"I am proud of you!"

There is certainly a lot of staff drama in my school right now. End of school year student chaos aside, there have been an unusually high number of teachers being "surplused" whose positions will no longer be available at the school next year. There have also been a handful of teachers asked by the principal to step down from their leadership positions.

Sure, this can be an unfortunate reality for ANY school district under extreme budget cuts and crises, but the unprofessional and abrupt way our principal has handled these changes has been far from professional or ideal. Communication from top to bottom has consistently been an area of concern in our building, and everything has now come to a head. My co-teacher, who has been in the building for over 18 years, agrees that this is the lowest staff morale she has ever seen at our school.

So what, you may ask, can us teachers do about this dire situation to improve school culture and climate for everyone? Luckily, we have a very strong teachers' union behind us and a building representative who works tirelessly for our staff's happiness, fairness, and well-being. Late this week, she called a meeting with our union representative and staff. The result? A well-attended, very informative, productive, and eye-opening meeting that informed us of our rights and duties in working to improve the leadership and communication in our school. Essentially, she invited us all to send her anonymous comments, concerns, and examples of poor leadership, communication, decision-making, and judgment on the part of the administration. If she gets enough comments vocalized, she can proceed with a vote of "no confidence" from the staff to send to the higher ups.

As of late, the comments sent to her have only mounted, and I know for a fact that the ball is rolling for something to be done about the lack of clear and effective administrative leadership in our building. I am not normally one to use a single person as a scapegoat, but in this case, it is necessary and well-deserved, unfortunately.

Following that meeting, one of my colleagues came into my room and said, "I am proud of you for speaking up!"

"Thanks," I said, "I guess I am finally learning how to grow a spine here."

Boy, does it feel GOOD to learn how to be assertive and confident when it matters most in one's school building .... fingers crossed that it helps make a difference!!

Creating a Generation of Helpless Enabled Children

As educators, we always want the best for our students and to see students work hard to achieve lifelong success and personal growth. Parents, of course, want the same thing. Unfortunately, many of them today believe the best way to raise their children is by treating them as equals and "friends" who call the shots and make their own decisions. While there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to get along with one's children all the same, it is certainly not realistic, especially as a child enters the turbulent, unpredictable, and often stressful stage of adolescence.


My students' parents run the gamut from not being involved or home at all to being a complete helicopter hovering over every detail of their lives. Another recent trend in parenting I have witnessed is a distinct group of enablers who give their children everything, only want to keep the peace and get along, and refuse to be the strict disciplinarians and disseminators of tough love all teenagers need. The result? Entitled, spoiled, and ungrateful young adolescents who think the world should be handed to them on a silver platter and do not understand the true value of good, honest hard work. These children do not receive the kind of tough love and firm limits at home they so desperately crave. Consequently, they come to school expecting everything to be easy and assuming their teachers will be "easy" on them too.


I certainly do not mean to berate today's parents, especially because I am not yet a parent myself. Nonetheless, teaching over 120 students per day for the past several years has allowed me a unique perspective into our new generation of students as people, learners, and consumers. Anyone who has studied adolescent development knows about the rollercoaster of emotions, decisions, peer pressures, and outside media and societal influences today's teens wrestle with. It is not an easy time to grow up, and I have great empathy toward today's adolescents.


Still, the value of hard work, honest struggle, and consistent consequences is truly invaluable to our next generation. I work every day to be in collaboration with parents to work towards the best for my students. I only want the best for them and the opportunity for them to experience success, failure, hardship, and consequences for their mistakes. How else will they grow or learn from past decisions?


Perhaps this mindset is what made the following chain of emails difficult to read this evening. The exchange is between my colleague and a student's parent, someone whom we have continually struggled with as an enabler. It is impossible to change her outlook, but we certainly can do all we can to work with her son and not give up on him. This excerpt should be read from bottom to top:


My colleague:

