From: Education Week
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/08/29/02gop.h28.html
By Alyson Klein
Vol. 28, Issue 02, Page 1
McCain Position on Federal School Law Is 'Pleasantly Ambiguous,' Analyst Says
At the Republican National Convention in St. Paul this week, President Bush was expected to anoint Sen. John McCain as his successor and the new leader of the party.
But it remains far from clear whether Sen. McCain—and other top Republicans—will continue to embrace the federal mandates on school accountability at the center of the No Child Left Behind Act, Mr. Bush’s signature domestic-policy initiative, or whether the GOP will return to its role as a champion of limited government and local control of schools.
“The biggest challenge within the Republican Party is really how much of a role should Washington continue to play,” said Eugene W. Hickok, who served as deputy secretary in the U.S. Department of Education earlier in President Bush’s tenure.
Sen. McCain outlined his education priorities in a speech to the NAACP in July, but as of last week he had not put forth a proposal explaining how he would revamp the No Child Left Behind law. Late last week, he tapped as his running mate Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, who brings to the ticket at least some experience with education issues.
Mr. Hickok, who is informally advising the McCain campaign, said he suspects that the Arizona Republican and his policy aides haven’t discussed the specifics of the NCLB law on the campaign trail in part because of its unpopularity, both within the party and with much of the public.
“It’s a somewhat politically difficult thing to talk about,” Mr. Hickok said. He said Sen. McCain does not want to walk away from the law completely but cannot embrace it wholeheartedly because it has become “a damaged brand.”
“It’s an awkward dance one has to go through,” Mr. Hickok said.
The law had been scheduled for reauthorization in 2007, but isn’t likely to be renewed until after a new president takes office.
The No Child Left Behind Act, which was passed in late 2001 with broad, bipartisan support, holds schools responsible for making progress toward academic proficiency for all students, as measured by state tests.
Hoekstra Bill
Republican leaders were important champions of the NCLB law in Congress. Among its architects was Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, now the House minority leader, who was the chairman of the House education committee when the measure was crafted.
But the GOP most typically has viewed education strictly as a state and local matter. And while some Republicans favor the strong federal presence in education that NCLB exemplifies, others in the party reject such a role as violating federalism principles.
Last March, the local-control contingent of the Republican caucus in Congress reasserted itself.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., a member of the House Education and Labor Committee, introduced a bill that would permit states to craft their own accountability systems. Sixty-six House Republicans, including several members of the House education panel, are co-sponsors of the bill.
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., introduced a similar bill in the Senate, which has seven co-sponsors.
Sen. McCain, who voted for the NCLB law seven years ago but hasn’t been closely identified with education issues during his quarter-century-long congressional career, hasn’t become a co-sponsor of Sen. DeMint’s legislation.
On the campaign trail, Sen. McCain has essentially said that he wants to “strengthen the good parts” of the law, a stance that is “pleasantly ambiguous,” said Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a free-market-oriented think tank.
‘Leeway’ Preserved
By indicating that he generally supports the NCLB law but not getting into specifics, he’s “reassuring the various components of the party that he’s sympathetic to their agenda without planting any flags,” Mr. Hess said.
“If he were to win, he’d have a lot of leeway in terms of what direction he wanted to move in,” Mr. Hess added.
Mr. Hickok and Jeanne Allen, the president of the Center for Education Reform, a nonpartisan organization that advocates expanded school choice, said they believe Sen. McCain does not fit neatly into either contingent of the party on education issues.
The senator “has his own camp,” Ms. Allen said. He appears to support a “continued connection between federal funds and accountability,” but seems likely to give more latitude to states and school districts than the Bush administration has, she said.
Sen. McCain “has a lighter touch in terms of Washington carrot and stick” than Bush administration officials do, Ms. Allen said.
Sen. McCain’s education agenda focuses on bolstering alternative-certification programs for teachers, giving principals more control over school budgets, and encouraging districts to explore alternative-pay programs for teachers.
His running mate brings more executive experience with education programs.
Gov. Palin, elected in 2006, helped champion an overhaul of the state’s school finance system, which supporters said channeled more money to rural districts outside Anchorage and helped stabilize school districts’ budgets. The measure, approved by the Alaska legislature this year, also hiked spending for students with special needs.
Ms. Palin has also become known for juggling her duties as Alaska’s chief executive with those of a parent. In April, she gave birth to a son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, who was diagnosed with Down syndrome. She and her husband, Todd, have four other children.
“My mom and dad both worked at the local elementary school,” Gov. Palin said last Friday. “I got involved in the pta and then was elected to the city council. My agenda was to stop wasteful spending and cut property taxes.”
She also served as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.
The Republican convention comes just a few weeks after a poll by Phi Delta Kappa International and the Gallup Organization found that Americans believe that the Democrats are more likely than the Republicans to improve schools. ("Survey Gives Obama Edge on Education," Aug. 27, 2008.)
During the 2000 and 2004 elections, the same polls showed President Bush running roughly evenly with his Democratic opponents on school issues.
“No Child Left Behind gave [President Bush] an edge for a bit, but that is no longer working to the Republican advantage,” said Paul E. Peterson, the director of the program on education policy and governance at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. “I think the Republican Party has to come up with some new approaches if they’re going to become the dominant party on education policy again.”
No Need to Defend
President Bush’s departure will almost certainly open the door for some Republicans who voted for the No Child Left Behind Act to return to their roots and push for leaving school policy authority firmly in state and local hands.
“You will see more Republicans come out against some of the core tenets of NCLB,” said Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president at the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute, who was an Education Department official during Mr. Bush’s first term. “The Republicans, in particular on [Capitol] Hill, will no longer feel beholden to defend the Bush administration.”
The No Child Left Behind law and education issues generally appear likely to take a back seat at the Republican convention this week. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, one of the key architects of the law as a domestic-policy adviser in the Bush White House in 2001, had not been scheduled to address the convention as of late last week.
By contrast, at the party’s 2000 convention in Philadelphia, Ms. Spellings, a campaign aide to then-Texas Gov. Bush, spoke to each state’s delegation about the candidate’s plans for improving schools.
“I suspect the entire convention will go by without anyone mentioning NCLB,” Mr. Petrilli said. “If you do hear the words ‘No Child Left Behind,’ they will come from the mouth of President Bush.”
Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The Mistrusted Male Teacher
From: ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=5670187&page=1
By LAUREN COX
Of all the historical gender disparities in the American classroom, one has quietly stagnated for the last 20 years. Men still account for 16 percent of all elementary school teachers, according to a 2003 National Schools and Staffing Survey.
Advocates like the National Education Association have called for efforts to support young men interested in teaching, but sometimes it's the parents who carry on mistrust and sexual stereotypes.
On the popular Colorado parent blog hosted by the Denver Post, Milehighmamas, contributor Annie Payne recently wrote:
"…I was okay with our teacher assignment until I realized that not only is my son's new teacher a man, (wait for it Mitch McDad, don't get your boxers in a bunch just yet), he is also young and single! What's a young single dude doing teaching fourth grade anyway?!""
A similar discussion erupted on a Detroit's parent blog called Momslikeme earlier this month. A slew of self-conscious but clearly prejudiced posts responded to the question: "Do you think it is appropriate or inappropriate for young men to be teaching the little ones?"
Opinions ranged from "personally I think it's a little weird," to men are too rough and "if I had a male teacher in my K-3rd grades I would have freaked," to support for male teachers as strong mentors for fatherless children.
But Bryan G. Nelson, a teacher with 30 years of experience, has heard these inaccurate assumptions, and worse.
"Most people really want men teaching their children, but it does happen occasionally," said Nelson, who is the founding director of MenTeach, a support and recruitment organization for male teachers.
"I had a parent who was complaining and concerned about me working with her daughter," Nelson said. "The kid really liked me a lot, and because the child was liking me so much the mother got worried and suspicious."
A Career Path With High Stakes
Nelson said the mother's suspicion of a perverted relationship was quickly resolved within the school's staff and the mother eventually opened up about being strained and flustered by a divorce.
But Nelson, who took a graduate fellowship at Harvard to study men in secondary school teaching, found that overzealous suspicions of sexual abuse are one of the top three reasons why the teaching profession doesn't draw more men. From his research, the other two reasons are perceptions about men's nurturing abilities and low social status combined with low pay.
Male and Female Stereotypes
"People don't think of men as caretaking or nurturing, which many of the young grades require," Nelson said. "And if you're a single man and you're going out to date somebody, when they ask you 'what do you do?' it just doesn't have the same cache as saying I'm an engineer or a scientist."
Anecdotes of such stereotypes and biases pepper the positive personal stories sent into the MenTeach organization. Across the country men get weird looks, to assumptions that the teachers can't handle potty issues, to reactions form fellow teachers.
"I was about to graduate and was applying to schools hoping to find a teaching job. The teacher asked what grade I would like to teach and I was surprised that she kind of laughed when I told her I wanted to teach in the primary grades," wrote Mark D. Hedger, now a principal in Holden, Mo.
"Even though I had volunteered in her classroom, she acted as though it would be very strange for me to actually be a teacher at this level," he said.
Nelson said his research and experience as a male teacher led him to start working as a consultant to school districts that are trying to restructure the curriculums for male teachers. He believes the identity of children's teachers should reflect the child's larger community, including a 50-50 ratio of men to women.
But for all the enthusiasm over recruiting male teachers, media representatives from the National Education Association and the National Parent Teachers Association say there aren't notable studies or research about the real influence of a teacher's identity and gender.
The Real Importance of Gender
"I really think it has a lot to do with the personality of the teacher," said Dr. Caryl Oris, a consulting psychiatrist for the Sewanhaka Central High School District on Long Island, N.Y. "What matters more than anything is that it's a good teacher and the teacher loves to teach."
"Could you say it would be great if they had this caring male teacher? Yes, but it could be other adults in their lives," Oris said. "Children have many adults in their lives."
Oris said what worries her more than whether there are enough male teachers in elementary schools are parents who actually express their unease with male teachers.
Student and Teacher Relationship
"Children have their own anxieties about going to school. They shouldn't have the burden of the parents' anxieties as well," Oris said. "If the parent is concerned, I think that it is something the parent is reacting to from their own life or their own experiences and projecting that onto the child."
That's precisely what Payne, the author of the milehighmamas blog post, admits to doing.
"A couple of the commenters were put off about my opinion of young male teachers," Payne said. "I won't apologize for it. That was my experience, although I admit it was narrow, from working in the Los Angeles County Unified School District."
However Payne did exactly what Oris would recommend: She met with the teacher.
"I was a little nervous about what to expect with this teacher," Payne said. "But I knew immediately that he did mean business."
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=5670187&page=1
By LAUREN COX
Of all the historical gender disparities in the American classroom, one has quietly stagnated for the last 20 years. Men still account for 16 percent of all elementary school teachers, according to a 2003 National Schools and Staffing Survey.
Advocates like the National Education Association have called for efforts to support young men interested in teaching, but sometimes it's the parents who carry on mistrust and sexual stereotypes.
On the popular Colorado parent blog hosted by the Denver Post, Milehighmamas, contributor Annie Payne recently wrote:
"…I was okay with our teacher assignment until I realized that not only is my son's new teacher a man, (wait for it Mitch McDad, don't get your boxers in a bunch just yet), he is also young and single! What's a young single dude doing teaching fourth grade anyway?!""
A similar discussion erupted on a Detroit's parent blog called Momslikeme earlier this month. A slew of self-conscious but clearly prejudiced posts responded to the question: "Do you think it is appropriate or inappropriate for young men to be teaching the little ones?"
Opinions ranged from "personally I think it's a little weird," to men are too rough and "if I had a male teacher in my K-3rd grades I would have freaked," to support for male teachers as strong mentors for fatherless children.
But Bryan G. Nelson, a teacher with 30 years of experience, has heard these inaccurate assumptions, and worse.
"Most people really want men teaching their children, but it does happen occasionally," said Nelson, who is the founding director of MenTeach, a support and recruitment organization for male teachers.
"I had a parent who was complaining and concerned about me working with her daughter," Nelson said. "The kid really liked me a lot, and because the child was liking me so much the mother got worried and suspicious."
A Career Path With High Stakes
Nelson said the mother's suspicion of a perverted relationship was quickly resolved within the school's staff and the mother eventually opened up about being strained and flustered by a divorce.
But Nelson, who took a graduate fellowship at Harvard to study men in secondary school teaching, found that overzealous suspicions of sexual abuse are one of the top three reasons why the teaching profession doesn't draw more men. From his research, the other two reasons are perceptions about men's nurturing abilities and low social status combined with low pay.
Male and Female Stereotypes
"People don't think of men as caretaking or nurturing, which many of the young grades require," Nelson said. "And if you're a single man and you're going out to date somebody, when they ask you 'what do you do?' it just doesn't have the same cache as saying I'm an engineer or a scientist."
Anecdotes of such stereotypes and biases pepper the positive personal stories sent into the MenTeach organization. Across the country men get weird looks, to assumptions that the teachers can't handle potty issues, to reactions form fellow teachers.
"I was about to graduate and was applying to schools hoping to find a teaching job. The teacher asked what grade I would like to teach and I was surprised that she kind of laughed when I told her I wanted to teach in the primary grades," wrote Mark D. Hedger, now a principal in Holden, Mo.
"Even though I had volunteered in her classroom, she acted as though it would be very strange for me to actually be a teacher at this level," he said.
Nelson said his research and experience as a male teacher led him to start working as a consultant to school districts that are trying to restructure the curriculums for male teachers. He believes the identity of children's teachers should reflect the child's larger community, including a 50-50 ratio of men to women.
But for all the enthusiasm over recruiting male teachers, media representatives from the National Education Association and the National Parent Teachers Association say there aren't notable studies or research about the real influence of a teacher's identity and gender.
The Real Importance of Gender
"I really think it has a lot to do with the personality of the teacher," said Dr. Caryl Oris, a consulting psychiatrist for the Sewanhaka Central High School District on Long Island, N.Y. "What matters more than anything is that it's a good teacher and the teacher loves to teach."
"Could you say it would be great if they had this caring male teacher? Yes, but it could be other adults in their lives," Oris said. "Children have many adults in their lives."
Oris said what worries her more than whether there are enough male teachers in elementary schools are parents who actually express their unease with male teachers.
Student and Teacher Relationship
"Children have their own anxieties about going to school. They shouldn't have the burden of the parents' anxieties as well," Oris said. "If the parent is concerned, I think that it is something the parent is reacting to from their own life or their own experiences and projecting that onto the child."
That's precisely what Payne, the author of the milehighmamas blog post, admits to doing.
"A couple of the commenters were put off about my opinion of young male teachers," Payne said. "I won't apologize for it. That was my experience, although I admit it was narrow, from working in the Los Angeles County Unified School District."
However Payne did exactly what Oris would recommend: She met with the teacher.
"I was a little nervous about what to expect with this teacher," Payne said. "But I knew immediately that he did mean business."
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Teaching Secrets: The Parent Meet and Greet
From: NEA
http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2008/08/27/44tln_ratzel.h19.html
By Marsha Ratzel
Back-to-school night sends chills up the spine of many teachers. Somehow standing in front of parents and explaining yourself can reduce even the most seasoned veteran to rubble.
The big key to a successful parent meet-and-greet experience is preparation. Think about the questions that most parents are going to want answered and make a list. If you’re a rookie, you can ask other teachers for ideas about what typically comes up. Armed with your list, you’ll be able to think about your responses. And if you’re not sure how to respond to parent questions, ask a colleague to help you prepare.
You can bet that parents will ask you questions that would be better handled in a one-on-one phone call or meeting. Know these questions are coming and prepare a diplomatic way of suggesting a more appropriate time to discuss them. When the timing is right, you’ll be ready.
Most back-to-school events have a limited period when you’re facing a group of parents and all eyes are on you. Often it’s ten minutes or less. You have to convince yourself for those ten minutes that you are the expert, even if you feel like you don’t know a thing. Many teachers also find it helpful to prepare a short handout that covers administrative details. It may relieve future confusion or questions because parents can refer to it.
