Ch 14 of 20: Parents' Rights

Back in the days, the worst-case scenario following bad behavior was parents’ conference. If a parent was contacted and asked to meet with the teacher, it was a complete misfortune for the family, the student, and his/her social life.

My parents, unlike most parents at the time, were at least willing to give me a fair hearing of what had happened. Most parents would not even listen, and automatically side with the teacher. It would be considered a disgrace for the family if their student so misbehaved.

This type of parents’ reaction does not exist anymore, especially not in second-generation American families. It may still be true for families who recently emigrated from different countries, especially developing countries, where education and teachers’ authority is still taken quite seriously…

One of the reasons for this phenomenon results from parents losing authority with their children. They may be too busy working multiple jobs and thus being away from home, or they may start losing respect from the younger generation due to language deficiency or cultural background.

I have met so many wonderful, willing to help and supportive, Hispanic parents, who valued education and wish their students to succeed, and yet are completely powerless in their attempt to influence their child.

Situation changes for the worse, unfortunately, after families have been here for a while, and are swayed by a sense of entitlement; feeling that the system owes them. They neglect their responsibilities and lay it all on teachers, and school in general. From this group of people I often hear a blaming tone. They, often, refuse to take responsibility for their student’s behavior and blame teachers and administrators. Some even flatly declare that they are not going to do anything about their misbehaving student…

And then there is a third group of parents, parents of students who are fairly motivated, disciplined, and quite well mannered. Usually they live in affluent areas, and go to respectable schools. These are the schools where teachers have fewer problems with students but many more problems with parents…

Teachers who work in those schools tell me horror stories about parents screaming at them for not complying with their demands regarding procedures, homework assignments, and most commonly – grades. These teachers deal with parents who treat them like kids and try to control their teaching and decision making…

Imagine a corporate environment where a boss has to answer for employee’s parents’ demands regarding special treatment for their son or daughter…

Consider a situation where a worker is directly responsible before the law, not only for things he/she has done, but for things done by somebody else. A case where not reporting, or not even noticing, misconduct done by others, may carry a severe punishment that could cost him/her job, and even imprison...

Compare the education profession to other careers, considering the layers of “bosses”, so to speak, to whom teachers have to report. There is the department head, the administrator in charge, the principal, the school district officials, as well as other special supervisors and advisers, to name few.

…Add to that 200 students, and double this number of parents and guardians… all bossing the same teacher…

Ch 13 of 20: Students' rights (no obligations...)

Somewhere along the way of making education mandatory for all youngsters, it stopped being a privilege and became an entitlement. Everyone under a certain age must go to school whether student and parents want it or not. It became the law.

I am not against enforcing education on children and young adult, and for sure, I am for a system that prepares adolescents to become functioning citizens, with education, skills and social values. What I am against, though, is forcing every young person to go through the same mandatory system. There should be different systems for different needs and wants of youngsters and their families.

Even if every child was capable of becoming a rocket scientists or a brain surgeon not everyone would want to become one. The most talented girl at my school, whose father was a medicine doctor, and her mother highly educated as well, wanted just to learn manual crafts, and fortunately her parents supported her.

What I see at schools every day are classrooms full of students who are not only completely disinterested in education, but also determined to spoil the experience for everyone else. They are using every tool in their arsenal to resist any positive progress; refuse to cooperate or participate, disrupt teacher and students and tease the ones who show interest. They destroy educational materials that are handed to them with no cost, and leave graffiti on books and trash on school property.

I can’t describe the frustration of trying to teach, aide, or even just observe such a  class; watching the phenomena of students wasting, on purpose, the one most valuable asset, given to them for free – education, paid by each of us. It aggravates to see the time and resources wasted; tax money paid by all of us, including their parents, earned with hard work; Spoiled opportunities – theirs and others!

My frustration and anger often boil to a point that aggravates administrators. I understand that kids will be kids… They don’t see the whole picture and lack the maturity to recognize what is good for them, but - how do we allow that? How do we let few irresponsible youngsters to spoil education for eighty percent of school population? How do we let them control us, educators, kind and giving individuals, whose only fault is trying to help them? Why are we so helpless against them?