Clearly it is my fault.... Is it me or is she making excuses....I can't teach him individually and I try to give him attention, but he is just so difficult especially because he is never on time, there, or not feeling well.  Should I respond or let it go... I guess I should treat him as though he is in Kindergarten.  Apparently, helping him after he was sick and taking my time off to help him catch up during finals and during bobcat was not enough... I even helped him my only block off during semester one finals to help him.  Clearly it is me. Please advise...any suggestions on how I should proceed? ----- Parent: Stress interferes with his ability to concentrate.  Try positive feedback, kind and motivational words.  Let him know that you believe in him and that you understand he is overwhelmed and you are there to help.  Validate his feelings and this will allow his walls to come down and you'll get more out of him.  He calls up frequently before your class and says he's not feeling good so this means that something in your class is making him not want to be there.   ----- Colleague:  Thank you for your email.  First let me say I would never give up on your son. The only thing I can say is that he can get help from [another teacher] during lunches.  I suggested that to him today and he said he didn't want to go. This is a snowball affect and we are going to be moving very fast until finals.  I will help him when I can, but my time is limited.  I hope that Adam keeps a positive attitude because I know he can catch up if he wants to. Thank you. ------ Parent: Honestly, I have to say we are upset with what is going on in my son's life at school.  He has started seeing a therapist and hopefully he will put him on a medication to help him with his ADD and mood issues.  I admit he is challenging but please please please don't give up on him.  Is it possible that he be assigned a tutor after school to help him?   If you look at his previous math grades you know he is advanced and has done amazing in math in the past and has loved it so what is going on, I don't know.  I have forwarded your email to the counselor so she can be in the loop. Hormones may be playing a part in his distractability and I am hoping we can all find a solution together to help my son. ----- Colleague: Hello, I am writing you of my continued concern with your son in Algebra.  He is starting to really struggle mainly because he either comes in late to my class, he is absent from my class, or seems to have something wrong (upset or not feeling well).  He has not completed his homework fully multiple times.  I try to help him but he often shuts down.  We do not have the time everyday to catch him  up and there are high stakes for the last final exam. If he doesn’t pass he will have to repeat Algebra next year.  He is very capable so I know this is not necessary.  Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help. Thank you. ----- How can we better work with parents like this? Do you think my colleague should respond to the parent's most recent email? I am curious about your thoughts.

It All Started in 3rd Grade: A Tribute to a Forever Friendship

Sometimes the best memories we have of school do not involve our teachers, the careful lessons they planned for us, or what we learned. Oftentimes, it is the people sitting next to us in the classroom that touch our lives in more ways than one. I was lucky enough to have met my particularly special classmate back in 1992 in Mrs. Mattson's third grade classroom. Her name is Julia, and she quickly became the best friend I could ever ask for.


Back then, I had no idea how a single person could touch my life or what it meant to truly be called a "best" friend. Julia became like the sister I never had and always wanted. She taught me more about life, patience, empathy, and leading others than I could have ever learned in a classroom. She inspired me to be a better person and to always see the best in others, even when I least wanted to do so.


Last Saturday, I had the privilege of being Julia's Matron of Honor at her wedding and watching her marry a wonderful man and the love of her life of over eleven years. After all the grieving over my aunt's passing, this moment became a welcome bright spot in my life. There is nothing quite like seeing two people madly in love make the commitment to each other for "all the days of their lives" and say yes to eternal love. It is always a joy and miracle to witness firsthand. 


Why am I talking about Julia on my blog about teaching? It's quite simple. Like my Aunt Ellen, Julia has always been one of my greatest life teachers, someone who always guides me in the right direction and lends the kind of accepting ear when I need it the most. I consider myself blessed to have met Julia so early on in my life and even more grateful for the forever friendship we now share -- and always will cherish.


I recently told my students about Julia and how much she means to me. I asked them to think about who their true friends are and told them never to take any of them for granted. Even though they are only 14 years old, I think my students are beginning to see what really matters in friendships and the importance of seeking out others who bring out the best in themselves.


Moreover, Julia is an extremely talented children's book illustrator who has already experienced much success in her blossoming, beginning career. She is a gem to know and a brilliant artist. Please visit her website to see what she has published and what is forthcoming: http://www.juliadenos.com/. 


Now, I would like to share with you some of the speech I wrote for Julia and shared at the wedding on Saturday:

I distinctly remember sitting in Mrs. Mattson's 3rd grade class at Highland Elementary School and noticing a new girl in town. Though she was quite smaller in stature than me, something prompted me to eloquently say to her, "I like your pencil pouch." Luckily, Julia accepted my compliment, and I'd like to think she agreed to come over my house for more reason other than to escape her four siblings. Despite the fact that I initially called her "Julia Dones," Julia and I formed an unbreakable bond of friendship then, eighteen years ago.

From the start, I learned a great deal from this eldest member of the "Dones" family who possessed such a calming, reassuring demeanor and the ability to lead by example and draw anything -- and I mean, anything -- with grace and ease. From endless sleepovers, trips to Maine, and summer camps to Dodd Middle School, color guard, Cheshire High, and into the real world of adulthood, Julia has been my rock, my confidant, my mentor, and my best friend through it all. 