Remember that this is what most parents want to know: (1) You’re going to treat their child fairly; and (2) You are committed to teaching both the curriculum and other skills well, including how to stay organized, study for a test, take notes, make a mistake and recover from it, and become a lifelong learner. Parents want reassurance that you’ll listen to them as a valued partner in their child’s school year. You don’t want to give them the impression that you’ll do anything they want, but you do want them to know you are available to hear their concerns.
This time with parents early in the school year is a teacher’s opportunity to shine and it is hard for many teachers to step up and do this. But for this one evening, you really have to show ‘em what you’ve got!
What is most important to remember:
• Let parents know you’re thrilled to be there and excited to meet everyone, even if you aren’t. Actually, most teachers are happy to meet and greet, but their nervousness may overshadow their excitement, leaving them with that frightened-deer look.
• You’re the expert. You know more about your curriculum, the way your classroom works, and how you interact with students than any other person in the room. Even if you’re a brand new first-year teacher, you’re still the authority when it comes to your teaching plans.
• Parents want reassurance. Be sure to tell them how they can help their child with the type of homework and projects you plan to assign.
• Be very specific about where and how parents can find out about homework and grades. If you maintain a Web site, print out stickers with the Web address on it. I’ve known teachers who put the stickers on refrigerator magnets for handy reference. If you let parents know what to expect from you, especially in terms of how you communicate homework and grades, the year will go smoothly.
• This is your opportunity to sell parents on your classroom. Don’t paint a false reality. Provide an honest view.
• Don’t focus on the operational aspects of class. Rules, grading policies, syllabi, and classroom expectations can be covered in a handout which parents can read and refer to long after the evening is over. I can’t stress it enough: Reassuring parents is what matters most.
• Lay out in plain view sets of the textbooks, reference materials, and special equipment that students will use.
• Clearly explain how parents can reach you. If you prefer e-mail, be sure to provide them with your e-mail address. If you prefer to be contacted by phone, let parents know when they can reach you. Give them a sense of your turnaround time for an e-mail or a phone call.
• Switch your viewpoint. Instead of feeling like you’re under the microscope, realize that this is your chance to research your parents and get an impression of them. Don’t be reactive. Ask them questions about their kids. Probe and learn.
• Have a notepad handy so you can jot down what you promise to do. This might be coordinating something for parents through the office, scheduling a conference, or sending home extra copies of something. In the hub-bub of the evening, without notes you may forget what you promise. This would make a terrible first impression.
• This is a great time to recruit parent volunteers for field trips and special days where an extra pair of adult hands is needed. One teacher I know recruits parents to help her change the displays of student work in her room and the hallway. Another teacher asks parents to share their professional or vocational expertise for science labs or to talk about their interests. Some even serve as consultants for classroom projects.
• Most of all, smile, relax, and enjoy the evening.
Learning the ropes of back-to-school events is tough work. The good news is that once you have, you’ll have a powerful tool at your disposal for any event where parents are gathered. By offering guidance and setting clear expectations for parents at the start of the year, you can help their children achieve success in the classroom.
http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2008/08/27/44tln_ratzel.h19.html
By Marsha Ratzel
Back-to-school night sends chills up the spine of many teachers. Somehow standing in front of parents and explaining yourself can reduce even the most seasoned veteran to rubble.
The big key to a successful parent meet-and-greet experience is preparation. Think about the questions that most parents are going to want answered and make a list. If you’re a rookie, you can ask other teachers for ideas about what typically comes up. Armed with your list, you’ll be able to think about your responses. And if you’re not sure how to respond to parent questions, ask a colleague to help you prepare.
You can bet that parents will ask you questions that would be better handled in a one-on-one phone call or meeting. Know these questions are coming and prepare a diplomatic way of suggesting a more appropriate time to discuss them. When the timing is right, you’ll be ready.
Most back-to-school events have a limited period when you’re facing a group of parents and all eyes are on you. Often it’s ten minutes or less. You have to convince yourself for those ten minutes that you are the expert, even if you feel like you don’t know a thing. Many teachers also find it helpful to prepare a short handout that covers administrative details. It may relieve future confusion or questions because parents can refer to it.
Remember that this is what most parents want to know: (1) You’re going to treat their child fairly; and (2) You are committed to teaching both the curriculum and other skills well, including how to stay organized, study for a test, take notes, make a mistake and recover from it, and become a lifelong learner. Parents want reassurance that you’ll listen to them as a valued partner in their child’s school year. You don’t want to give them the impression that you’ll do anything they want, but you do want them to know you are available to hear their concerns.
This time with parents early in the school year is a teacher’s opportunity to shine and it is hard for many teachers to step up and do this. But for this one evening, you really have to show ‘em what you’ve got!
What is most important to remember:
• Let parents know you’re thrilled to be there and excited to meet everyone, even if you aren’t. Actually, most teachers are happy to meet and greet, but their nervousness may overshadow their excitement, leaving them with that frightened-deer look.
• You’re the expert. You know more about your curriculum, the way your classroom works, and how you interact with students than any other person in the room. Even if you’re a brand new first-year teacher, you’re still the authority when it comes to your teaching plans.
• Parents want reassurance. Be sure to tell them how they can help their child with the type of homework and projects you plan to assign.
• Be very specific about where and how parents can find out about homework and grades. If you maintain a Web site, print out stickers with the Web address on it. I’ve known teachers who put the stickers on refrigerator magnets for handy reference. If you let parents know what to expect from you, especially in terms of how you communicate homework and grades, the year will go smoothly.
• This is your opportunity to sell parents on your classroom. Don’t paint a false reality. Provide an honest view.
• Don’t focus on the operational aspects of class. Rules, grading policies, syllabi, and classroom expectations can be covered in a handout which parents can read and refer to long after the evening is over. I can’t stress it enough: Reassuring parents is what matters most.
• Lay out in plain view sets of the textbooks, reference materials, and special equipment that students will use.
• Clearly explain how parents can reach you. If you prefer e-mail, be sure to provide them with your e-mail address. If you prefer to be contacted by phone, let parents know when they can reach you. Give them a sense of your turnaround time for an e-mail or a phone call.
• Switch your viewpoint. Instead of feeling like you’re under the microscope, realize that this is your chance to research your parents and get an impression of them. Don’t be reactive. Ask them questions about their kids. Probe and learn.
• Have a notepad handy so you can jot down what you promise to do. This might be coordinating something for parents through the office, scheduling a conference, or sending home extra copies of something. In the hub-bub of the evening, without notes you may forget what you promise. This would make a terrible first impression.
• This is a great time to recruit parent volunteers for field trips and special days where an extra pair of adult hands is needed. One teacher I know recruits parents to help her change the displays of student work in her room and the hallway. Another teacher asks parents to share their professional or vocational expertise for science labs or to talk about their interests. Some even serve as consultants for classroom projects.
• Most of all, smile, relax, and enjoy the evening.
Learning the ropes of back-to-school events is tough work. The good news is that once you have, you’ll have a powerful tool at your disposal for any event where parents are gathered. By offering guidance and setting clear expectations for parents at the start of the year, you can help their children achieve success in the classroom.
Ask The Experts: Should I give students my cell phone number?
From: NEA
http://www.nea.org/neatoday/go/askexperts.html
We asked experienced, National Board Certified Teachers and found they don't agree. So you'll have to decide for yourself! But we hope their comments help you think about it.
YES
I've started texting a number of my students this year with reminders, classroom-related questions, even grades, and it's really useful. I get a lot more response and it's helped build channels of communication with a few students I might not have connected with as easily otherwise.
I am the teacher they hear from on their phones, and we know how all-important those phones have become.
When I text, obviously students end up with my number and they do text back, but I haven't had any problems. Students seem respectful of my time and rarely initiate the text conversations themselves. It's fairly easy to identify who is calling or texting, and I'm sure teens are aware of this fact. Besides, kids need the opportunity to develop good cell phone etiquette—when to text, how to respond appropriately, not to use phones for pranks, how to be polite, etc.
Cell phone use and texting have become a basic communication tool of our time. It's time to embrace this technology and set standards for its use.
Jen Morrison, High school English teacher, Prosperity, South Carolina
NO
Our professional email addresses are published in the students' agenda books and posted in the grade book accessible by students and parents online. I wouldn't give out my cell phone number, though, for several reasons:
First, because I need a life, too (after the 12–14 hours I spend in school every day, I would like to hold onto my weekends). Even doctors are not available around the clock. Why should teachers' privacy be invaded? There are no emergencies in education that cannot wait 24 or 48 hours.
Second, because it would be much more time-consuming.
Third, I find there is a better tone in written communication, especially between teacher and parents: exchanging emails allows time to cool down and present a documented response instead of an emotional one.
Maria Boichin, Middle school French immersion teacher, Gaithersburg, Maryland
NO
I will not give out my personal cell phone number to my employer and several of my relatives, much less my students.
I would only share a cell phone number with students if I had a business cell phone dedicated for contacts related to school business.
Renee Moore , Instructor of English, Mississippi Delta Community College Moorhead, Mississippi, and former high school English teacher
YES
I give my students my cell phone number. I also give parents my cell phone number.
I do screen my calls and I establish time limits (I don't take calls after 9 p.m. because I go to bed early—I am a teacher after all!)
If I really want parents to be part of my teaching team, then I need to be as available to them as I am to my colleagues.
And my students need to feel that they can call me when they have questions about their homework and projects.
Using my cell phone also means I have a record of my contacts with parents and students.
I have been giving out my home phone (which is now my cell phone) for 13 years. So far, my experience has been all positive.
Michelle Wise Capen, Elementary school curriculum coach and lead teacher - Lenoir, North Carolina
YES
I don't give my personal phone number out to my elementary school students, but I do give my phone number out to parents with whom I am in ongoing contact regarding after-school events, homework help, etc.
Of course, with the common use of caller ID, other families and students get my phone number when I call them. In my experience, it has only been positive for a parent or students to call and ask for clarity on the homework or about a school activity.
It also allows us to build trust between the home and school environments within the first several months of school.
Once students know that you and their parents have each other's phone numbers, discipline problems are very minor!
I even have several students from my first few years of teaching who call once in a blue moon to fill me in on how they are doing in school.
Overall it has been a positive experience for me and has worked out well, especially for increasing parent involvement.
Brenda Martinez, Elementary school teacher Milwaukee, Wisconsin
RARELY
When I took my class on a field trip last year, I made them all punch my cell number into their phones just in case someone got separated from the group.
Since then, two of those students have called me.
One call was to let me know a student was going to miss the PSAT (a class requirement) and one was to ask a question about registering for the SAT.
The second question should have been asked in class, but I was not overly annoyed.
I absolutely do not accept text messages from students. Recently, someone in our district was asked to resign because the person was texting with students during the school day.
To me (an old person), that type of "anytime" communication implies a more intimate, less professional relationship than is proper with students. There is a time and place for everything, and the time and place for teacher-student communication is not when I'm out with my family.
However, I do give parents my home number if we are having a difficult time connecting during school hours.
Kim McClung, High school English teacher - Kent, Washington
http://www.nea.org/neatoday/go/askexperts.html
We asked experienced, National Board Certified Teachers and found they don't agree. So you'll have to decide for yourself! But we hope their comments help you think about it.
YES
I've started texting a number of my students this year with reminders, classroom-related questions, even grades, and it's really useful. I get a lot more response and it's helped build channels of communication with a few students I might not have connected with as easily otherwise.
I am the teacher they hear from on their phones, and we know how all-important those phones have become.
When I text, obviously students end up with my number and they do text back, but I haven't had any problems. Students seem respectful of my time and rarely initiate the text conversations themselves. It's fairly easy to identify who is calling or texting, and I'm sure teens are aware of this fact. Besides, kids need the opportunity to develop good cell phone etiquette—when to text, how to respond appropriately, not to use phones for pranks, how to be polite, etc.
Cell phone use and texting have become a basic communication tool of our time. It's time to embrace this technology and set standards for its use.
Jen Morrison, High school English teacher, Prosperity, South Carolina
NO
Our professional email addresses are published in the students' agenda books and posted in the grade book accessible by students and parents online. I wouldn't give out my cell phone number, though, for several reasons:
First, because I need a life, too (after the 12–14 hours I spend in school every day, I would like to hold onto my weekends). Even doctors are not available around the clock. Why should teachers' privacy be invaded? There are no emergencies in education that cannot wait 24 or 48 hours.
Second, because it would be much more time-consuming.
Third, I find there is a better tone in written communication, especially between teacher and parents: exchanging emails allows time to cool down and present a documented response instead of an emotional one.
Maria Boichin, Middle school French immersion teacher, Gaithersburg, Maryland
NO
I will not give out my personal cell phone number to my employer and several of my relatives, much less my students.
I would only share a cell phone number with students if I had a business cell phone dedicated for contacts related to school business.
Renee Moore , Instructor of English, Mississippi Delta Community College Moorhead, Mississippi, and former high school English teacher
YES
I give my students my cell phone number. I also give parents my cell phone number.
I do screen my calls and I establish time limits (I don't take calls after 9 p.m. because I go to bed early—I am a teacher after all!)
If I really want parents to be part of my teaching team, then I need to be as available to them as I am to my colleagues.
And my students need to feel that they can call me when they have questions about their homework and projects.
Using my cell phone also means I have a record of my contacts with parents and students.
I have been giving out my home phone (which is now my cell phone) for 13 years. So far, my experience has been all positive.
Michelle Wise Capen, Elementary school curriculum coach and lead teacher - Lenoir, North Carolina
YES
I don't give my personal phone number out to my elementary school students, but I do give my phone number out to parents with whom I am in ongoing contact regarding after-school events, homework help, etc.
Of course, with the common use of caller ID, other families and students get my phone number when I call them. In my experience, it has only been positive for a parent or students to call and ask for clarity on the homework or about a school activity.
It also allows us to build trust between the home and school environments within the first several months of school.
Once students know that you and their parents have each other's phone numbers, discipline problems are very minor!
I even have several students from my first few years of teaching who call once in a blue moon to fill me in on how they are doing in school.
Overall it has been a positive experience for me and has worked out well, especially for increasing parent involvement.
Brenda Martinez, Elementary school teacher Milwaukee, Wisconsin
RARELY
When I took my class on a field trip last year, I made them all punch my cell number into their phones just in case someone got separated from the group.
Since then, two of those students have called me.
One call was to let me know a student was going to miss the PSAT (a class requirement) and one was to ask a question about registering for the SAT.
The second question should have been asked in class, but I was not overly annoyed.
I absolutely do not accept text messages from students. Recently, someone in our district was asked to resign because the person was texting with students during the school day.
To me (an old person), that type of "anytime" communication implies a more intimate, less professional relationship than is proper with students. There is a time and place for everything, and the time and place for teacher-student communication is not when I'm out with my family.
However, I do give parents my home number if we are having a difficult time connecting during school hours.
Kim McClung, High school English teacher - Kent, Washington
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Students must take responsibility
From: Go San Angelo
http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2008/aug/26/students-must-take-responsibility/
By Bruce McLaren
For many, a new school year has begun with all the gilded enthusiasm that teachers, administrators, students, clerical and custodial people can muster. This list also needs to include parents, grandparents and anyone else who touch the lives of those involved in the process of learning.
Once again, fall is a time filled with anticipation, new clothes, backpacks, laptops, friends, interscholastic sports and responsibilities. But wait one minute. Let me share with you a recent finding from the nationally recognized Association For Supervision and Curriculum Development:
"Some 7,000 high school students drop out of school every day, at a cost to society of $209,000 per student over their lifetimes." In Texas, there seems to be a growing concern that many of our high school graduates are not ready to complete their freshman year in college. A solution being offered is to send them to a community college so they can be brought up to academic speed. Why? Read on.
Students, some of you may not agree with what I am going to say. However, if you do choose to read on, understand that my comments are directed to those who see you off to school each day as well. What I am writing about is "educational responsibility," and, to be as tactfully blunt as possible, it is written to see if I am the only one who is upset with the ongoing diatribe from groups that choose to bash public school systems and are of the opinion that educators are the ones to blame for failure rates, poor test scores and homework not being turned in on time or at all.