I heard it so many times – “…but you are the teacher! It is your job to control the class!” And my reply is “How? Using what tools? “ What do you say, or do, to a  student who is completely candid about his disinterest in school?

This is not a new problem, what new is our inability to deal with it. We, school staff, cannot force students to learn, their parents have very little influence, the system has neither authority nor alternatives, and law suits are looming over everyone who dares say “fine, this is your choice…” Politicians are making decisions for school administrators; officials who had never been to a classroom…

Before I started teaching I worked as a teacher aide. Helping in different classrooms I was amazed to learn what teachers are facing every day at their job. I must admit that in most cases I blamed, in my heart, the teachers. I thought the chaos was a result of a poor classroom management and bad teaching methods.

I vividly remember one specific class where the teacher was standing in front of the room, lecturing to only two students; a brother and sister who just emigrated from Iran. They were the only ones who showed interest, or maybe just had good manners… The rest of the students were throwing paper balls, talking, and listening to loud music. I would walk around the room, trying to get students to focus their attention on the teacher and work with them individually. I even had some successes with a sharp African American boy who showed interest and ability (but unfortunately got involved in a fight, and was expelled from school, despite my pleas…). I would come home and tell my family about that one bad teacher, that though I liked him personally, was, in my opinion, a poor educator…

Over the years, I often thought of that teacher, and the longer I stayed in education, the better I understood him. It was not long before I was ready, in my frustration, to do just that – teach the only two interested students and ignore the rest. I was so discouraged by the inability of the system to deal with what he used to call “those low performing students”, who disrupt learning and teaching, that I justified him.

… I saw him again years later. It was by a pure coincidence. I lost a job due to low enrollment and was offered a temporary assignment at a different school, replacing a teacher on a sick leave, for an unspecified length of time…

The name of the teacher sounded familiar, and something about the way he worded the instruction made me suspect that this is the same person. Few days later when we spoke over the phone he did not remember me, yet I could swear it was him… It took few more weeks before we met, but when we finally did, sure enough, it was the very same teacher, dealing with the same frustrating situation. Trying to teach unmotivated, low performing students, in a low performing school…

I could tell him now how much I sympathize with what he was going through back then, and now. Apparently he was hoping I would stay and replace him for the rest of the semester but when he asked me my reply was “Thanks! But no, thanks!”. Unfortunately he was forced to come back, despite of his health condition … but as bad as I felt for him I did not want to stay beyond the two weeks I committed for. There was nothing I could do to improve the learning environment, and I knew that eventually I will be the one to be blamed for that… It was a losing game…

You see – since education became an entitlement, it carries only rights! Students have the right for an appropriate education; best teachers, best programs, best materials. If not - they are entitled to sue; every sixth grader can, and will, tell you that! However, they don’t have to come to school ready; bring supplies, protect the ones they are given, respect property, teachers and staff. Their only requirement is to show up at school! And yes! Schools are very particular about that; it means money! But what about other obligations like carrying a pencil and a piece of paper? Displaying positive attitude, attempting to learn something, or at least – give just respect to the people who try to teach, and to the ones who try to learn?

Every time I hear complaints from parents, backed by a smart advocate, I want to scream. I want to ask – have you been to a classroom? Have you seen those students sitting with a big, empty, backpack, with absolutely no school supplies? Have you noticed those students who completely ignore instruction, deliberately disrupting the lesson? They don’t learn because they don’t want to learn! They should be held accountable for that! Teachers are not responsible for the failure of the education system! It is the system itself that fails those reluctant students by not making them answerable for what they do, or don’t, know!

Why do schools have to provide students with every piece of supply is beyond me, but at least students should protect and respect what is given to them! Instead – they complain! Give them papers they ask why they are not lined, and make paper balls! Give them pencils – they break them, but not before complaining that they don’t have erasers… Give them erasers – they through them at each other! Providing something for free, without attached liability, is not only expensive and wasteful, but also against every value and principle that we are trying to instill in our youngsters. It is education without educating!