As if Julia herself was not an incredible addition to my life, along came Mr. Matthew Perlot, a man I still enjoy calling "Beef" after a hilarious incident with a main course at his junior prom in 1999. I distinctly remember when Julia and Matt first met at the Cheshire Youth Center at our Sweet 16th Birthday. Even though their first dance did not work out as planned at this festivity (As the great Mr. Denos would say, "Whoops!"), Julia and Matt had found each other. As their relationship progressed and love deepened, I felt privileged to witness it all. They were clearly a perfectly matched pair and the most artistic couple at CHS, making Mrs. Benarcryk, of course, proud.

Yes, Julia found her soul mate over eleven years ago, and it has been an absolute honor to call both Julia and Matt close friends and integral parts of my life. Their natural artistry, creativity, passion, love, kindness, patience, and zest for life is infectious and admirable to everyone around them. Very few childhood memories of mine exist without Julia, and I cannot wait to see what new adult memories we create together with our spouses and each other. Thank you for sharing my childhood, Julia, and for always being the best friend anyone could ever ask for. Matt is certainly one lucky man. Greg and I love you both immensely. 

Now, please raise your glasses in honor of a true match made in heaven who finally got their proper first dance. Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Perlot!

-----

Let's here it for forever friendship that all started in a simple elementary school classroom! I can only hope that my own students find this kind of irreplaceable bond with their peers.

Whatever happened to quality writing instruction?

Here is a really interesting article a close friend shared with me today from The Boston Globe. It is disheartening to see how little writing instruction is valued in the middle and high school English classroom these days. Perhaps this piece is a charge to do something about it??

Failure to communicate

The inability of many students to write clear, cogent sentences has costly implications for the digital age

By Kara Miller  |  May 19, 2010

WHEN YOU teach English to college students, you quickly realize two things.


First, many seem to have received little writing instruction in high school. I initially noticed this as an undergraduate English major at Yale, where I helped peers revise their papers. I saw it again in graduate school at Tufts, where I taught freshman writing classes. And it has also struck me at Babson, where, for the past two years, I have instructed first-year students.


The second thing English teachers realize is that correcting students’ papers is tremendously time consuming. I constantly do battle with myself to spend less than 20 minutes on a paper. At meetings, instructors are often urged not to exceed 15 minutes, but I frequently end up spending double that. This can be a genuinely frustrating experience: 50 papers stacked on the coffee table, 10 in the finished pile, and an entire afternoon gone.


But I can’t help it; there’s so much to correct. Subjects don’t agree with verbs. “Its’’ and “it’s’’ are used interchangeably. “They are’’ is confused with “their.’’ And facts too often function as topic sentences. Many of the students whose work I correct are smart, motivated, and quick to incorporate suggestions. But they have either forgotten the rules of writing, or they never learned them in the first place.


Some of the problem, of course, is carelessness. But much of it is not. I have read seniors’ cover letters — letters that aim to snag them a dream job — and they’re frequently riddled with both grammatical and stylistic mistakes.


Inadequate writing skills have led to concern in colleges across the country. In 2007, the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that just 24 percent of 12th-graders scored “proficient’’ or better. That same year, more than 80 percent of students at the City University of New York had to enroll in remedial courses in reading, writing, or math.


Vartan Gregorian, the former president of Brown University, has expressed deep concern about the erosion of solid communication skills. “In an age overwhelmed by information (we are told, for example, that all available information doubles every two to three years), we should view this as a crisis, because the ability to read, comprehend, and write — in other words, to organize information into knowledge — can be viewed as tantamount to a survival skill.’’


Which leads to a serious question: why do so many students come to college without a command of fundamentals?


To some degree, it’s a mathematical problem. If it takes me all weekend to correct 40 papers, how can a high school English teacher begin to tackle 120 papers (four sections, 30 students per section) in a detail-oriented way?


The few teachers who do spend day and night reviewing papers deserve both a medal and a hefty raise. As they know, fixing students’ writing is complex; it simply cannot be boiled down to a multiple-choice test or a series of right-and-wrong answers. Which may mean rethinking the way writing is taught in high school — and, perhaps, the way teachers are compensated.


We often belittle English teachers — if you speak and read English, how hard can it be to teach it? — but those with strong communication skills are both rare and valuable. Recall that when Massachusetts implemented a teachers’ test 12 years ago, the public was shocked to discover that more than 30 percent of prospective teachers failed the literacy portion.