I often wonder if we have been sold a bill of goods about our children's education. It appears that many educational reformers, study groups, as well as government agencies are directing their energies in a mollifying way, almost pacifying those students unwilling to accept individual responsibility for any part of their education. Some of these pundits call for "kinder and gentler" changes in school systems, expected academic requirements and outcomes, and appear to be advocating the easing of responsibilities from the tired, backpack-burdened, cell-phone toting backs of this particular group.
What's wrong with this picture? If you will indulge me a moment, I would like to offer some suggestions that might turn these conditions around:
1. Quit blaming teachers for children not turning in required homework. Homework is the student's responsibility.
2. Quit blaming teachers for students who choose to skip school because they thought it was dull, boring and they would rather hang out with their friends. Attending school is a student's responsibility.
3. Learn to understand and accept that homework is more important than school night social life.
4. Do not put the blame for suspensions, loss of a cell phones, necessity of wearing name tags or extra assignments on the back of teachers. Schools have rules. Teachers and administrators are expected to enforce those rules. They were not made in haste or with an alleged ethnic bias. If a student has chosen to take a path not acceptable in the school society, they need to live with the consequences.
5. Teachers, you and school administrators are asked to do many more things in the name of accountability, testing and educating your charges than I ever faced when I was in public education. Perhaps instead of "No Child Left Behind," we need to understand that "No Teacher Needs the Blame for Bad Choices Made By Some Students." You should not have to put up with parental blame for a child not getting all A's, not passing into the next grade or failing a class because they chose not to turn in the required work.
Understand that I am not speaking to the majority of school students. My comments are directed to those who fail to accept their responsibilities as students and hide behind others who find it easier to blame teachers than correct the problem where it resides.
For those who choose not to do homework, prefer to skip school, and through someone else, blame teachers for being the cause of it all, consider this: It's time to wake-up and smell reality. Perhaps a more pointed suggestion is one that comes from Kelly Flynn, author of "Kids, Classrooms, and Capitol Hill":
"Get your butts to school, sit down, be quiet, do your work, quit whining, and make your parents proud!" Responsibility is part of your life. It is like a meal that includes vegetables and other things that are good for you. Try it. You'll like it.
http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2008/aug/26/students-must-take-responsibility/
By Bruce McLaren
For many, a new school year has begun with all the gilded enthusiasm that teachers, administrators, students, clerical and custodial people can muster. This list also needs to include parents, grandparents and anyone else who touch the lives of those involved in the process of learning.
Once again, fall is a time filled with anticipation, new clothes, backpacks, laptops, friends, interscholastic sports and responsibilities. But wait one minute. Let me share with you a recent finding from the nationally recognized Association For Supervision and Curriculum Development:
"Some 7,000 high school students drop out of school every day, at a cost to society of $209,000 per student over their lifetimes." In Texas, there seems to be a growing concern that many of our high school graduates are not ready to complete their freshman year in college. A solution being offered is to send them to a community college so they can be brought up to academic speed. Why? Read on.
Students, some of you may not agree with what I am going to say. However, if you do choose to read on, understand that my comments are directed to those who see you off to school each day as well. What I am writing about is "educational responsibility," and, to be as tactfully blunt as possible, it is written to see if I am the only one who is upset with the ongoing diatribe from groups that choose to bash public school systems and are of the opinion that educators are the ones to blame for failure rates, poor test scores and homework not being turned in on time or at all.
I often wonder if we have been sold a bill of goods about our children's education. It appears that many educational reformers, study groups, as well as government agencies are directing their energies in a mollifying way, almost pacifying those students unwilling to accept individual responsibility for any part of their education. Some of these pundits call for "kinder and gentler" changes in school systems, expected academic requirements and outcomes, and appear to be advocating the easing of responsibilities from the tired, backpack-burdened, cell-phone toting backs of this particular group.
What's wrong with this picture? If you will indulge me a moment, I would like to offer some suggestions that might turn these conditions around:
1. Quit blaming teachers for children not turning in required homework. Homework is the student's responsibility.
2. Quit blaming teachers for students who choose to skip school because they thought it was dull, boring and they would rather hang out with their friends. Attending school is a student's responsibility.
3. Learn to understand and accept that homework is more important than school night social life.
4. Do not put the blame for suspensions, loss of a cell phones, necessity of wearing name tags or extra assignments on the back of teachers. Schools have rules. Teachers and administrators are expected to enforce those rules. They were not made in haste or with an alleged ethnic bias. If a student has chosen to take a path not acceptable in the school society, they need to live with the consequences.
5. Teachers, you and school administrators are asked to do many more things in the name of accountability, testing and educating your charges than I ever faced when I was in public education. Perhaps instead of "No Child Left Behind," we need to understand that "No Teacher Needs the Blame for Bad Choices Made By Some Students." You should not have to put up with parental blame for a child not getting all A's, not passing into the next grade or failing a class because they chose not to turn in the required work.
Understand that I am not speaking to the majority of school students. My comments are directed to those who fail to accept their responsibilities as students and hide behind others who find it easier to blame teachers than correct the problem where it resides.
For those who choose not to do homework, prefer to skip school, and through someone else, blame teachers for being the cause of it all, consider this: It's time to wake-up and smell reality. Perhaps a more pointed suggestion is one that comes from Kelly Flynn, author of "Kids, Classrooms, and Capitol Hill":
"Get your butts to school, sit down, be quiet, do your work, quit whining, and make your parents proud!" Responsibility is part of your life. It is like a meal that includes vegetables and other things that are good for you. Try it. You'll like it.
10 Approaches to Better Discipline
From: NEA
http://www.nea.org/classmanagement/disck021113.html
Helping Students Manage Their Own Behavior
All discipline problems are not alike. Effective teachers match different approaches to different problems. Here are some approaches from Inspiring Discipline by Merrill Harmin (NEA Professional Library 1995) that may prove useful to you.
The Simple Authority Statement With a simple authority statement, teachers can exercise authority with minimum distress and emotion. By employing this strategy, you also show students how a person can use authority respectfully and reasonably. The Strategy calls for the teacher to voice disapproval authoritatively, promptly, and as unemotionally as possible.
Redirect Student Energy By redirecting student energy, a teacher can end misbehavior without creating negative feelings. Instead of focusing on the misbehavior, this strategy calls on the teacher to turn student attention to something else, preferably something worth attending to. This is a useful approach when direct confrontation is either unnecessary or imprudent.
The Calm Reminder A calm reminder can help students understand what they are supposed to do, in a way that does not communicate negative emotions.
The Next-Time Message A next-time message can correct students' behavior without making them feel discouraged. The strategy calls for the teacher to tell students what to do next time, without focusing on what was done this time.
The Check-Yourself Message A check-yourself message can remind students to manage themselves responsibly. The strategy involves the teacher telling students to check what they have done, implying that when they do so, they will see what corrections are necessary. This strategy can be used whenever students become careless.
The Silent Response A silent response strategy gives students room to solve their own problems. This strategy also provides a way of avoiding hasty, inappropriate responses. A teacher using this strategy reacts to an act of misbehavior by making a mental note only and considering later what, if any, action is appropriate.
Clock Focus A clock focus strategy can settle student restlessness and increase student powers of concentration. The strategy calls for the teacher to announce "clock focus," a cue to students to stand and watch the second hand of a clock make full circles, as many rotations as they choose, and then to sit and resume their individual work. The strategy can be used whenever students need to be settled down, particularly young students working at individual tasks.
The Visitor's Chair By using the visitor's chair strategy, a teacher can position a student close-by without communicating disapproval. The teacher using this strategy asks a student to sit in a "visitor's chair" close to where the teacher is sitting or standing. Students know they can return to their own seats whenever they feel ready for responsible self-management.
Honest "I" Statements "I" statements can help teachers communicate honestly without generating defensiveness or guilt. Honest "I" statements also help teachers model a valuable interpersonal skill. The strategy calls for the teacher to talk honestly about personal needs and feelings, making "I" statements, avoiding comments about what "you" did or "you" said. This approach is especially useful when upsetting feelings emerge.
The Undone-Work Response An undone-work response is a useful approach for reacting when students fail to do required work. A teacher using this strategy avoids a blaming response and instead aims to create a growth-producing response. This approach can be used whenever a student has not completed work on time.
Source: Merrill Harmin. 1995. Inspiring Discipline. Washington, D.C. NEA Professional Library.
http://www.nea.org/classmanagement/disck021113.html
Helping Students Manage Their Own Behavior
All discipline problems are not alike. Effective teachers match different approaches to different problems. Here are some approaches from Inspiring Discipline by Merrill Harmin (NEA Professional Library 1995) that may prove useful to you.
The Simple Authority Statement With a simple authority statement, teachers can exercise authority with minimum distress and emotion. By employing this strategy, you also show students how a person can use authority respectfully and reasonably. The Strategy calls for the teacher to voice disapproval authoritatively, promptly, and as unemotionally as possible.
Redirect Student Energy By redirecting student energy, a teacher can end misbehavior without creating negative feelings. Instead of focusing on the misbehavior, this strategy calls on the teacher to turn student attention to something else, preferably something worth attending to. This is a useful approach when direct confrontation is either unnecessary or imprudent.
The Calm Reminder A calm reminder can help students understand what they are supposed to do, in a way that does not communicate negative emotions.
The Next-Time Message A next-time message can correct students' behavior without making them feel discouraged. The strategy calls for the teacher to tell students what to do next time, without focusing on what was done this time.
The Check-Yourself Message A check-yourself message can remind students to manage themselves responsibly. The strategy involves the teacher telling students to check what they have done, implying that when they do so, they will see what corrections are necessary. This strategy can be used whenever students become careless.
The Silent Response A silent response strategy gives students room to solve their own problems. This strategy also provides a way of avoiding hasty, inappropriate responses. A teacher using this strategy reacts to an act of misbehavior by making a mental note only and considering later what, if any, action is appropriate.
Clock Focus A clock focus strategy can settle student restlessness and increase student powers of concentration. The strategy calls for the teacher to announce "clock focus," a cue to students to stand and watch the second hand of a clock make full circles, as many rotations as they choose, and then to sit and resume their individual work. The strategy can be used whenever students need to be settled down, particularly young students working at individual tasks.
The Visitor's Chair By using the visitor's chair strategy, a teacher can position a student close-by without communicating disapproval. The teacher using this strategy asks a student to sit in a "visitor's chair" close to where the teacher is sitting or standing. Students know they can return to their own seats whenever they feel ready for responsible self-management.
Honest "I" Statements "I" statements can help teachers communicate honestly without generating defensiveness or guilt. Honest "I" statements also help teachers model a valuable interpersonal skill. The strategy calls for the teacher to talk honestly about personal needs and feelings, making "I" statements, avoiding comments about what "you" did or "you" said. This approach is especially useful when upsetting feelings emerge.
The Undone-Work Response An undone-work response is a useful approach for reacting when students fail to do required work. A teacher using this strategy avoids a blaming response and instead aims to create a growth-producing response. This approach can be used whenever a student has not completed work on time.
Source: Merrill Harmin. 1995. Inspiring Discipline. Washington, D.C. NEA Professional Library.
Helping Students Find the 'Write' Way to Behave
From: NEA
http://www.nea.org/classmanagement/ifc080527.html
by Ellen Delisio, Education World
Having students write about their misbehavior, why it occurred, and what they are going to do to correct it is valuable for students and teachers. Students get a chance to have their say, and teachers can review the write-ups with students and keep the documents in students' files.
Looking for ways to help students reflect on disruptive behavior and learn to correct it? Let them write about their actions on contracts, questionnaires, and in journals, and then review the documents with them.
Contracts or questionnaires should be part of an overall classroom management strategy. Teachers should issue class rules at the beginning of the school year and ensure they are clear and consistent. Students should understand which infractions warrant discipline and the consequences for disruptive behaviors. Teachers also should make clear when students will receive forms: when the disruptive behavior occurs or right after class.
Slipping forms or instructions to students to write up the incident during class can decrease embarrassment for students and minimize class disruptions.
Reflecting and Writing
A student who writes himself or herself up can identify the behavior and its cause, explain why the behavior is a problem, and propose a way to correct the situation. That allows the student to express his or her viewpoint about the incident.
The teacher then can review the form with the student and decide whether a parent or guardian should sign it.
If having parents sign the form does not lead to improved behavior, the next time a student completes a form, consider having the student read it over the phone to a parent, in the presence of another adult.
Having students write themselves up doesn't mean teachers should give up, though. Writing short, on-the-spot notes -- pointing out positive and negative behavior -- also can be a good classroom management tool. While carrying around a pad of adhesive notes, jot down "good job," "excellent question," or "remember to raise your hand" and stick the notes on students' desks. Students get instant feedback and a reminder that the teacher is on top of things.
Not everyone favors writing as part of a punishment, though. Some schools do not want students to develop a negative attitude about writing, so they do not assign writing for misbehavior.
"I feel it is important to make the kids understand what they did wrong but not by punishing them with a skill in which we want them to excel," Dana Arhar, a teacher at Immokalee Middle School in Immokalee, Florida, told Education World.
One teacher from the Middle Level list serv came up with another kind of note. She sings (badly) to the recalcitrant youngster, mostly oldies. Tunes by the Monkees usually got the quickest response. After serenading some students with off-key verses, now she has only to threaten to sing, she wrote.
No Notes for You?
Other suggestions for managing your classroom:
http://www.nea.org/classmanagement/ifc080527.html
by Ellen Delisio, Education World
Having students write about their misbehavior, why it occurred, and what they are going to do to correct it is valuable for students and teachers. Students get a chance to have their say, and teachers can review the write-ups with students and keep the documents in students' files.
Looking for ways to help students reflect on disruptive behavior and learn to correct it? Let them write about their actions on contracts, questionnaires, and in journals, and then review the documents with them.
Contracts or questionnaires should be part of an overall classroom management strategy. Teachers should issue class rules at the beginning of the school year and ensure they are clear and consistent. Students should understand which infractions warrant discipline and the consequences for disruptive behaviors. Teachers also should make clear when students will receive forms: when the disruptive behavior occurs or right after class.
Slipping forms or instructions to students to write up the incident during class can decrease embarrassment for students and minimize class disruptions.
Reflecting and Writing
A student who writes himself or herself up can identify the behavior and its cause, explain why the behavior is a problem, and propose a way to correct the situation. That allows the student to express his or her viewpoint about the incident.
The teacher then can review the form with the student and decide whether a parent or guardian should sign it.
If having parents sign the form does not lead to improved behavior, the next time a student completes a form, consider having the student read it over the phone to a parent, in the presence of another adult.
Having students write themselves up doesn't mean teachers should give up, though. Writing short, on-the-spot notes -- pointing out positive and negative behavior -- also can be a good classroom management tool. While carrying around a pad of adhesive notes, jot down "good job," "excellent question," or "remember to raise your hand" and stick the notes on students' desks. Students get instant feedback and a reminder that the teacher is on top of things.
Not everyone favors writing as part of a punishment, though. Some schools do not want students to develop a negative attitude about writing, so they do not assign writing for misbehavior.
"I feel it is important to make the kids understand what they did wrong but not by punishing them with a skill in which we want them to excel," Dana Arhar, a teacher at Immokalee Middle School in Immokalee, Florida, told Education World.
One teacher from the Middle Level list serv came up with another kind of note. She sings (badly) to the recalcitrant youngster, mostly oldies. Tunes by the Monkees usually got the quickest response. After serenading some students with off-key verses, now she has only to threaten to sing, she wrote.
No Notes for You?
Other suggestions for managing your classroom:
- When leaving the classroom as a group, tell the students you will be watching the behavior of two children, but don't say who they are. If the two you are watching behave, reward the entire class after returning to the room.
- If a student interrupts another pupil and calls out an answer, tell him or her that the behavior "robs" the other student of a learning opportunity.
- Remember the keys to successful management strategies: fairness and consistency.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
We're Teaching Books That Don't Stack Up
From: The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082202398.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
By Nancy Schnog
Browsing in Barnes & Noble one recent afternoon, I found myself drawn to the "Summer Reading" table, where neatly stacked piles of books by Charles Dickens and John Steinbeck and Zora Neale Hurston sat waiting for the teenagers who were supposed to read them by the first day of school. Gazing at the gleaming covers, I had to wonder how many students were in fact turning the pages with any real desire to get to the next one.