So, next time when you ask your student what did he/she learn at school today, ask yourself what did they NOT learn at school! What basic human and citizenship values, like respect, responsibility, care for property, appreciation to resources, among others, did they not learn!

Ch 12 of 20: Bell Schedule

Frustrated teachers and administrators are trying to figure out what is wrong with their school’s performance. Low performing schools, like many of the ones I see, are banging their heads against the wall trying to break the standardized test score barrier to get their school off the hook. They research methods other schools are using, calling staff from different areas in a desperate attempt to find out what is the secret magic that brings their scores higher.

I was sitting in those meeting many times, listening to my colleagues arguing for one method or another. One person is claiming that a certain technique worked so well somewhere, resulting in a higher score, and someone else presenting just the opposite, arguing that another school, using that same technique, sees no progress.

This is the time when I am waiting for that innocent child, who sees the facts as they are and speaks out the truth… to cry “The Emperor is naked!” pointing to reality that everyone pretends not to notice… The fact that, for example, this wonderful, high performing school, is in a privileged area, with well educated and well to do population, and long waiting list that efforts losing few trouble makers, and thus pressuring students and parents – to meet their standards or hit the road…

When I am assigned to a new school and I want to get a feeling for its academic rank and culture, I always check its bell schedule…

My good colleagues at the west area schools enjoy a relaxed bell schedule. They start at 8:00, have about 50 minutes-long classes, enjoy nutrition recess, unwind for 35 minutes at lunch break, have a nice 7 minutes passing time between periods - the same schedule that they have had for 20 years…

The stressed out schools start before 8:00, have no nutrition recess, shorter lunch, mean 4 minutes passing period, and the greatest “fix-it-all” - block scheduling…

If you have taught math at a low-performing school with block scheduling you know what I mean… I am not saying it is a bad idea all together – it might work for art, music, PE, even social studies, but not math, for more than one reason. To start - there is no way you can keep students’ attention for more than 40 minutes, in the best case; 20 minutes to teach the lesson and 20 minutes for practice, collectively and individually. After that they lose they concentration and become restless and impatient. So – how do you fill 90 minutes, or worse, 110 minutes?

Yes, you can show them a movie, talk to them about current events, teach them about the world (my favorite passing time activity…) but the fact is still the same – there is that much material that you have to cover each week, month, semester.  Since you now meet your class only 2 or 3 times a week you have to give double dose of the material in each meeting. It means that after the first 40 minutes, with maybe a short break, you have to do another round of 40 minutes teaching the next section. Learning math is challenging enough as it is, and to have it absorbed and ready to be applied – it needs to be administered in a bite size… Dealing with two mouthful quantities to be swallowed, digested, and processed is quite impossible!

School age youngsters need to move around, spend energy, play and refresh their minds before being ready to absorb more learning. Long periods in the same seat is almost impossible for most students, especially for middle schoolers. The notion that more is better, resulting in maximizing the in-class minutes, especially in low-performing schools, is ineffective, and even counter-effective! More and more researches are showing that recess is not only what students want, but also what students need in order to perform well. Studies had proved that outside, playground, time, helps students refresh their minds, exhaust their energy and prepares them for refocusing their mind on learning. Furthermore – researchers found a direct positive correlation between exercise and academic performance! Countries that excel in education level, like Finland and some Asian countries, have shorter periods and longer, and more often, recesses!

Unfortunately, education leaders believe that fixing our failing schools depends on how many classroom minutes we provide our learners, and the tighter the schedule is, the better education we deliver. Not surprisingly, then, that low performing schools squeeze seven periods a day, some in block schedule, have short or no breaks, and very brief passing periods. They administer remedy without a sound proof that it cures the ailment, and ignore the fact that while no real evidence supports that more is better, volume of data claims that actually less is better!