Though the media tend to focus on nationwide shortages of math and science teachers — which are indeed acute — finding, coaching, and retaining good English teachers is an underreported struggle. Indeed, as anyone who has received a poorly written e-mail, assessment, memo, cover letter, or report knows, writing — both good and bad — has real power. The National Commission on Writing (a part of the College Board) has calculated that “remedying deficiencies in writing costs American corporations as much as $3.1 billion annually.’’


In an increasingly digital world, writing acts as a vehicle for knowledge — giving it short shrift in the classroom is a serious mistake.


Kara Miller teaches at Babson College.  

Creating Patient Problem Solvers

This is a link to an interesting talk about math curriculum.  The teacher giving the talk argues that teachers should "be less helpful" to encourage "patient problem solvers."  The video is about 12 minutes long and well worth that time. I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-05-18&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email



At the beginning, I honestly was not sure what the teacher was getting at. However, a little more time and reflection allowed me to appreciate his discussion about learning from the students' experiences with challenging their critical thinking and problem solving skills. This is a very engaging and interesting process indeed.


One of my colleagues from Harvard, who also enjoyed the film, is a life, career, and social service agency coach.  At the moment, she is coaching five middle school kids from the inner city who have been expelled from school.  The critical thinking and problem solving aspect of the talk went way beyond math for her and certainly for me as well. Please visit her website and read about the incredible work she is doing with her students at www.SageCoach-cac.com.

Should chronic student absenteeism equal loss of credit? I think so!

Here is an interesting article that certainly prompted conversation among my colleagues and I. What do you think? The full article and related topics can be found at: http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=706&sid=1955549#



WASHINGTON - Beginning next school year, Montgomery County students who miss class or show up late won't be penalized with a loss of credit.


Currently, students who have five unexcused absences in a class each semester will automatically fail the class. Showing up late for class 15 times in a single semester will also lead to automatic failure.
But these rules, called the "loss of credit" policy, are going away.


In a memo to the County Board of Education, Schools Superintendent Jerry Weast says grades must be an accurate reflection of student achievement and the current policy contradicts that.


The decision to end the "loss of credit" policy was not taken lightly.


A task force made up of school officials, teachers, parents and students spent 18 months studying the idea before recommending that the "loss of credit" policy be retired.


Because it's a change of school regulations, the school board does not get to vote on the decision.


But board member Laura Berthiaume is concerned.


"The message that may be going out is that you can skip class and that there will be no real consequence," she says.
Kids who skip school will still face non-academic punishment.


Weast's memo says consequences for unexcused absences would range from a minimum of a conference to a maximum of detention. He also says each high school will establish a formal process to promote student attendance.


Berthiaume says the change in policy may give the students who are the least engaged more reason to skip. In addition, she says it could be a "free pass" for bright kids who can get away with missing class and still pass exams.

Remembering My Aunt's Legacy

On May 11, my beloved Aunt Ellen passed away, her long battle with cancer finally ending peacefully. Obviously, her loss took quite a toll on me, as it did for my mother and the rest of her family. To us, Ellen was always the caregiver and person whom you could rely on to make everything OK and brighten even the darkest moment of a given day.


While honoring and remembering her life up North in Maine this past week, I had the chance to revisit a poem I wrote for her this past Christmas. Since she was one of my greatest teachers about life, I would like to share my poem with you:

For My Aunt Ellen 

My Aunt Ellen is to me the greatest person in this world,

the kind of rare star you hope to see glimmer in the night sky.

Aunt Ellen has the biggest heart with the most caring touch,

always knowing how to make you smile,

always placing others before herself.

Aunt Ellen's soul is made of pure love;

her heart exudes intense warmth and genuine hope.
In my eyes, Aunt Ellen will always be 

the most beautiful person to walk this Earth.

Aunt Ellen is the smartest and wisest woman I know,

whose life experiences speak for themselves.
I appreciate all the advice she has given me;
I will take her words with me all the days of my life.
The memories I will forever cherish,
from Nubble Light to ‘Gate to the Sunshine State.

For all Aunt Ellen has done,

I will forever be thankful.
My love for her only grows more

with each day that passes.

On a high pedestal is where I hold Aunt Ellen,

for she is admired more than she will ever know.

Having Aunt Ellen a part of my life is the greatest gift of all;

being in her presence is God's blessing to me.
Giving, helpful, loving, caring, selfless, and kind,

there is no one who compares.

Aunt Ellen is not only my favorite aunt but also

a leader, mentor, role model, and best friend.

To be like her would be my only wish.

Looking deep inside of her,
I see that strong, wise woman I hope to one day become.