It's the time of year when I'm reminded of my twisted fate as a high-school English teacher. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, more teens and young adults are dropping literary reading than any other age group in America. "The percentage of 17-year olds," it reports, "who read nothing at all for pleasure has doubled" in the past 20 years. I teach juniors and seniors -- yes, 17-year-olds.
If ever there were a teaching conundrum, today's high-school English teachers are smack in the middle of it. It's our job to take digital natives -- teens saturated with images in video games and on YouTube -- and get them to strike up a relationship with pictureless chains of black print and focus on the decidedly internal rewards of classical literature. More and more, this mission feels like blind idealism.
But as school starts up again, it's time to acknowledge that the lure of visual media isn't the only thing pushing our kids away from the page and toward the screen. We've shied away from discussing a most unfortunate culprit in the saga of diminishing teen reading: the high-school English classroom. As much as I hate to admit it, all too often it's English teachers like me -- as able and well-intentioned as we may be -- who close down teen interest in reading.
"Butchering." That's what one of my former students, a young man who loves creative writing but rarely gets to do any at school, called English class. He was referring to the endless picking apart of linguistic details that loses teens in a haze of "So what?" The reading quizzes that turn, say, "Hamlet" into a Q&A on facts, symbols and themes. The thesis-driven essay assignments that require students to write about a novel they can't muster any passion for ("The Scarlet Letter" is high on teens' list of most dreaded). I'll never forget what one parent, bemoaning his daughter's aversion to great books after she took AP English Literature, wrote to me: "What I've seen teachers do is take living, breathing works of art and transform them into dessicated lab specimens fit for dissection."
As someone who teaches in private schools, I find this especially painful to acknowledge. I haven't been constrained in my teaching methods by Standards of Learning or No Child Left Behind testing. But even where teachers are free to design their own "best practices," I've been amazed at the chasm between their sense of purpose in their curricular choices and teens' sense that what they choose for them is irrelevant. Ironically, kids' turn-off to books can originate in teachers' hopes of turning them on.
How do I know? Because kids tell me. Every June, when I asked my students at a previous school to write about a favorite book of the year, they mostly gushed over two: J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." For years, "Catcher" served as a successful icebreaker for my juniors, exciting debate while eliding the gender divide. Whether they admired Holden Caulfield's quirkiness or disparaged him as a jerk, both my male and female students were eager to argue about him.
So imagine my dismay when "Catcher" was demoted to the eighth or ninth grade. Apparently it wasn't sophisticated enough for 11th-graders, its language too facile, the plot insufficiently complex. That many 17-year-olds identify powerfully with Salinger's 17-year-old protagonist was a fact cast by the wayside.
But here's what a former student wrote in an essay about this book that knocked her socks off: "To my twelve-year-old self, the book didn't seem to move anywhere. I didn't understand why Holden couldn't just try a little harder at school. By tenth grade, I had been drunk for the first time. I knew rebellion against my parents, the difficulties of teenage romance, the fakeness of social interaction. As a reader in the eleventh grade, I grew close to Holden; he was a friend who understood me." In adults' determination to create sophisticated teen readers, we sever them from potential fictional soulmates.
It's hard to forget my son's summer-reading assignment the year before he entered ninth grade: Julia Alvarez's "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents." Try as he did, he never got beyond the first of 15 vignettes about four culturally displaced sisters who search for identity through therapists and mental illness, men and sex, drugs and alcohol. I could hardly blame him. We ask 14-year-old boys to read novels about the travails of anguished women and want them to develop a love of reading?
Far too often, teachers' canonical choices split from teenagers' tastes, intellectual needs and maturity levels. "Why do we assume that every 15-year-old who passes through sophomore English is an English major in the making?" asks a teacher friend. "It's simply not the case. And the kids go elsewhere, just as fast as they can -- anywhere but another book."
I watched this play out last year when the junior reading list at my school, consisting mainly of major American authors, was fortified with readings in Shakespeare, Ibsen and the British Romantic poets. When I handed my students two weeks of readings by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge after a month-long study of American transcendentalists, it became clear that they had overdosed on verse packed with nature description and emotional reflection. "When will we read something with a plot?" asked one agitated boy, obviously yearning for afternoon lacrosse to begin.
One of my recent juniors was particularly eloquent on the subject. After having sat in my classroom for a year forcefully projecting his boredom, he started an e-mail dialogue with me over the summer. "The reason for studying fiction escapes me," he wrote. "Why waste time thinking about fabricated situations when there are plenty of real situations that need solutions? Cloning, ozone depletion, and alternate fuels are a few of the countless problems that need to be addressed by the next generation, my generation."
Okay, you may think, this is a kid geared to excel in history and science, not literature. But read his closing words: "Granted fiction has a place in this world, but it is not in the classroom. It is beside the night lamp next to your bed, the car ride to the beach, the soft glow of a fireplace. Fiction is about spending beautiful days indoors because you can't wait to get to the next page. Because I like science fiction, my Shakespeare, my Fitzgerald, my Dickinson are Haldeman, Asimov, Herbert. They dare me to think and question my beliefs."
So there you have it: A smart teen and motivated reader goes to high-school English class and discovers that the classics have nothing to offer him. "The reason I did not participate in class," he admitted, "was that I found the reading a chore."
Parents of high-school students are probably familiar with the product of this classroom: the alienated writer who turns up sulking at the dinner table. When students have to produce an essay on a book they care nothing for, it becomes a nightmare for both the student (think "all-nighter") and the teacher, who'll spend precious weekend hours reading papers devoid of content. The upshot of this empty drill: teens increasingly resistant to great books.
If I were a student today, surfing the gazillions of Web libraries or model-essay banks for insight into an assigned school classic, I'm sure I'd be asking myself, "What on Earth could there be left to say?" Last year, when I thought that I was stepping out of the mainstream by requiring my students to write a review of "Dead Poets Society," I was shocked to find, with just one click, that the 1989 Robin Williams movie had already been analyzed by hundreds of online literary pundits. Asking our students for yet another written commentary has a certain absurd ring to it, no?
The lesson couldn't be clearer. Until we do a better job of introducing contemporary culture into our reading lists, matching books to readers and getting our students to buy in to the whole process, literature teachers will continue to fuel the reading crisis.
I'm not suggesting that every 11th-grade English teacher adopt "Catcher," drop Shakespeare or ride the multicultural bandwagon. But if we really want to recruit teen readers, we're going to have to be strenuous advocates for fresh and innovative reading incentives. If that means an end to business as usual -- abolishing dry-bones literature tests, cutting back on fact-based quizzes, adding works of science fiction or popular nonfiction to the reading list -- so be it. We can continue to alienate teen readers, or we can hear them, acknowledge their tastes, engage directly with their resistance to serious reading and move gradually, with sensitivity to what's age-appropriate, toward the realm of great literature.
So if your kids haven't yet started their summer reading, or are having trouble getting through it, perhaps now you know why. It may be what they've learned at school.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082202398.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
By Nancy Schnog
Browsing in Barnes & Noble one recent afternoon, I found myself drawn to the "Summer Reading" table, where neatly stacked piles of books by Charles Dickens and John Steinbeck and Zora Neale Hurston sat waiting for the teenagers who were supposed to read them by the first day of school. Gazing at the gleaming covers, I had to wonder how many students were in fact turning the pages with any real desire to get to the next one.
It's the time of year when I'm reminded of my twisted fate as a high-school English teacher. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, more teens and young adults are dropping literary reading than any other age group in America. "The percentage of 17-year olds," it reports, "who read nothing at all for pleasure has doubled" in the past 20 years. I teach juniors and seniors -- yes, 17-year-olds.
If ever there were a teaching conundrum, today's high-school English teachers are smack in the middle of it. It's our job to take digital natives -- teens saturated with images in video games and on YouTube -- and get them to strike up a relationship with pictureless chains of black print and focus on the decidedly internal rewards of classical literature. More and more, this mission feels like blind idealism.
But as school starts up again, it's time to acknowledge that the lure of visual media isn't the only thing pushing our kids away from the page and toward the screen. We've shied away from discussing a most unfortunate culprit in the saga of diminishing teen reading: the high-school English classroom. As much as I hate to admit it, all too often it's English teachers like me -- as able and well-intentioned as we may be -- who close down teen interest in reading.
"Butchering." That's what one of my former students, a young man who loves creative writing but rarely gets to do any at school, called English class. He was referring to the endless picking apart of linguistic details that loses teens in a haze of "So what?" The reading quizzes that turn, say, "Hamlet" into a Q&A on facts, symbols and themes. The thesis-driven essay assignments that require students to write about a novel they can't muster any passion for ("The Scarlet Letter" is high on teens' list of most dreaded). I'll never forget what one parent, bemoaning his daughter's aversion to great books after she took AP English Literature, wrote to me: "What I've seen teachers do is take living, breathing works of art and transform them into dessicated lab specimens fit for dissection."
As someone who teaches in private schools, I find this especially painful to acknowledge. I haven't been constrained in my teaching methods by Standards of Learning or No Child Left Behind testing. But even where teachers are free to design their own "best practices," I've been amazed at the chasm between their sense of purpose in their curricular choices and teens' sense that what they choose for them is irrelevant. Ironically, kids' turn-off to books can originate in teachers' hopes of turning them on.
How do I know? Because kids tell me. Every June, when I asked my students at a previous school to write about a favorite book of the year, they mostly gushed over two: J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." For years, "Catcher" served as a successful icebreaker for my juniors, exciting debate while eliding the gender divide. Whether they admired Holden Caulfield's quirkiness or disparaged him as a jerk, both my male and female students were eager to argue about him.
So imagine my dismay when "Catcher" was demoted to the eighth or ninth grade. Apparently it wasn't sophisticated enough for 11th-graders, its language too facile, the plot insufficiently complex. That many 17-year-olds identify powerfully with Salinger's 17-year-old protagonist was a fact cast by the wayside.
But here's what a former student wrote in an essay about this book that knocked her socks off: "To my twelve-year-old self, the book didn't seem to move anywhere. I didn't understand why Holden couldn't just try a little harder at school. By tenth grade, I had been drunk for the first time. I knew rebellion against my parents, the difficulties of teenage romance, the fakeness of social interaction. As a reader in the eleventh grade, I grew close to Holden; he was a friend who understood me." In adults' determination to create sophisticated teen readers, we sever them from potential fictional soulmates.
It's hard to forget my son's summer-reading assignment the year before he entered ninth grade: Julia Alvarez's "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents." Try as he did, he never got beyond the first of 15 vignettes about four culturally displaced sisters who search for identity through therapists and mental illness, men and sex, drugs and alcohol. I could hardly blame him. We ask 14-year-old boys to read novels about the travails of anguished women and want them to develop a love of reading?
Far too often, teachers' canonical choices split from teenagers' tastes, intellectual needs and maturity levels. "Why do we assume that every 15-year-old who passes through sophomore English is an English major in the making?" asks a teacher friend. "It's simply not the case. And the kids go elsewhere, just as fast as they can -- anywhere but another book."
I watched this play out last year when the junior reading list at my school, consisting mainly of major American authors, was fortified with readings in Shakespeare, Ibsen and the British Romantic poets. When I handed my students two weeks of readings by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge after a month-long study of American transcendentalists, it became clear that they had overdosed on verse packed with nature description and emotional reflection. "When will we read something with a plot?" asked one agitated boy, obviously yearning for afternoon lacrosse to begin.
One of my recent juniors was particularly eloquent on the subject. After having sat in my classroom for a year forcefully projecting his boredom, he started an e-mail dialogue with me over the summer. "The reason for studying fiction escapes me," he wrote. "Why waste time thinking about fabricated situations when there are plenty of real situations that need solutions? Cloning, ozone depletion, and alternate fuels are a few of the countless problems that need to be addressed by the next generation, my generation."
Okay, you may think, this is a kid geared to excel in history and science, not literature. But read his closing words: "Granted fiction has a place in this world, but it is not in the classroom. It is beside the night lamp next to your bed, the car ride to the beach, the soft glow of a fireplace. Fiction is about spending beautiful days indoors because you can't wait to get to the next page. Because I like science fiction, my Shakespeare, my Fitzgerald, my Dickinson are Haldeman, Asimov, Herbert. They dare me to think and question my beliefs."
So there you have it: A smart teen and motivated reader goes to high-school English class and discovers that the classics have nothing to offer him. "The reason I did not participate in class," he admitted, "was that I found the reading a chore."
Parents of high-school students are probably familiar with the product of this classroom: the alienated writer who turns up sulking at the dinner table. When students have to produce an essay on a book they care nothing for, it becomes a nightmare for both the student (think "all-nighter") and the teacher, who'll spend precious weekend hours reading papers devoid of content. The upshot of this empty drill: teens increasingly resistant to great books.
If I were a student today, surfing the gazillions of Web libraries or model-essay banks for insight into an assigned school classic, I'm sure I'd be asking myself, "What on Earth could there be left to say?" Last year, when I thought that I was stepping out of the mainstream by requiring my students to write a review of "Dead Poets Society," I was shocked to find, with just one click, that the 1989 Robin Williams movie had already been analyzed by hundreds of online literary pundits. Asking our students for yet another written commentary has a certain absurd ring to it, no?
The lesson couldn't be clearer. Until we do a better job of introducing contemporary culture into our reading lists, matching books to readers and getting our students to buy in to the whole process, literature teachers will continue to fuel the reading crisis.
I'm not suggesting that every 11th-grade English teacher adopt "Catcher," drop Shakespeare or ride the multicultural bandwagon. But if we really want to recruit teen readers, we're going to have to be strenuous advocates for fresh and innovative reading incentives. If that means an end to business as usual -- abolishing dry-bones literature tests, cutting back on fact-based quizzes, adding works of science fiction or popular nonfiction to the reading list -- so be it. We can continue to alienate teen readers, or we can hear them, acknowledge their tastes, engage directly with their resistance to serious reading and move gradually, with sensitivity to what's age-appropriate, toward the realm of great literature.
So if your kids haven't yet started their summer reading, or are having trouble getting through it, perhaps now you know why. It may be what they've learned at school.
Immigration Study: 'Second Generation' Has Edge
From: NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93861094&ft=1&f=1013
by Margot Adler
Weekend Edition Sunday, August 24, 2008 · In much of the debate over immigration, there is an underlying question: Are today's immigrants assimilating into the mainstream as easily as past generations?
The answer, at least in New York City, is an unqualified "yes," according to the results of a 10-year study involving more than 3,000 young men and women, most of them in their 20s.
John Mollenkopf, a professor at City University of New York and an author of the study, says that if you look at the children of immigrants, "the kids are doing well compared to their parents and also doing well compared to the native-born comparison groups."
The "second generation" project looked at five groups — Russians, Dominicans, South Americans, Chinese and West Indians — and compared them with U.S.-born whites, Puerto Ricans and African-Americans. Researchers found that most in the second generation were fluent in English and working in the mainstream economy. When they looked at economic and educational achievement, they found that West Indians were doing better, in general, than African-Americans; Dominicans were doing better than Puerto Ricans; and the Chinese and the Russians were doing as well as or better than native-born whites.
Because this is New York City and most study participants are the children of people who came to the United States 20 to 30 years ago, their parents either entered legally or found it relatively easy to obtain legal status even if they came illegally.
Legal immigration is more difficult today, and researchers note that this may well change the rate of assimilation. But for these five groups, "what we really find is a very rapid assimilation and becoming American," says Mary Waters of Harvard University, another author of the study, titled Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age, and recently published as a book.
Inheriting the City also uncovered cultural differences that may give the children of some immigrant groups certain advantages. Many members of this second generation interviewed for this story said their parents had pushed them to succeed academically. This is a common theme in immigrant families, even a stereotype.
Enia Titova, who came from Russia when she was 12, attended Stuyvesant, an elite New York public high school. "In a lot of Russian families, if you don't have a graduate degree, it is frowned upon," she says. "When you get a 96, parents want to know where the other four points went — that's the question, I think, in a lot of immigrant households."