In analyzing the consequence of bell and block scheduling, we weigh mainly students’ achievements, of course. We do forget, however, to consider its effect on teachers. Teachers’ comfort and well being has a direct impact on their job effectiveness, not to mention those basic human rights of a working individual…

Let’s talk about lunch break, for example. Lunch breaks are never long enough to enable teachers to recharge before the next section of the day. When the bell-ring announces lunch break, the students charge out instantly, but the teacher has some closing to do - erase the board, turn off electronic devices, pick up few papers from the floor, maybe replace the materials - getting ready for the next period, and very often exchange few words with some students for one reason or another; precious minutes that are taken away from his/her recess time…

At one school we had block scheduling with 110 minutes long blocks, a nightmare for every math teacher in a low performing school… The morning session included two consecutive blocks with only 7 minutes between them… If you were not one of the lucky teachers with a conference before lunch, or the bathrooms were not next door, you were doomed to work four hours without a bathroom break…

At another school we had a 30-minutes lunch break. Because of school size, and the fact that bathrooms were not available at the bungalows where I taught, I could never get to the cafeteria until almost the end of the break. By then the cafeteria workers had already remove most of the food items, closed the cashiers and most infuriating - emptied the coffee pots. If there is something I desperately needed at that time, is a good cup of coffee, but as I, at last, reached the promised cafeteria, I would watch with dismay how my precious coffee is being poured down the drain…

Other schools don’t even have faculty cafeteria so teachers have to waste precious lunch minutes standing in line with the students (yeah… they do get priority) and then waste more time marching to the teachers’ lounge… not much fun…

It almost feels like the whole school time machine is aimed at limiting teachers’ comfort and causing them a constant race against time. If you have a conference period with important business to take care of, you are asked to cover another class. If you get to school early because you need to do some prep work, someone needs your help. If you plan on leaving early – forget it! And if you get to the cafeteria, desperately needing few minutes to eat and relax, they reject your $20 bill that you carefully remembered to bring (cash only! no checks or credit card!)

So, stepping to a school, not knowing much about its academic level, culture and intensity of teachers’ pressure – check out the bell schedule… This is a good indicator for school’s stress level…

Links:
The Secret Behind Finland's Super Smart School Kids? Recess
The Effect of Recess on Academics
The Rebirth of Recess

Ch 11 of 20: Middle School

Muppet: Nobody Cares About Me

The Middle School phenomenon has caused, in my opinion, more damage to the education system than any other “progressive” reform. It had emerged several decades ago, here, and later in other countries, from a previous system dividing the elementary / high school system into three stages, adding a Junior High School. The Junior High concept was created to escalate students’ academic preparedness for the higher grades by breaking away from the traditional elementary school, and provide thus more rigorous studies, as a better readiness for higher education.

It was in the early seventies when academia people started to wonder if it is right to enforce strict academic measures on early teens, and therefore limit their time and ability for creativity and socializing. Combined with new psychological theories a new trend surfaced that resulted in easing academic demands on young adolescents, trying to create a warmer transition from elementary to high school. 

Some countries around the world, and few districts here in the States, however, stayed with the Junior-Senior concept, and even smaller number of organizations kept the eight –four, elementary high-school, system long after it was pronounced “old fashion”. Those few “survivors” can smile now and say “See - we told you…”

Luckily, I grew up in a country that, at the time, kept the 1-8 elementary and 9-12 high school system. Back then my young country was one of the world’s leaders on the education rank list, and it produced a genius generation of engineers and inventors in every field. Its place on the list dropped miserably after adapting some “progressive methods”, one of them is the middle school system… It is not my place to debate what caused the education level drop, and what part of it is due to adapting the middle school system. All I can do is describe my own experience…

I can testify to having the best time of my schooling life during those last three years of my elementary school, especially those critical 7th and 8th grades. We all grew up together, started to mature together, and made room for the emerging stars among us. We didn't have to re-invent a social structure and fight our place in it. We were comfortable in our world of being the seniors in our little kingdom, and thus our minds were free to absorb and progress. Now, years later, I realize that my best childhood and adolescence friends are those who were part of my world during those precious years of 12 to 14…