But the researchers also found something unexpected: Some groups, such as Chinese immigrants, knew how to work the system more effectively than others.
"We interviewed one young woman whose mother worked in a garment factory and had very little education," Waters says. "She said her mother didn't even know what Stuyvesant was, but she knew from the other moms in the garment factory — I need to get my kid into this school."
Ling Wu Kong, who came from China when he was 2 and now attends law school, says Waters is correct. "Every time there is a student who maxes out on the SAT, their picture is prominently placed on the front page in the Chinese newspapers," he says. "They give you a pretty good idea of what to expect, so even for people whose parents don't speak English, they are able to navigate the system."
It's a little different for other groups.
Waters says researchers also met Dominican kids who had gotten into Stuyvesant, but whose parents didn't let them go to the school because they would have to take a subway and go across bad neighborhoods to get there.
Cristina Carpio's parents came from Ecuador. Now a medical student, Carpio says she went to Stuyvesant only after persuading her mother to let her go. "During the orientation week, my sister took me to Stuyvesant to ease my mother's fears," she says, adding that her sister told her mother, "Look, she knows how to take the subway, she knows how to do it on her own, she has to go to that school. There is no other way."
The study, funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, found that the children of immigrants in New York City had another big advantage: Many of them continue to live at home with their parents.
Carpio says that when she becomes an intern next year, "I will be moving back home because I can save money on the rent and pay for my loans." And Ling feels it wouldn't be right if he didn't go home. "There is this ideal in the Chinese community, when everyone lives together. I'm living at home now," he says, laughing.
That cultural difference can have huge economic consequences, says Philip Kasinitz, a professor of sociology at City University who also helped write the study. "Black Americans, white Americans and Puerto Ricans seem to share the idea that you must leave home in your teens or early 20s, and that there is something wrong with you if you are still living with your parents in your mid-20s," he says.
In New York, he notes, given real estate values, this can help the children of immigrants get their careers established and finish their education.
Although Inheriting the City paints an optimistic portrait of this second generation, it has some warnings about the situation facing native-born minorities. The researchers also say the children of undocumented immigrants tend to do worse and have a tougher time assimilating. Because legal immigration is tougher to come by today, researchers say they wonder whether the path for the next "second generation" will be as smooth.
Excerpt: 'Inheriting The City'
NPR.org, August 21, 2008 · Introduction
Immigration is squarely on the American political agenda. With the influx of migrants continuing at high levels, it is destined to remain there. Although its salience as an issue may rise and fall, immigration poses fundamental questions about what it means to be an American and whether the nation can deliver on its historic promise to provide upward mobility to newcomers and their children.
Scholars usually frame the debate in terms of the economic and demographic impacts of high levels of immigration. Yet the broad passions excited by the issue point to deeper concerns about the ways in which mass migration is reshaping American society and culture (Zolberg 2006). Many wonder what sort of Americans the latest immigrants will become and what sort of America will be their legacy—and ours. Even those who think that immigration has a generally benevolent economic impact often worry that the huge numbers of largely nonwhite immigrants who have come to the United States since the mid-1960s will not "assimilate" or will put native born minorities at a further disadvantage.
The answer to the question of what large scale migration will mean for American society, however, lies less with the immigrants themselves than with their ambivalently American children. The March 2005 Current Population Survey (CPS) reported that this new "second generation"— the children of at least one immigrant parent born in the United States or who arrived by the age of 12—accounted for one out of six 18- to 32-year-olds in the nation and one out of four of all Americans under 18. In many ways, they will define how today's immigrant groups become tomorrow's American ethnic groups. In the process, they will not only reshape American racial and ethnic relations but define the character of American social, cultural, and political life.
This book is about their lives. It is the culmination of a decade-long research project by a large team of researchers who interviewed members of the second and 1.5 generations in and around New York City. (We define the second generation as those born in the United States to at least one immigrant parent and the 1.5 generation as those born abroad but who arrived by age 12 and then grew up in the United States.) By looking at what life is like for them and those who will follow them, the project sought to understand the longer term consequences of immigration for American society. Over time, however, it also became a study of what it is like to be a young adult in New York today. We learned about the struggles and joys experienced by young adults coming of age in a tough town, a place of ever-present dangers, of backbreaking competition, but also of extraordinary possibilities.
As such, it is also a book about New York City. This city of "eight million stories" houses more adult immigrants and more children of immigrants than any other city in the United States and its metropolitan area more than anywhere else but Greater Los Angeles. Yet while large scale international migration to Los Angeles did not take place until well into the twentieth century, it has a much longer history in New York. Indeed, the children of immigrants, past and present, have often been seen as the quintessential New Yorkers. Today's second generation grows up among local institutions and attitudes that were shaped by the region's long, deep, and diverse immigrant traditions.
Writing this book has made us more aware of how difficult it can be to grow up in New York, yet how the city can still welcome newcomers. These qualities will no doubt lead some readers to think our research and conclusions apply only to New York. The city's enthusiasts and detractors alike tend to exaggerate its difference from the rest of the United States — an "island off the coast of America," in the words of Spalding Grey. Yet the problems faced by the second generation in New York are pretty much the same as those anywhere else. If New Yorkers have forged distinctive answers to those problems, they may offer positive or negative lessons to the rest of the nation.
Why is it important to assess how New York and the nation are incorporating this new second generation? One reason is sheer numbers. Immigrants and their children now form a majority of the population in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. According to the March 2005 CPS, 35 percent of all New Yorkers were foreign born, and their native born children constituted another 17 percent. Their presence is even greater among the city's 18- to 32-year-old residents, more than a fifth of whom were born here to immigrant parents; another fifth arrived by age 12 and grew up here, and a final fifth arrived as young adult immigrants. In short, most young adult New Yorkers are of immigrant origin. These trends are even more pronounced among those who are under 18. Thus, even if immigration were to end magically tomorrow, the question of how the children of immigrants will fit into U.S. society would be with us for decades.
Simply put, the children of immigrants are the future of New York and many other parts of the nation.
A second reason to study the children of immigrants involves the future of American ethnic and racial relations. Before 1965, immigrants to the United States were overwhelmingly European. Since then, most have come from other parts of the globe. Given how the United States has historically constructed racial categories, they are not generally regarded as "white." Yet they are not African Americans either. Since the cleavage between the "white" descendants of immigrants and the "black" descendants of American slaves has so strongly marked big cities, the emergence of a large and rapidly growing group that does not fit easily into either of these categories has enormous potential consequences. To a degree, the arrival of this group was presaged by New York's large Puerto Rican population, which is also neither unambiguously white nor unambiguously black. Glazer and Moynihan (1963) suggested that this large "intermediate" group would temper the city's race relations. Since that largely turned out not to be the case, we must be careful about any conclusions we draw from the experience of the new immigrants.
New York City is a rich site for studying how immigration is affecting race relations. Its immigrants are staggeringly diverse, and newcomers have altered the makeup of every racial category. No one group dominates the flow of immigrants to New York as Cubans have in Miami or Mexicans in Los Angeles. About 45 percent of the city's black population are immigrants or the children of immigrants, as are 40 percent of the white population. The same is true of 59 percent of the Hispanic population and 95 percent of the Asian population. Most native Hispanics with native parents are Puerto Ricans who were born on the mainland but whose parents or grandparents migrated from the island, so even they have a strong migrant heritage, though they are all American citizens.
Immigrants are having a huge impact on the city's labor market. Like other American cities, New York incorporated the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century immigrants in part because their arrival coincided with, and fed, the growth of its manufacturing sector, which provided jobs and a living to people with limited education or who did not speak English. Today, many wonder whether a service sector economy that places a premium on education and communication can accommodate new immigrant workers. As the top of the city's household income distribution pulls away from the bottom, others worry that while immigrants may find low wage jobs, their children will lack opportunities for upward mobility in an "hourglass"-shaped economy.
Unlike their predecessors, the children of the current immigrants are becoming American in the midst of continuing immigration. Our understanding of assimilation has been largely shaped by the experience of the descendants of the southern and eastern European immigrants who came to the United States between roughly 1882 and 1924 (Foner 2000, 2005). Their incorporation took place after legislative changes in the 1920s, the Depression, and World War II sharply reduced new immigration. Their children came of age in a context of low immigration with few new arrivals to reinvigorate ties to the old country or to reinforce old country ways. Americanization was further reinforced for many by the experience of serving in the American armed forces in World War II. Today, by contrast, members of the new second generation rub shoulders with recently arrived immigrants their own age in the streets, classrooms, and workplaces of New York. There is therefore a good deal less distinction between the first and second generations than in the past (Rumbaut 2004; Waters and Jiménez 2005; Foner and Kasinitz 2007).
Today's second generation also grows up in communities where the parents have more transnational connections than in the past. Modern communications and cheap transportation enable immigrants to remain socially connected to their home communities. Today's transnational immigrants (or "trans/migrants") and their children remain active in social networks that make it possible for them to live in more than one society at a time, perhaps never fully committing to either (Glick Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Stanton 1992; Portes 1999; Levitt 2001, 2007; Levitt and Waters 2002). New York's immigrant neighborhoods are jammed with businesses selling low cost phone calls and instant money transfers to remote parts of the globe. In every group, some second generation people remain strongly tied to their parents' homelands. They visit often, send money back, and even contemplate settling there. A surprising number of first generation West Indian and Latin American parents "send back" children to live with relatives when the dangers of the New York streets terrify them or they suddenly lose their child-care arrangements. These transnational connections may be quite important to the American lives of the new second generation.
Finally, it is important to study the second generation because so many first generation parents worry about what will happen to their American children. While social scientists cannot automatically accept their view of their community's problems, we should nevertheless take their concerns seriously. Anyone spending time in America's growing immigrant communities will hear parental concern over the second generation. "We are afraid for our kids," we have been told. With a mixture of awe, fear, and disdain, immigrant parents say their children are "becoming American." This is the stuff of sermons in Korean churches, of discussion in Ecuadoran hometown associations, of debate in Chinese newspapers.
Sometimes this is only a vague but nagging fear about cultural loss among people who are otherwise quite happy in America. Jhumpa Lahiri's fictional couple, for example, find themselves inexplicably afraid for their U.S.-born son at Harvard: "So we drive to Cambridge to visit him or bring him home for the weekend so that he can eat rice with us with his hands and speak Bengali, things we sometimes worry he will no longer do after we die" (Lahiri 1999:197). Other times the fear is more pointed. West Indian Brooklynites told Mary Waters that "we are losing our kids to the streets," a shorthand both for the manifold dangers of the American ghetto and for the less well understood but nonetheless frightening impact that being considered a black person in racist America was having on their children (Waters 1999).
This fear is part of the paradox of the immigrant experience. Immigrants come to America to improve their lives and those of their children. Most manage to do just that. They overcome hardships and obstacles to give their children the chance to become Americans. At the same time, parents are often uncomfortable with and anxious about the future of the new Americans they have created. Whether the experience of the immigrant second and 1.5 generations in New York justifies these fears or not is the most important question that we hope this book can answer.
Excerpted from "Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age." Copyright © 2008. Published by Harvard University Press. All rights reserved.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93861094&ft=1&f=1013
by Margot Adler
Weekend Edition Sunday, August 24, 2008 · In much of the debate over immigration, there is an underlying question: Are today's immigrants assimilating into the mainstream as easily as past generations?
The answer, at least in New York City, is an unqualified "yes," according to the results of a 10-year study involving more than 3,000 young men and women, most of them in their 20s.
John Mollenkopf, a professor at City University of New York and an author of the study, says that if you look at the children of immigrants, "the kids are doing well compared to their parents and also doing well compared to the native-born comparison groups."
The "second generation" project looked at five groups — Russians, Dominicans, South Americans, Chinese and West Indians — and compared them with U.S.-born whites, Puerto Ricans and African-Americans. Researchers found that most in the second generation were fluent in English and working in the mainstream economy. When they looked at economic and educational achievement, they found that West Indians were doing better, in general, than African-Americans; Dominicans were doing better than Puerto Ricans; and the Chinese and the Russians were doing as well as or better than native-born whites.
Because this is New York City and most study participants are the children of people who came to the United States 20 to 30 years ago, their parents either entered legally or found it relatively easy to obtain legal status even if they came illegally.
Legal immigration is more difficult today, and researchers note that this may well change the rate of assimilation. But for these five groups, "what we really find is a very rapid assimilation and becoming American," says Mary Waters of Harvard University, another author of the study, titled Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age, and recently published as a book.
Inheriting the City also uncovered cultural differences that may give the children of some immigrant groups certain advantages. Many members of this second generation interviewed for this story said their parents had pushed them to succeed academically. This is a common theme in immigrant families, even a stereotype.
Enia Titova, who came from Russia when she was 12, attended Stuyvesant, an elite New York public high school. "In a lot of Russian families, if you don't have a graduate degree, it is frowned upon," she says. "When you get a 96, parents want to know where the other four points went — that's the question, I think, in a lot of immigrant households."
But the researchers also found something unexpected: Some groups, such as Chinese immigrants, knew how to work the system more effectively than others.
"We interviewed one young woman whose mother worked in a garment factory and had very little education," Waters says. "She said her mother didn't even know what Stuyvesant was, but she knew from the other moms in the garment factory — I need to get my kid into this school."
Ling Wu Kong, who came from China when he was 2 and now attends law school, says Waters is correct. "Every time there is a student who maxes out on the SAT, their picture is prominently placed on the front page in the Chinese newspapers," he says. "They give you a pretty good idea of what to expect, so even for people whose parents don't speak English, they are able to navigate the system."
It's a little different for other groups.
Waters says researchers also met Dominican kids who had gotten into Stuyvesant, but whose parents didn't let them go to the school because they would have to take a subway and go across bad neighborhoods to get there.
Cristina Carpio's parents came from Ecuador. Now a medical student, Carpio says she went to Stuyvesant only after persuading her mother to let her go. "During the orientation week, my sister took me to Stuyvesant to ease my mother's fears," she says, adding that her sister told her mother, "Look, she knows how to take the subway, she knows how to do it on her own, she has to go to that school. There is no other way."
The study, funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, found that the children of immigrants in New York City had another big advantage: Many of them continue to live at home with their parents.
Carpio says that when she becomes an intern next year, "I will be moving back home because I can save money on the rent and pay for my loans." And Ling feels it wouldn't be right if he didn't go home. "There is this ideal in the Chinese community, when everyone lives together. I'm living at home now," he says, laughing.
That cultural difference can have huge economic consequences, says Philip Kasinitz, a professor of sociology at City University who also helped write the study. "Black Americans, white Americans and Puerto Ricans seem to share the idea that you must leave home in your teens or early 20s, and that there is something wrong with you if you are still living with your parents in your mid-20s," he says.
In New York, he notes, given real estate values, this can help the children of immigrants get their careers established and finish their education.
Although Inheriting the City paints an optimistic portrait of this second generation, it has some warnings about the situation facing native-born minorities. The researchers also say the children of undocumented immigrants tend to do worse and have a tougher time assimilating. Because legal immigration is tougher to come by today, researchers say they wonder whether the path for the next "second generation" will be as smooth.
Excerpt: 'Inheriting The City'
NPR.org, August 21, 2008 · Introduction
Immigration is squarely on the American political agenda. With the influx of migrants continuing at high levels, it is destined to remain there. Although its salience as an issue may rise and fall, immigration poses fundamental questions about what it means to be an American and whether the nation can deliver on its historic promise to provide upward mobility to newcomers and their children.
Scholars usually frame the debate in terms of the economic and demographic impacts of high levels of immigration. Yet the broad passions excited by the issue point to deeper concerns about the ways in which mass migration is reshaping American society and culture (Zolberg 2006). Many wonder what sort of Americans the latest immigrants will become and what sort of America will be their legacy—and ours. Even those who think that immigration has a generally benevolent economic impact often worry that the huge numbers of largely nonwhite immigrants who have come to the United States since the mid-1960s will not "assimilate" or will put native born minorities at a further disadvantage.
The answer to the question of what large scale migration will mean for American society, however, lies less with the immigrants themselves than with their ambivalently American children. The March 2005 Current Population Survey (CPS) reported that this new "second generation"— the children of at least one immigrant parent born in the United States or who arrived by the age of 12—accounted for one out of six 18- to 32-year-olds in the nation and one out of four of all Americans under 18. In many ways, they will define how today's immigrant groups become tomorrow's American ethnic groups. In the process, they will not only reshape American racial and ethnic relations but define the character of American social, cultural, and political life.
This book is about their lives. It is the culmination of a decade-long research project by a large team of researchers who interviewed members of the second and 1.5 generations in and around New York City. (We define the second generation as those born in the United States to at least one immigrant parent and the 1.5 generation as those born abroad but who arrived by age 12 and then grew up in the United States.) By looking at what life is like for them and those who will follow them, the project sought to understand the longer term consequences of immigration for American society. Over time, however, it also became a study of what it is like to be a young adult in New York today. We learned about the struggles and joys experienced by young adults coming of age in a tough town, a place of ever-present dangers, of backbreaking competition, but also of extraordinary possibilities.
As such, it is also a book about New York City. This city of "eight million stories" houses more adult immigrants and more children of immigrants than any other city in the United States and its metropolitan area more than anywhere else but Greater Los Angeles. Yet while large scale international migration to Los Angeles did not take place until well into the twentieth century, it has a much longer history in New York. Indeed, the children of immigrants, past and present, have often been seen as the quintessential New Yorkers. Today's second generation grows up among local institutions and attitudes that were shaped by the region's long, deep, and diverse immigrant traditions.
Writing this book has made us more aware of how difficult it can be to grow up in New York, yet how the city can still welcome newcomers. These qualities will no doubt lead some readers to think our research and conclusions apply only to New York. The city's enthusiasts and detractors alike tend to exaggerate its difference from the rest of the United States — an "island off the coast of America," in the words of Spalding Grey. Yet the problems faced by the second generation in New York are pretty much the same as those anywhere else. If New Yorkers have forged distinctive answers to those problems, they may offer positive or negative lessons to the rest of the nation.
Why is it important to assess how New York and the nation are incorporating this new second generation? One reason is sheer numbers. Immigrants and their children now form a majority of the population in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. According to the March 2005 CPS, 35 percent of all New Yorkers were foreign born, and their native born children constituted another 17 percent. Their presence is even greater among the city's 18- to 32-year-old residents, more than a fifth of whom were born here to immigrant parents; another fifth arrived by age 12 and grew up here, and a final fifth arrived as young adult immigrants. In short, most young adult New Yorkers are of immigrant origin. These trends are even more pronounced among those who are under 18. Thus, even if immigration were to end magically tomorrow, the question of how the children of immigrants will fit into U.S. society would be with us for decades.
Simply put, the children of immigrants are the future of New York and many other parts of the nation.
A second reason to study the children of immigrants involves the future of American ethnic and racial relations. Before 1965, immigrants to the United States were overwhelmingly European. Since then, most have come from other parts of the globe. Given how the United States has historically constructed racial categories, they are not generally regarded as "white." Yet they are not African Americans either. Since the cleavage between the "white" descendants of immigrants and the "black" descendants of American slaves has so strongly marked big cities, the emergence of a large and rapidly growing group that does not fit easily into either of these categories has enormous potential consequences. To a degree, the arrival of this group was presaged by New York's large Puerto Rican population, which is also neither unambiguously white nor unambiguously black. Glazer and Moynihan (1963) suggested that this large "intermediate" group would temper the city's race relations. Since that largely turned out not to be the case, we must be careful about any conclusions we draw from the experience of the new immigrants.
New York City is a rich site for studying how immigration is affecting race relations. Its immigrants are staggeringly diverse, and newcomers have altered the makeup of every racial category. No one group dominates the flow of immigrants to New York as Cubans have in Miami or Mexicans in Los Angeles. About 45 percent of the city's black population are immigrants or the children of immigrants, as are 40 percent of the white population. The same is true of 59 percent of the Hispanic population and 95 percent of the Asian population. Most native Hispanics with native parents are Puerto Ricans who were born on the mainland but whose parents or grandparents migrated from the island, so even they have a strong migrant heritage, though they are all American citizens.
Immigrants are having a huge impact on the city's labor market. Like other American cities, New York incorporated the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century immigrants in part because their arrival coincided with, and fed, the growth of its manufacturing sector, which provided jobs and a living to people with limited education or who did not speak English. Today, many wonder whether a service sector economy that places a premium on education and communication can accommodate new immigrant workers. As the top of the city's household income distribution pulls away from the bottom, others worry that while immigrants may find low wage jobs, their children will lack opportunities for upward mobility in an "hourglass"-shaped economy.
Unlike their predecessors, the children of the current immigrants are becoming American in the midst of continuing immigration. Our understanding of assimilation has been largely shaped by the experience of the descendants of the southern and eastern European immigrants who came to the United States between roughly 1882 and 1924 (Foner 2000, 2005). Their incorporation took place after legislative changes in the 1920s, the Depression, and World War II sharply reduced new immigration. Their children came of age in a context of low immigration with few new arrivals to reinvigorate ties to the old country or to reinforce old country ways. Americanization was further reinforced for many by the experience of serving in the American armed forces in World War II. Today, by contrast, members of the new second generation rub shoulders with recently arrived immigrants their own age in the streets, classrooms, and workplaces of New York. There is therefore a good deal less distinction between the first and second generations than in the past (Rumbaut 2004; Waters and Jiménez 2005; Foner and Kasinitz 2007).
Today's second generation also grows up in communities where the parents have more transnational connections than in the past. Modern communications and cheap transportation enable immigrants to remain socially connected to their home communities. Today's transnational immigrants (or "trans/migrants") and their children remain active in social networks that make it possible for them to live in more than one society at a time, perhaps never fully committing to either (Glick Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Stanton 1992; Portes 1999; Levitt 2001, 2007; Levitt and Waters 2002). New York's immigrant neighborhoods are jammed with businesses selling low cost phone calls and instant money transfers to remote parts of the globe. In every group, some second generation people remain strongly tied to their parents' homelands. They visit often, send money back, and even contemplate settling there. A surprising number of first generation West Indian and Latin American parents "send back" children to live with relatives when the dangers of the New York streets terrify them or they suddenly lose their child-care arrangements. These transnational connections may be quite important to the American lives of the new second generation.
Finally, it is important to study the second generation because so many first generation parents worry about what will happen to their American children. While social scientists cannot automatically accept their view of their community's problems, we should nevertheless take their concerns seriously. Anyone spending time in America's growing immigrant communities will hear parental concern over the second generation. "We are afraid for our kids," we have been told. With a mixture of awe, fear, and disdain, immigrant parents say their children are "becoming American." This is the stuff of sermons in Korean churches, of discussion in Ecuadoran hometown associations, of debate in Chinese newspapers.
Sometimes this is only a vague but nagging fear about cultural loss among people who are otherwise quite happy in America. Jhumpa Lahiri's fictional couple, for example, find themselves inexplicably afraid for their U.S.-born son at Harvard: "So we drive to Cambridge to visit him or bring him home for the weekend so that he can eat rice with us with his hands and speak Bengali, things we sometimes worry he will no longer do after we die" (Lahiri 1999:197). Other times the fear is more pointed. West Indian Brooklynites told Mary Waters that "we are losing our kids to the streets," a shorthand both for the manifold dangers of the American ghetto and for the less well understood but nonetheless frightening impact that being considered a black person in racist America was having on their children (Waters 1999).
This fear is part of the paradox of the immigrant experience. Immigrants come to America to improve their lives and those of their children. Most manage to do just that. They overcome hardships and obstacles to give their children the chance to become Americans. At the same time, parents are often uncomfortable with and anxious about the future of the new Americans they have created. Whether the experience of the immigrant second and 1.5 generations in New York justifies these fears or not is the most important question that we hope this book can answer.
Excerpted from "Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age." Copyright © 2008. Published by Harvard University Press. All rights reserved.
Friday, August 22, 2008
When Learning Has a Limit
From: The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121936528440062155.html?mod=dist_smartbrief
By BEN WILDAVSKY
In the early 1980s, my mother taught at an Oakland, Calif., community college. Her students ranged from blacks born in the rural South to Southeast Asian boat people. When I was myself away at school, she sent me a moving letter describing how much she loved the job. Whatever their backgrounds, she wrote, her students showed a hunger for education and for improving their lot in life. For the most part, she said, their writing got better, too.
The vision that captivated my mother and her students -- that education offers a chance not only for acquiring knowledge but for improving opportunity -- has long been central to the American dream. Yet it is a vision that has too often gone unrealized -- which is one reason that education reform has taken on such urgency in recent decades.
Since the release of "A Nation at Risk" 25 years ago, we have seen the introduction of top-down standards (including the No Child Behind Act), the spread of a bottom-up school-choice movement (including vouchers and charter schools), and the advent of entrepreneurial programs, like Teach for America, that combine a market-oriented approach with a focus on academic results.
Meanwhile, record numbers of students aspire to higher education, not least because the economic returns to a college degree are, despite a recent leveling off, indisputable. Thus all sorts of people are busy trying to make sure that more high-school grads get a shot not only at enrolling in college but at finishing it.
None of this much impresses Charles Murray. In "Real Education," he suggests that teachers, students and reformers are all suffering from a case of false consciousness. "The education system," he says, "is living a lie."
The problem with American education, according to Mr. Murray, is not what President Bush termed the "soft bigotry of low expectations" but rather the opposite: Far too many young people with inherent intellectual limitations are being pushed to advance academically when, Mr. Murray says, they are "just not smart enough" to improve much at all. It is "a triumph of hope over experience," he says, to believe that school reform can make meaningful improvements in the academic performance of below-average students. (He might have noted, but doesn't, that such students are disproportionately black and Hispanic.)
Thus students are being steered toward college when many should be directed toward jobs for which they are better suited. At the same time, Mr. Murray argues, we're giving short shrift to the academically gifted, who ought to be offered a rigorous education appropriate to their abilities rather than having their classroom experience dragged down by low-IQ underachievers.
Mr. Murray believes that Americans should forsake what he calls "unattainable egalitarian ideals of educational achievement" in favor of "attainable egalitarian ideals of personal dignity." For high-school students that would mean more realism about potentially lucrative vocational options.
Mr. Murray would also institute a series of CPA-like certification exams for which students could prepare in a variety of non-B.A.-granting postsecondary schools. Only true high-IQ achievers -- say, 10% or 20% of all students -- would go on to college, study the Great Books and learn virtue, too.
To be sure, Mr. Murray does see a place for a broad liberal education -- but only in elementary and middle school, where he would like teachers to use E.D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge curriculum.
What is one to make of all this? For one thing, it is dismayingly fatalistic. One can accept the idea that inherent academic abilities are unevenly distributed while also believing that many low-achieving kids -- and high-achieving kids, too, for that matter -- could learn a lot more than they are learning now. International tests show that students in many other nations bypass American kids in reading and math. Could such comparative results really be a function of higher raw intelligence overseas -- or are they more likely to reflect superior educational practices? It is telling that hard-headed education reformers like Eric Hanushek, Chester E. Finn and Jay Greene believe that we can do much more to boost the academic achievement of children upon whom Mr. Murray would essentially give up.
In Mr. Murray's deterministic vision of education, IQ scores matter considerably more than teaching or curriculum or effort -- variables that are within the control of individuals and not, as he would have it, mostly their DNA. He wants to make way for what is essentially an IQ-elite.
Let us hope that he has a fool-proof way of identifying this lucky group, beyond the universal IQ testing that he advocates. He does see his certification exams as egalitarian and notes in passing that otherwise nonelite students should be permitted to lobby for admission to advanced classes, so long as they accept the risk of flunking out. But one can't help thinking: Woe to those who get put in the wrong category.
While accusing education reformers of being wooly-headed romantics, then, Mr. Murray conjures up a romantic vision of his own. In his brave new world, the bell curve of abilities is cheerfully acknowledged; students and workers gladly accept their designated places in the pecking order; and happy, well-paid electricians and plumbers go about their business while their brainy brethren read Plato and prepare for the burdens of ruling the world. It is hard to believe that a dynamic, upwardly mobile society would emerge from such an arrangement, or "dignity" either.
The view outlined in "Real Education" seems far from the one that Mr. Murray put forward in "Losing Ground" (1984). In that influential book, a headlong assault on the welfare state, he called for an "infinitely forgiving" education system in which students can try over and over to succeed, even if only some will.
And indeed, there is something in the American creed that sees the classroom as exactly the place for such second chances, a place where the efforts of personal will (those of students, teachers and policymakers alike) can make a difference in what we learn and how we live.
Mr. Murray says that he is deeply concerned about the dangers of overestimating the abilities of students. To which one might reply: Aren't the dangers of underestimating their abilities vastly worse?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121936528440062155.html?mod=dist_smartbrief
By BEN WILDAVSKY
In the early 1980s, my mother taught at an Oakland, Calif., community college. Her students ranged from blacks born in the rural South to Southeast Asian boat people. When I was myself away at school, she sent me a moving letter describing how much she loved the job. Whatever their backgrounds, she wrote, her students showed a hunger for education and for improving their lot in life. For the most part, she said, their writing got better, too.
The vision that captivated my mother and her students -- that education offers a chance not only for acquiring knowledge but for improving opportunity -- has long been central to the American dream. Yet it is a vision that has too often gone unrealized -- which is one reason that education reform has taken on such urgency in recent decades.
Since the release of "A Nation at Risk" 25 years ago, we have seen the introduction of top-down standards (including the No Child Behind Act), the spread of a bottom-up school-choice movement (including vouchers and charter schools), and the advent of entrepreneurial programs, like Teach for America, that combine a market-oriented approach with a focus on academic results.
Meanwhile, record numbers of students aspire to higher education, not least because the economic returns to a college degree are, despite a recent leveling off, indisputable. Thus all sorts of people are busy trying to make sure that more high-school grads get a shot not only at enrolling in college but at finishing it.
None of this much impresses Charles Murray. In "Real Education," he suggests that teachers, students and reformers are all suffering from a case of false consciousness. "The education system," he says, "is living a lie."
The problem with American education, according to Mr. Murray, is not what President Bush termed the "soft bigotry of low expectations" but rather the opposite: Far too many young people with inherent intellectual limitations are being pushed to advance academically when, Mr. Murray says, they are "just not smart enough" to improve much at all. It is "a triumph of hope over experience," he says, to believe that school reform can make meaningful improvements in the academic performance of below-average students. (He might have noted, but doesn't, that such students are disproportionately black and Hispanic.)
Thus students are being steered toward college when many should be directed toward jobs for which they are better suited. At the same time, Mr. Murray argues, we're giving short shrift to the academically gifted, who ought to be offered a rigorous education appropriate to their abilities rather than having their classroom experience dragged down by low-IQ underachievers.
Mr. Murray believes that Americans should forsake what he calls "unattainable egalitarian ideals of educational achievement" in favor of "attainable egalitarian ideals of personal dignity." For high-school students that would mean more realism about potentially lucrative vocational options.
Mr. Murray would also institute a series of CPA-like certification exams for which students could prepare in a variety of non-B.A.-granting postsecondary schools. Only true high-IQ achievers -- say, 10% or 20% of all students -- would go on to college, study the Great Books and learn virtue, too.
To be sure, Mr. Murray does see a place for a broad liberal education -- but only in elementary and middle school, where he would like teachers to use E.D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge curriculum.
What is one to make of all this? For one thing, it is dismayingly fatalistic. One can accept the idea that inherent academic abilities are unevenly distributed while also believing that many low-achieving kids -- and high-achieving kids, too, for that matter -- could learn a lot more than they are learning now. International tests show that students in many other nations bypass American kids in reading and math. Could such comparative results really be a function of higher raw intelligence overseas -- or are they more likely to reflect superior educational practices? It is telling that hard-headed education reformers like Eric Hanushek, Chester E. Finn and Jay Greene believe that we can do much more to boost the academic achievement of children upon whom Mr. Murray would essentially give up.
In Mr. Murray's deterministic vision of education, IQ scores matter considerably more than teaching or curriculum or effort -- variables that are within the control of individuals and not, as he would have it, mostly their DNA. He wants to make way for what is essentially an IQ-elite.