Raising my kids here, and sending them to the local, well acclaimed, schools, I watched with dismay their experience going through the middle school horrid system. My daughter, an ‘A’ student, shy and delicate, spent most of her lunch breaks by herself, and was trying to get involved in any school activity that could save her from a social isolation. My son, who could have been an ‘A’ students had he not been caught in the middle-school madness, was desperately trying to prove the cool guy in the new, chaotic, social structure in order to socially survive…

Being the foreign, new comer, that I was, I did not grasp the harm in the middle-school insanity until years later, too late, by then, to mend the scars that were left.

Yet, still not fully comprehending the whole picture, I decided to become a middle school math teacher, believing that my skills will be best used teaching arithmetic and those ill-understood concepts of fractions, decimals and percentages… It was only when I actually started teaching that I realized how impossible it is to teach anything in middle school, let alone mathematics...

What’s amiss in middle schools?

It is absolutely the wrong structure, at the wrong age…

The first time I was faced with a system that required me to choose classes and move from one classroom to another I was at my freshman year of the university. We were all so confused that we thought we will never be able to graduate… and most of us were over twenty by then… Of course it is not quite the same, yet I can’t imagine facing a similar system at the age of eleven, after being under the clear, strict care of the elementary school organization for five or six years…

Pre and young teens are at an age when they need structure and direction more than ever. Unfortunately, right at that fragile age we open the gates for them and let them free to go to an uncharted territory. All of a sudden the cushioning and protection given to them at elementary school is let go, and the rules abruptly change on them; Moving from one classroom to another, with anonymous new teacher in every class, and hundreds of new faces almost every period of the day.

The social structure that was carefully balanced for that many years is undone exactly at that sensitive time when early teen boys are becoming young men and girls are turning to women. The old social arrangement does not apply anymore and every young soul has to fight for a new place in the pyramid. No wonder that this is when alcohol and drugs are creeping their way into the young people’s life.   

To counter-act the breaking of the social structure, and to support peer cooperation rather than competition, group work became the common practice in most middle schools classrooms. Students sitting in groups of 3-6, ideally learning together and helping each other… Sounds great? The idea is good. Does it work? For social interaction – maybe, for academic progress – not quite…  The middle school concept that was trying to ease students’ academic stress and leave more room for socializing and creativity, affords them complete leisure and laziness.

Over the past several years, the middle-school system is desperately trying to re-invent itself, as more and more researches are proving its failure. Schools are trying to have one teacher teaching several subjects to strengthen teacher-students connection. A typical combination is one teacher for math and science, and one for social sciences and language arts. However, due to budget and logistics limitations, other, strange, combinations exist like English and math or English and Science …

For that purpose, block scheduling is often prescribed, where students spend two hours, without a break, in the classroom; a nightmare for teachers and students…

Then there is the “Home Room” or “Advisory” period. In most high schools it means 5-10 minutes added to first or second period, dedicated to messages over the laud-speakers and some administrative errands. In a middle school, however, this special period is dedicated to teacher-students quality time, sort of bonding together, time for general education, on top of administrative errands. This period lasts between 30 to 60 minutes every day, but unfortunately is an absolute waste of time. When asked what they usually do during this time, students’ answer is always the same – "Nothing!" In the best case a teacher would assign a word-search or a game… Really? Nothing better to do with 40 precious minutes? No real learning? No discussions? Nothing to broaden those limited horizons? And if nothing better, why not add 5-10 minutes to each of the other academic periods?

Then, just recently, another “academic” activity was added… Breakfast In Class… another mind blowing invention… Why not have students come 10 minutes earlier and be served at the cafeteria, where it belongs? Why waste class time! Not to mention the trash, the disrupted learning atmosphere, the questionable added duty for teachers, the waste of food that big part of it finds its way to the trash can!