Let us hope that he has a fool-proof way of identifying this lucky group, beyond the universal IQ testing that he advocates. He does see his certification exams as egalitarian and notes in passing that otherwise nonelite students should be permitted to lobby for admission to advanced classes, so long as they accept the risk of flunking out. But one can't help thinking: Woe to those who get put in the wrong category.
While accusing education reformers of being wooly-headed romantics, then, Mr. Murray conjures up a romantic vision of his own. In his brave new world, the bell curve of abilities is cheerfully acknowledged; students and workers gladly accept their designated places in the pecking order; and happy, well-paid electricians and plumbers go about their business while their brainy brethren read Plato and prepare for the burdens of ruling the world. It is hard to believe that a dynamic, upwardly mobile society would emerge from such an arrangement, or "dignity" either.
The view outlined in "Real Education" seems far from the one that Mr. Murray put forward in "Losing Ground" (1984). In that influential book, a headlong assault on the welfare state, he called for an "infinitely forgiving" education system in which students can try over and over to succeed, even if only some will.
And indeed, there is something in the American creed that sees the classroom as exactly the place for such second chances, a place where the efforts of personal will (those of students, teachers and policymakers alike) can make a difference in what we learn and how we live.
Mr. Murray says that he is deeply concerned about the dangers of overestimating the abilities of students. To which one might reply: Aren't the dangers of underestimating their abilities vastly worse?
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Sites Mimicking Social Networks Set Up for Staff Development
From: Education Week
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/08/21/01network.h28.html?tmp=1403284944
By Stephen Sawchuk
Vol. 28, Issue 01, Pages 1,18
As support and professional-development opportunities for teachers begin to move from conference rooms to chat rooms, a burgeoning number of states and districts are drawing on features from course-management software and popular social-networking sites to establish online networks connecting teachers to peers who may live dozens or even hundreds of miles away.
Conceptually, these teacher networks reflect the “learning team” approach to professional development, in which teachers at a school site seek feedback, glean new ideas, and reflect on instructional practices through discussions with their colleagues. To this, the online networking adds the ability for teachers to connect to peers at any time of the day or night, say experts familiar with the networks.
“In the 21st century, no teacher should have to say he feels alone,” said Tom Carroll, the president of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. The Washington-based advocacy group, which works to improve teaching standards, supports online teacher-networking projects in Denver, Memphis, Tenn., and Seattle as part of its Teachers Linked In Networked Communities initiative. “These teachers grew up connected. They have Facebook, they’re texting, they’re e-mailing. It’s time for us to bring their schoolwork into this environment,” he said.
In general, the networks connect novice teachers to others in their preparation classes, teachers who instruct in the same subject or grade level to one another, and teacher-mentors to colleagues—even when they are not located at the same schools. The sites facilitate online discussions, workshops, coaching, and collaborative study groups and work teams.
One of the three TLINC sites, housed at the University of Colorado at Denver, began after the “cooperating” teachers—the district’s term for the educators who mentor teacher-candidates during their clinical preparation—were hampered from regular meetings by the sprawling city’s distances.
“There was no way we could have had the time to drive and meet together and have the rich conversational discussions we needed to have,” said Cindy Gutierrez, the director of initial professional teacher education at the university.
In Illinois, a handful of supporters—primarily the Illinois state board of education, the college of education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the State Farm Companies Foundation—financed the Illinois New Teacher Collaborative in 2004. The initiative was designed to spearhead induction programs across the state through which educators could advance up the credentials ladder, said Renée T. Clift, the collaborative’s director.
To facilitate the sharing of best practices across these programs, the collaborative subsequently launched its network, INTC Online, in 2006.
Both sites adapted existing networking platforms for their own use. Their distinguishing features lie in their sizes and scope.
Denver uses Tapped In, an education networking site that claims about 2,800 members from around the world and allows individuals to join online “classrooms” and user groups.
To this platform, officials embedded access to TLINC at specific junctures on the district’s teacher professional continuum. Groups of teacher-candidates in schools across the city can network through the site, as can the district’s cooperating teachers.
“We can be very strategic about the network, rather than just having an individual teacher joining Tapped In and seeing who’s out there,” Ms. Gutierrez said. “In doing it this way, it allows us to collaborate at a systems level.”
Illinois’ INTC Online grew out of an open-source course-management platform known as Moodle.
The network is not tied to a specific university, and can be accessed by every candidate who completes a state-approved teacher-training program, whether traditional or alternative, as well as any educator who works to support new teachers.
As on social-networking sites, users set up profiles and can connect to all others who list the same tags—such as “reading” or “biology”—on their profiles. They can join specific user groups oriented toward preservice teachers, new teachers, or pre-K-12 administrators.
Members can also set up restricted-access pages within the site for program-specific activities.
The networks are still in the early stages of adopting appropriate technology to support the online discussions. Both Denver and Illinois have instituted asynchronous communication tools, such as threaded discussions on bulletin boards.
Denver’s network permits real-time communications among teachers using chatrooms. Illinois officials are now piloting a similar tool.
Facebook for Teachers
In South Carolina, officials hope to tailor a teacher network specifically to those educators most physically isolated from their peers.
Rural districts make up the lion’s share of South Carolina’s school system. The smallest communities lack restaurants, entertainment, even a Wal-Mart.
With Blackboard, a for-profit leader in the course-management software industry, the state envisions a site similar to Facebook. As on that site, users would be able to connect to other teachers and post messages on electronic “walls.”
“The idea is that teachers would leave their college [online social] network and enter a professional network,” said Mark Bounds, the state’s deputy superintendent for educator quality and leadership.
In contrast to the Denver and Illinois networks, South Carolina’s initiative would primarily function as a social network, Mr. Bounds said. But he expects that teacher interactions would soon turn to discussions of students’ performance.
“We know that professional development would ensue—that teachers would discuss great lessons they’ve taught and things they’ve done to increase student achievement,” he said.
The project wasn’t included in the state’s budget this year, but Mr. Bounds said he will seek other funding to continue the initiative.
A Question of Data
With their focus on teachers seeking out their own peers for help and support, the virtual sites contain many features of professional-learning communities in actual school settings. But there is one key difference: The sites connect teachers who are not necessarily in the same schools or classrooms.
“The collaboration is less around specific data or classroom problems where everyone knows the students involved,” noted Hanna Doerr, the program manager for the national commission’s TLINC initiatives.
Instead, she said, the sites tend to facilitate broader discussions about curriculum, content-delivery, and classroom management.
The distinction raises some concerns for advocates of the learning-team approach to professional development.
“The danger of relying solely on networks beyond the school is that you get potentially fragmented results, and you’re affecting some teachers, not all teachers, and some students, not all students,” said Stephanie Hirsh, the president of the Oxford, Ohio-based National Staff Development Council, a nonprofit group that works to link professional development to school improvement efforts.
Ms. Hirsh said all schools should establish such in-house teams to meet two to three times in a week. Still, she added, online networking can afford teachers opportunities to deepen their content knowledge, especially when they have limited access to peers who instruct in the same grade or subject level.
Ms. Doerr underscored the importance of supplementing online interactions with face-to-face meetings—a mix her organization calls “bricks and clicks.”
“When you have that face-to-face interaction,” she said, “it’s easier to come out with your problems and reach out for help and support [online].”
A Critical Mass
As networks’ directors focus on how to build the right set of features to transform the networks from novelties to integral components of teachers’ professional learning, they are now running into questions about sustainability.
Obstacles include network interfaces that Ms. Gutierrez described as somewhat “clunky” and graphically limited compared with sites such as Facebook.
The Illinois INTC project officials have experienced challenges building a “critical mass” of users sufficient to ensure that teachers who log on to the network can immediately find the help they need.
“You’ll have new people who come online and are excited abut the site, but they don’t see much activity, and they don’t come back,” said Lara Hebert, the INTC online research and development coordinator.
INTC Online now has 978 registered users, but in July, only 50 logged on, she said.
Denver officials are addressing the problem through a mix of requirements and incentives.
Participation in TLINC is required as part of the teacher training at the University of Colorado at Denver, Ms. Gutierrez said. It is also an element of the district’s ProComp differentiated-pay system: Mentors can earn a compensation bonus if they participate.
Still, across the three TLINC sites, officials have observed a decrease in usage over time.
“Because the programs are focused in the schools of education, we get a lot of use in the first year by the teacher-candidates, but then it tends to fade out,” Ms. Doerr said. “We want to get the veteran teachers already in the schools onto the community.”
Illinois officials, so far, have resisted tying INTC Online to requirements, and the site remains purely voluntary. In part, that reflects the goal of allowing teachers to drive the system’s gradual evolution, Ms. Hebert said.
I
n the meantime, the site’s managers hope to develop a better understanding of what will make the networks self-sustaining over time.
“If [network participation] is required for something—a grade, a certification, a stipend—people will participate. We know that,” said Ms. Clift, the director of the Illinois collaborative. “What we don’t know is what are the triggers that will encourage people to get as much professional satisfaction out of a space like this as they are personal satisfaction using Facebook and MySpace.”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/08/21/01network.h28.html?tmp=1403284944
By Stephen Sawchuk
Vol. 28, Issue 01, Pages 1,18
As support and professional-development opportunities for teachers begin to move from conference rooms to chat rooms, a burgeoning number of states and districts are drawing on features from course-management software and popular social-networking sites to establish online networks connecting teachers to peers who may live dozens or even hundreds of miles away.
Conceptually, these teacher networks reflect the “learning team” approach to professional development, in which teachers at a school site seek feedback, glean new ideas, and reflect on instructional practices through discussions with their colleagues. To this, the online networking adds the ability for teachers to connect to peers at any time of the day or night, say experts familiar with the networks.
“In the 21st century, no teacher should have to say he feels alone,” said Tom Carroll, the president of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. The Washington-based advocacy group, which works to improve teaching standards, supports online teacher-networking projects in Denver, Memphis, Tenn., and Seattle as part of its Teachers Linked In Networked Communities initiative. “These teachers grew up connected. They have Facebook, they’re texting, they’re e-mailing. It’s time for us to bring their schoolwork into this environment,” he said.
In general, the networks connect novice teachers to others in their preparation classes, teachers who instruct in the same subject or grade level to one another, and teacher-mentors to colleagues—even when they are not located at the same schools. The sites facilitate online discussions, workshops, coaching, and collaborative study groups and work teams.
One of the three TLINC sites, housed at the University of Colorado at Denver, began after the “cooperating” teachers—the district’s term for the educators who mentor teacher-candidates during their clinical preparation—were hampered from regular meetings by the sprawling city’s distances.
“There was no way we could have had the time to drive and meet together and have the rich conversational discussions we needed to have,” said Cindy Gutierrez, the director of initial professional teacher education at the university.
In Illinois, a handful of supporters—primarily the Illinois state board of education, the college of education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the State Farm Companies Foundation—financed the Illinois New Teacher Collaborative in 2004. The initiative was designed to spearhead induction programs across the state through which educators could advance up the credentials ladder, said Renée T. Clift, the collaborative’s director.
To facilitate the sharing of best practices across these programs, the collaborative subsequently launched its network, INTC Online, in 2006.
Both sites adapted existing networking platforms for their own use. Their distinguishing features lie in their sizes and scope.
Denver uses Tapped In, an education networking site that claims about 2,800 members from around the world and allows individuals to join online “classrooms” and user groups.
To this platform, officials embedded access to TLINC at specific junctures on the district’s teacher professional continuum. Groups of teacher-candidates in schools across the city can network through the site, as can the district’s cooperating teachers.
“We can be very strategic about the network, rather than just having an individual teacher joining Tapped In and seeing who’s out there,” Ms. Gutierrez said. “In doing it this way, it allows us to collaborate at a systems level.”
Illinois’ INTC Online grew out of an open-source course-management platform known as Moodle.
The network is not tied to a specific university, and can be accessed by every candidate who completes a state-approved teacher-training program, whether traditional or alternative, as well as any educator who works to support new teachers.
As on social-networking sites, users set up profiles and can connect to all others who list the same tags—such as “reading” or “biology”—on their profiles. They can join specific user groups oriented toward preservice teachers, new teachers, or pre-K-12 administrators.
Members can also set up restricted-access pages within the site for program-specific activities.
The networks are still in the early stages of adopting appropriate technology to support the online discussions. Both Denver and Illinois have instituted asynchronous communication tools, such as threaded discussions on bulletin boards.
Denver’s network permits real-time communications among teachers using chatrooms. Illinois officials are now piloting a similar tool.
Facebook for Teachers
In South Carolina, officials hope to tailor a teacher network specifically to those educators most physically isolated from their peers.
Rural districts make up the lion’s share of South Carolina’s school system. The smallest communities lack restaurants, entertainment, even a Wal-Mart.
With Blackboard, a for-profit leader in the course-management software industry, the state envisions a site similar to Facebook. As on that site, users would be able to connect to other teachers and post messages on electronic “walls.”
“The idea is that teachers would leave their college [online social] network and enter a professional network,” said Mark Bounds, the state’s deputy superintendent for educator quality and leadership.
In contrast to the Denver and Illinois networks, South Carolina’s initiative would primarily function as a social network, Mr. Bounds said. But he expects that teacher interactions would soon turn to discussions of students’ performance.
“We know that professional development would ensue—that teachers would discuss great lessons they’ve taught and things they’ve done to increase student achievement,” he said.
The project wasn’t included in the state’s budget this year, but Mr. Bounds said he will seek other funding to continue the initiative.
A Question of Data
With their focus on teachers seeking out their own peers for help and support, the virtual sites contain many features of professional-learning communities in actual school settings. But there is one key difference: The sites connect teachers who are not necessarily in the same schools or classrooms.
“The collaboration is less around specific data or classroom problems where everyone knows the students involved,” noted Hanna Doerr, the program manager for the national commission’s TLINC initiatives.
Instead, she said, the sites tend to facilitate broader discussions about curriculum, content-delivery, and classroom management.
The distinction raises some concerns for advocates of the learning-team approach to professional development.
“The danger of relying solely on networks beyond the school is that you get potentially fragmented results, and you’re affecting some teachers, not all teachers, and some students, not all students,” said Stephanie Hirsh, the president of the Oxford, Ohio-based National Staff Development Council, a nonprofit group that works to link professional development to school improvement efforts.
Ms. Hirsh said all schools should establish such in-house teams to meet two to three times in a week. Still, she added, online networking can afford teachers opportunities to deepen their content knowledge, especially when they have limited access to peers who instruct in the same grade or subject level.
Ms. Doerr underscored the importance of supplementing online interactions with face-to-face meetings—a mix her organization calls “bricks and clicks.”
“When you have that face-to-face interaction,” she said, “it’s easier to come out with your problems and reach out for help and support [online].”
A Critical Mass
As networks’ directors focus on how to build the right set of features to transform the networks from novelties to integral components of teachers’ professional learning, they are now running into questions about sustainability.
Obstacles include network interfaces that Ms. Gutierrez described as somewhat “clunky” and graphically limited compared with sites such as Facebook.
The Illinois INTC project officials have experienced challenges building a “critical mass” of users sufficient to ensure that teachers who log on to the network can immediately find the help they need.
“You’ll have new people who come online and are excited abut the site, but they don’t see much activity, and they don’t come back,” said Lara Hebert, the INTC online research and development coordinator.
INTC Online now has 978 registered users, but in July, only 50 logged on, she said.
Denver officials are addressing the problem through a mix of requirements and incentives.
Participation in TLINC is required as part of the teacher training at the University of Colorado at Denver, Ms. Gutierrez said. It is also an element of the district’s ProComp differentiated-pay system: Mentors can earn a compensation bonus if they participate.
Still, across the three TLINC sites, officials have observed a decrease in usage over time.
“Because the programs are focused in the schools of education, we get a lot of use in the first year by the teacher-candidates, but then it tends to fade out,” Ms. Doerr said. “We want to get the veteran teachers already in the schools onto the community.”
Illinois officials, so far, have resisted tying INTC Online to requirements, and the site remains purely voluntary. In part, that reflects the goal of allowing teachers to drive the system’s gradual evolution, Ms. Hebert said.