I don’t want to further expand on the middle school system. Educators understand the problems and try to provide small changes within the limitations of the system. Teachers are well aware of the situation; some deal with it somehow, but many leave to seek a job in a high school, or just quit the education field all together.  

Why don’t we go back to the old system? Politics… and money of course… someone has to admit failure and someone has to pay for it…

Ch 10 of 20: No proficiency criteria

Dr. Seuss: The Cat in the Hat

If there was a magic cure that could have treated all, or at least most, of the education system’s ailments, would we be able to apply it? The truth is that there is a way to solve most of the weaknesses of our schools. It is a simple remedy but it will declare a war between educators and politicians…

The solution is mandating one, objective, nation-wide (or at least state-wide) proficiency standard of knowledge, measured by a uniform, objective tool (test), for each graduation mandated subject.

The list of the benefits that will result is long but mainly it will give credibility to the high school diploma, will strengthen the higher education level, and overall will elevate our education quality to a competitive place among world’s nations.

Another, at least as important, benefit, will be challenging students to reach a real, clear and established goal in order to graduate from high school with a diploma.  

If you have been to a classroom, you know that not all students are created equal… It is a nice ideal but very far away from reality… If you are a math teacher, you meet this reality when you face forty students with forty different levels.

Back in the days, before a law-suit was looming over every decision made, common sense prevailed. Higher-level students were in a higher-level classes, lower performing students were in a class that matched their skills, and those in the middle were able to progress at their pace. Not surprisingly, lower students tried to hide that fact, and students in the middle tried their best to climb to the ‘A’ group.

We don’t label students any more… they are all equal before the mass education system… and it makes teachers’ mission impossible; the low performing students dominate the class environment. They muck the teacher and the students who happened to want to learn. They hold hostage the learning process, knowing that there is nothing the teacher can do to force them to cooperate. Parents have little or no influence, and deans are overwhelmed with the magnitude of the problem. In their frustration, they send the students right back to the classroom…

In the end, the ultimate guilty party is always the teachers… No matter what they do or how hard they try, they are helpless against the troops of unmotivated students who don’t have a real clear goal to achieve, and who know the system is behind them (and against their teacher…)

The issue is not the miserable frustration of a teacher trying to do his/her job… the issue is the inability of the majority of the students to learn. How much progress can be achieved when eighty percent of the time is spent on fighting disruption? How distressing it is that motivated students are teased by the lower students. How sad it is that we lose eighty percent of the potential learners to very few...

Whose idea was it that all students must graduate from high school anyway? Of course it is a desirable goal but is it realistic? Aren't we fooling ourselves believing that occupying a seat for twelve years means graduation competence?

Back to the good old days, students who were not capable or just not motivated to be in the academic ‘lane’, had other options. They could learn a craft and get a suitable certificate. Later, they could complete their education and receive a high school diploma or meet the requirements to be accepted to the universities.

Imagine a situation where a school decides that all students are required to be part of the ‘Track and Field’ team. Would it be possible to set a qualifying time? Of course not – unless it is set to be the time of the slowest member of the team. How well would this team perform? How competitive it will be against other teams?

The academic field is not different… When a decision was made that every student should be a part of the academic path, regardless of ability or motivation, there was only one way to reach this objective – lowering the bar so that all students can meet it… And what happens to our education level as result, compared to other countries, for example? Exactly what would have happened to that sports team! We, the richest country, with the brightest minds, fall to the bottom of the list … 

When no objective standard level for success is set, and every team member is a “mandated participant” the bar is automatically being lowered, it must be – how else can everyone pass? Most countries set their “passing” standard bar based on educational goal. They measure their students’ success by national matriculation tests, and the high school diploma depends on this unbiased measure. This method has two benefits. It graduates only deserving students, thus giving credibility to the high school diploma, and it gives students a real, measurable, goal to reach, and thus directs and motivates them. When no bar is set to discriminate between achieving and “sitting” students, the education standard is very questionable!

As a math teacher I see everyday 12^th grade students who will graduate with math skills of 5^th graders, and I am sure my English teachers colleagues have a similar experience, yet I can’t tell you how many times I was asked by an administrator to increase the percentage of students passing my class… What does it mean? To teach better? No! I can assure you that this is not what it meant – I was asked to let more students slide through, and if it meant lowering the bar – so it be… and why not? Who is going to notice that some algebra student know absolutely nothing about algebra, or for that matter, about basic arithmetic? If there is no objective qualifying test why not push through the passing gates more students. And yes, every year thousands of students graduate from high school not mastering basic skills, yet their report card will testify successfully passage of require subjects…

I was once present at a meeting between our high school math teachers and teachers of a middle school. We were discussing the math level of the students who came to us, and I asked the middle school teachers why they let students into algebra before they master basic arithmetic skills. I told them that, unfortunately, at high school we don’t have a choice, but they still have the option to work on basic skills… My comment was met with complete silence. They all, including my administrator, looked at me questioning my intelligence … They, too, don’t have a choice! They are told to place students in algebra, regardless of readiness level…

You may say - but there are standardized testing that are religiously administered to all schools every year, so here is a good objective measure… and I would say… yes!… what a brilliant idea! There are those standardized tests, and enormous sum of resources are invested in them… so why not use them for that end? Why not test performance of an individual student, conclude his/her level and decide what is needed for him/her? Why not have students’ score directly affected their path?

Here is another decision made by people who understand nothing about education and waste a good tool that could have made all the difference…

Instead, they mandate higher-level subjects without qualifying the level of success. Recently - Algebra II, a new requirement that is based on the mistaken notion that every graduating student is qualified and possesses the basic skills needed for it. How many students honestly earned their passing grade in Algebra I, and Geometry? But is it important? If no objective criterion proves students’ competence, why not mandate even calculus? As one colleague said - we will teach half of the Algebra I book in Algebra I, and the other half in Algebra II, Why not?

One size fits all! We are dropping the bar instead of raising students to the task, and students know it. Why should they put any effort to reach a bar if they know that it will be lowered for them, to match their very least common denominator…?

Ch 9 of 20: Technology

I don’t want to sound old fashion, even though I might be just that, but technology, sometimes, is just in the way of learning, at least in math, and especially in the lower grades where students are learning basic skills of calculation. If it was up to me, I would not propose calculators’ use until after algebra II. When students are presented with technology aids before they build a brain capacity to understand and figure out a way to solve a problem, their ability to think is cut short too early and their thinking process is being incapacitated.

Since the time I learned arithmetic, many “progressive” methods were introduced to the education system with, in my opinion, regretful results. Even before technology became so available and popular, a “new” method taught students to do the four basic arithmetic calculations using a digital, counting, method. Instead of developing a mental process of adding and subtracting, creating thus a brain picture for the meaning of these operations, they practice counting. While for my generation solving six plus seven was a mental process that we each developed in our mind (for me it was completing to ten and adding the leftover…), most students nowadays do all four arithmetic operations using their fingers; memorizing the multiplication table has become a big no-no, for some reason …

This digital (counting) method, by the way, is very successful with special needs students, and even children with severe disabilities are able to use it. The question is why teaching a method meant for less capable minds to perfectly capable brains. Why restrict students’ thinking process and thus limit their future ability to grasp more advanced concepts?

This incapacity manifests itself as soon as they start algebra, where abstract thinking skill is required. The list of subjects with which students struggle in algebra, as a result, is very long, starting with simple factoring. When they reach geometry, they are completely lost… They just don’t get it. Math and science teachers are continuously frustrated with their students’ inability to think beyond the very concrete, structured instructions.

My first full time teaching job was at a reputable high school, teaching math to students with special needs – mild to moderate. Being a brand new teacher, with very little experience, and not quite buying into the special education system, I didn't give in to the “can’t do” attitude of my SDC (Special Day Class) students. I demanded from them what I later demanded from all my general education classes.