I
n the meantime, the site’s managers hope to develop a better understanding of what will make the networks self-sustaining over time.
“If [network participation] is required for something—a grade, a certification, a stipend—people will participate. We know that,” said Ms. Clift, the director of the Illinois collaborative. “What we don’t know is what are the triggers that will encourage people to get as much professional satisfaction out of a space like this as they are personal satisfaction using Facebook and MySpace.”
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Some Twin Rivers teachers upset about extended class time
From: The Sacramento Bee
http://www.sacbee.com/education/story/1170607.html
By Deb Kollars
A decision to add 25 to 30 more teaching minutes every day for elementary children in the new Twin Rivers Unified School District has upset many teachers there.
About 400 met Tuesday afternoon at a union meeting to complain about the schedule changes, which took hold when school opened last week.
Some schools lengthened the day to provide the instructional minutes. Others shortened recesses and lunches. The goal was to help students achieve at higher levels.
According to many Twin Rivers teachers, children no longer have enough time to eat and play, and teachers are struggling to fit their lunches and preparation time into the school day.
"It's very stressful now," said Joyce Childs, a special education teacher at Pioneer Elementary, where lunches went from 45 to 30 minutes. More teaching time is good for children, she said, but not at the expense of other important uses of the school day. In the past, she noted, teachers used the longer lunch periods to help children who were behind, lead student councils and prepare lessons.
"When you add up the minutes, it's 12 extra days we are teaching," Childs said.
The change in instructional minutes – a rare move among districts – came as part of a new teachers contract being negotiated in the district, which was created July 1 when four districts merged. Parts of the contract are still being worked out, and it is not expected to go to members for a vote until later this fall.
But the district and teachers have a formal agreement on the added instructional minutes, as well as salary raises. The district isn't directly paying for the extra teaching minutes, but it is putting $3 million toward equalizing and raising salaries throughout the district.
According to Janice Auld, president of Twin Rivers United Educators, teachers could vote down the entire contract, but that would mean the salary raises might go away.
"I'm not sure we can change it this year," she said of the additional minutes. "But it's a one-year contract, so things could be modified next year."
Merging four districts and coming up with a single contract was bound to create some tough spots, Auld said.
"I liken this contract to building a house while you're living in it," she said.
http://www.sacbee.com/education/story/1170607.html
By Deb Kollars
A decision to add 25 to 30 more teaching minutes every day for elementary children in the new Twin Rivers Unified School District has upset many teachers there.
About 400 met Tuesday afternoon at a union meeting to complain about the schedule changes, which took hold when school opened last week.
Some schools lengthened the day to provide the instructional minutes. Others shortened recesses and lunches. The goal was to help students achieve at higher levels.
According to many Twin Rivers teachers, children no longer have enough time to eat and play, and teachers are struggling to fit their lunches and preparation time into the school day.
"It's very stressful now," said Joyce Childs, a special education teacher at Pioneer Elementary, where lunches went from 45 to 30 minutes. More teaching time is good for children, she said, but not at the expense of other important uses of the school day. In the past, she noted, teachers used the longer lunch periods to help children who were behind, lead student councils and prepare lessons.
"When you add up the minutes, it's 12 extra days we are teaching," Childs said.
The change in instructional minutes – a rare move among districts – came as part of a new teachers contract being negotiated in the district, which was created July 1 when four districts merged. Parts of the contract are still being worked out, and it is not expected to go to members for a vote until later this fall.
But the district and teachers have a formal agreement on the added instructional minutes, as well as salary raises. The district isn't directly paying for the extra teaching minutes, but it is putting $3 million toward equalizing and raising salaries throughout the district.
According to Janice Auld, president of Twin Rivers United Educators, teachers could vote down the entire contract, but that would mean the salary raises might go away.
"I'm not sure we can change it this year," she said of the additional minutes. "But it's a one-year contract, so things could be modified next year."
Merging four districts and coming up with a single contract was bound to create some tough spots, Auld said.
"I liken this contract to building a house while you're living in it," she said.
Teaching Secrets: Take Charge of Your Classroom
From: Teacher Magazine
http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2008/08/20/44tln_tillery.h19.html?tmp=1633073078
By Gail Tillery
“If he were my teacher, I’d make him cry,” remarked a sophomore at my high school after a teacher we’d just hired did a “shadow day.” Although I didn’t share that specific comment, I did reiterate to our new colleague that classroom management would be his biggest challenge. And so it was.
As mentoring coordinator at our large suburban high school, I’m in charge of inducting about 25 teachers a year. The teachers of most concern, of course, are the ones I affectionately dub the “baby teachers” (though not to their faces). Usually, these novice educators are very young—most have just graduated from college—and they are still feeling their way in life, much less in the classroom. Suddenly they may find themselves standing in front of a room filled with 35 seniors, some of whom are only three years younger than they are. In many cases, the disaster is coming on fast.
The first day of teaching school is something that must be experienced to be believed. Novice teachers think they are ready, but they are not. Based on years of working with these wonderful young people, I present the following advice.
What happens on the first day will happen on the last day. This means you must decide in advance what you want your classroom atmosphere to be. What will a typical day look like in your room? In order to make your vision happen, you must have a concrete, simple plan. Harry Wong’s excellent book, The First Days of School, is an invaluable resource for setting up routines that will allow your daily learning activities to function efficiently.
You are the king or queen of your room. Students this age will act as if they want to be in charge. They don’t. They are looking to you to set the atmosphere and the agenda. Be their leader instead of letting them run the show. This means setting boundaries, making consequences clear, and following through if necessary. Your students do not need a new friend. They need a teacher—and a leader. It’s your responsibility to take the point position and lead them where they need to go.
Dress the part; act the part; speak the part. Particularly when you are young, you must set yourself apart from your students. I have actually advised young female teachers to buy some suits and cut their hair. And yes, for males, ties are a must. Professional clothing not only makes you look more mature and in charge; it makes you feel that way. Don’t even think of flip-flops. Ever. And never use the word “like” except as a verb. Even then, question its use! '
Act the part, Part II: Take down your Facebook and your MySpace pages. Period. They will find it. Do not discuss your private life with your students—especially if you choose to drink. While they cognitively understand that it’s legal for you, they’re not experienced enough to filter it. Thus, they will say: “But Ms. Smith drinks, so it must be cool.”
Realize that you are a public figure. Understand that, while in my generation, your name was discussed at the ball field, this generation of students (and parents!) will be discussing you online and via text. As your first-period students leave the classroom on the first day of school, they will text on their way to second period about you. You’re a new teacher, which makes you interesting to them. What do you want them to be saying about you, in 140 text characters or less?
Let go of your need to be liked. Novice high school teachers want so badly to be popular with their students that they lose sight of the truth that teaching is not a popularity contest. My favorite TV show ever is M*A*S*H, and one of my favorite scenes involves Major Margaret Houlihan and a young, wounded G.I. He’s in pain, afraid, confused, and very far from home. As she gives him a sponge bath, he says furiously, “I hate your guts!” To which she very calmly replies, “My guts are not here for you to love.” Adopt this sentence as your motto, and believe it in your heart. Understand that you must earn your students’ respect; 99 percent of the time, their love will follow.
After 24 years of teaching, the best compliment I ever received continues to be this: “She’s tough, but she’s fair.” Show me a teacher who has a sense of her own power in the classroom, and I’ll show you students who feel safe and comfortable and who are learning to their utmost because there’s no drama and chaos in the room. Understanding that you are the leader will make your experience, and your students’ experience, a pleasant and rewarding one. And you won’t be suicidal at Thanksgiving.
http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2008/08/20/44tln_tillery.h19.html?tmp=1633073078
By Gail Tillery
“If he were my teacher, I’d make him cry,” remarked a sophomore at my high school after a teacher we’d just hired did a “shadow day.” Although I didn’t share that specific comment, I did reiterate to our new colleague that classroom management would be his biggest challenge. And so it was.
As mentoring coordinator at our large suburban high school, I’m in charge of inducting about 25 teachers a year. The teachers of most concern, of course, are the ones I affectionately dub the “baby teachers” (though not to their faces). Usually, these novice educators are very young—most have just graduated from college—and they are still feeling their way in life, much less in the classroom. Suddenly they may find themselves standing in front of a room filled with 35 seniors, some of whom are only three years younger than they are. In many cases, the disaster is coming on fast.
The first day of teaching school is something that must be experienced to be believed. Novice teachers think they are ready, but they are not. Based on years of working with these wonderful young people, I present the following advice.
What happens on the first day will happen on the last day. This means you must decide in advance what you want your classroom atmosphere to be. What will a typical day look like in your room? In order to make your vision happen, you must have a concrete, simple plan. Harry Wong’s excellent book, The First Days of School, is an invaluable resource for setting up routines that will allow your daily learning activities to function efficiently.
You are the king or queen of your room. Students this age will act as if they want to be in charge. They don’t. They are looking to you to set the atmosphere and the agenda. Be their leader instead of letting them run the show. This means setting boundaries, making consequences clear, and following through if necessary. Your students do not need a new friend. They need a teacher—and a leader. It’s your responsibility to take the point position and lead them where they need to go.
Dress the part; act the part; speak the part. Particularly when you are young, you must set yourself apart from your students. I have actually advised young female teachers to buy some suits and cut their hair. And yes, for males, ties are a must. Professional clothing not only makes you look more mature and in charge; it makes you feel that way. Don’t even think of flip-flops. Ever. And never use the word “like” except as a verb. Even then, question its use! '
Act the part, Part II: Take down your Facebook and your MySpace pages. Period. They will find it. Do not discuss your private life with your students—especially if you choose to drink. While they cognitively understand that it’s legal for you, they’re not experienced enough to filter it. Thus, they will say: “But Ms. Smith drinks, so it must be cool.”
Realize that you are a public figure. Understand that, while in my generation, your name was discussed at the ball field, this generation of students (and parents!) will be discussing you online and via text. As your first-period students leave the classroom on the first day of school, they will text on their way to second period about you. You’re a new teacher, which makes you interesting to them. What do you want them to be saying about you, in 140 text characters or less?
Let go of your need to be liked. Novice high school teachers want so badly to be popular with their students that they lose sight of the truth that teaching is not a popularity contest. My favorite TV show ever is M*A*S*H, and one of my favorite scenes involves Major Margaret Houlihan and a young, wounded G.I. He’s in pain, afraid, confused, and very far from home. As she gives him a sponge bath, he says furiously, “I hate your guts!” To which she very calmly replies, “My guts are not here for you to love.” Adopt this sentence as your motto, and believe it in your heart. Understand that you must earn your students’ respect; 99 percent of the time, their love will follow.
After 24 years of teaching, the best compliment I ever received continues to be this: “She’s tough, but she’s fair.” Show me a teacher who has a sense of her own power in the classroom, and I’ll show you students who feel safe and comfortable and who are learning to their utmost because there’s no drama and chaos in the room. Understanding that you are the leader will make your experience, and your students’ experience, a pleasant and rewarding one. And you won’t be suicidal at Thanksgiving.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Piling On The Homework: Does It Work For Everyone?
From: Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080818101331.htm
ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2008) — While U.S students continue to lag behind many countries academically, national statistics show that teachers have responded by assigning more homework. But according to a joint study by researchers at Binghamton University and the University of Nevada, when it comes to math, piling on the homework may not work for all students.
Published in the July issue of the Econometrics Journal, researchers found that although assigning more homework tends to have a larger and more significant impact on mathematics test scores for high and low achievers, it is less effective for average achievers.
"We found that if a teacher has a high achieving group of students, pushing them harder by giving them more homework could be beneficial," said Daniel Henderson, associate professor of economics at Binghamton University. "Similarly, if a teacher has a low ability class, assigning more homework may help since they may not have been pushed hard enough. But for the average achieving classes, who may have been given too much homework in an attempt to equate them with the high achieving classes, educators could be better served by using other methods to improve student achievement. Given these students' abilities and time constraints, learning by doing may be a more effective tool for improvement."
According to co-author Ozkan Eren, assistant professor of economics at the University of Nevada, the study examined an area previously unexplored, namely the connection between test scores and extra homework.
"There has been an extensive amount of research examining the influences of students' achievement, but it has been primarily focused on financial inputs such as class size or teachers' credentials," said Eren. "Our study examined the affect that additional homework has on test scores." While past studies suggest that nearly all students benefit from being assigned more homework Henderson and Eren discovered that only about 40% of the students surveyed would significantly benefit from an additional hour of homework each night.
According to Henderson, the findings should be of particular interest to schools who have responded to the increased pressures to pass state-mandated tests by forcing students to hit the books even harder. "This does not mean that homework is unimportant for average achievers," says Henderson. "But it does mean that this population may also benefit from other activities such as sports, art or music, rather than additional hours of math homework."
So what can teachers take away from the study? Henderson points out that every student is unique and while umbrella policies may benefit some, they generally cannot be applied to all.
"In my own personal experience I see that each semester requires a different approach," says Henderson. "This is even true when I teach the same course twice in a semester. Different times of the day or lengths of classes require different methods. Just as different quality students require different approaches."
Henderson also points out that repetition has been proven effective for some but not all subjects and what may have worked one academic year may need to be altered the next.
"Teachers should consider quality over quantity when it comes to homework assignments," he says. "In the end it should be up to the individual teacher to decide how to motivate and educate their students."
According to Henderson, the learning process needs to remain a rich, broad experience.
"One of the most beautiful things about America to me is the creativity that we instill in our primary and secondary schools," says Henderson. "I know that we lag behind many countries in test scores, but I believe we also produce some of the most creative, enthusiastic students in the world."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080818101331.htm
ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2008) — While U.S students continue to lag behind many countries academically, national statistics show that teachers have responded by assigning more homework. But according to a joint study by researchers at Binghamton University and the University of Nevada, when it comes to math, piling on the homework may not work for all students.
Published in the July issue of the Econometrics Journal, researchers found that although assigning more homework tends to have a larger and more significant impact on mathematics test scores for high and low achievers, it is less effective for average achievers.
"We found that if a teacher has a high achieving group of students, pushing them harder by giving them more homework could be beneficial," said Daniel Henderson, associate professor of economics at Binghamton University. "Similarly, if a teacher has a low ability class, assigning more homework may help since they may not have been pushed hard enough. But for the average achieving classes, who may have been given too much homework in an attempt to equate them with the high achieving classes, educators could be better served by using other methods to improve student achievement. Given these students' abilities and time constraints, learning by doing may be a more effective tool for improvement."
According to co-author Ozkan Eren, assistant professor of economics at the University of Nevada, the study examined an area previously unexplored, namely the connection between test scores and extra homework.
"There has been an extensive amount of research examining the influences of students' achievement, but it has been primarily focused on financial inputs such as class size or teachers' credentials," said Eren. "Our study examined the affect that additional homework has on test scores." While past studies suggest that nearly all students benefit from being assigned more homework Henderson and Eren discovered that only about 40% of the students surveyed would significantly benefit from an additional hour of homework each night.
According to Henderson, the findings should be of particular interest to schools who have responded to the increased pressures to pass state-mandated tests by forcing students to hit the books even harder. "This does not mean that homework is unimportant for average achievers," says Henderson. "But it does mean that this population may also benefit from other activities such as sports, art or music, rather than additional hours of math homework."
So what can teachers take away from the study? Henderson points out that every student is unique and while umbrella policies may benefit some, they generally cannot be applied to all.
"In my own personal experience I see that each semester requires a different approach," says Henderson. "This is even true when I teach the same course twice in a semester. Different times of the day or lengths of classes require different methods. Just as different quality students require different approaches."
Henderson also points out that repetition has been proven effective for some but not all subjects and what may have worked one academic year may need to be altered the next.
"Teachers should consider quality over quantity when it comes to homework assignments," he says. "In the end it should be up to the individual teacher to decide how to motivate and educate their students."
According to Henderson, the learning process needs to remain a rich, broad experience.
"One of the most beautiful things about America to me is the creativity that we instill in our primary and secondary schools," says Henderson. "I know that we lag behind many countries in test scores, but I believe we also produce some of the most creative, enthusiastic students in the world."
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