At that class, one of my SDC students completely mastered multiplication and division. He was not one of the brighter students otherwise, so I was amazed and thankful for this ability. When I met his father, he explained to me that he insisted that his son memorizes the multiplication table. He told him that if he is capable of something as complicated as figuring out how to put together the sound system, plugging all the wires into the correct connections, he must be capable of learning something as simple as the multiplication table, and he made him learn it…

As a teacher, my misgiving of technology has to do with watching with dismay how students of middle and high school are incapable of doing essential math operation. When students as young as elementary learners are reaching for a calculator to solve simple addition and subtraction problems, and middle-schoolers depend on technology to solve easy multiplication and division problems, mastering a basic skill like long division becomes a rarity and uncomplicated fractions and decimals questions become mission impossible…

As an observer of the education organization I am half-amused half-angry (being a taxpayer) at the tremendous waste that goes into the technology craze.

Almost any type of technology is expensive, and has to fit into some budget strategy. Teachers who plan on using calculators, for example, should find a way to stock their classroom or have an access to the prized storage. At one school, I had to get rid of the entire math related supplies at the end of the school year because of an English teacher who requested that specific classroom. All the items that were accumulated there for many years of math teaching had to be removed. Going through the supplies, I could not believe my eyes, seeing all the riches hidden there. On top of endless piles of basic items, there were tens, if not hundreds, of scientific calculators, and almost as many graphing calculators, a treasure that would make any math teacher the happiest person on campus…

I stood there, dumbfounded, not knowing what to do with all this wealth. The administrators who could have stored and saved it had already left the campus and I ended up distributing priceless items to whoever was present and expressed slight interest. Since I was not sure I would be there next year, I didn’t save any for myself… The following years, still on the same campus, facing a shortage of supplies, especially calculators, I would remember with dismay the lost treasure... 

(By the way, this English teacher decided that she didn't like my room, after all, and caused another teacher, young, good and well organized, to go through the same classroom dismantling process… Three month into the school year, this English teacher left on maternity leave and never came back to the school…) 

Public schools receive technology budget and in most cases, the rule is “use it or lose it”. It was not an unusual situation, then, that in one school, while being on a tight budget for the very basic supplies (papers, pencils, markers and so on) a decision was made to install a smart board in each classroom…

I was in the middle of teaching a lesson, trying my best to convey an algebraic concept, using every square inch of the white board and encouraging students to copy, when a knock on the door disrupted my class. I opened the door to two guys, holding a huge smart board, informing me that they came to install it. “Now?” I asked with disbelief? “I am right in the middle of the lesson!” This information didn't seem to impress them much, and they marched directly toward my white board, with serious intentions to remove it right there and then and replace it with the smart board. Stepping forward, I was ready to physically block their way. Adding extra pleading mixed with threatening, I, somehow, convinced them to agree to come back at another time. The compromise was that for now they will just mark the location… So they drew a big black ‘X’ right in the middle of my algebra jargon, and happy with this achievement they did exit my classroom, leaving me still perplexed about the event that almost took place…

By the end of the semester almost every single classroom was equipped with a smart board, but, sadly, only very few were used… Five years later, working in many public and private schools since, I have never seen so many smart boards at any single school. The sad part is not only that most boards were not utilized, and that they replaced a necessary white board space, but that they used up an enormous amount of money that was desperately needed for basic supplies…

I have recently seen classrooms with rows of unused, dusty computers. A teacher told me she was assigned to a classroom full of computers that she needed for her course, but none of them was connected… Schools are stocked with hundreds of computers, only part of them are in a usable condition… but – there is a new idea now, fresh from the education politicians with the help of savvy business men – an iPad for every student! Another untested idea that until proven helpful or unhelpful to students, will cause a chaos in the classroom, add extreme stress on teachers and will cost millions of taxpayers’ dollars… 

Link:

http://tekbot.unl.edu/SPIRIT2/Articles/TPCKinMathArticle.pdf

Ch 8 of 20: School Size

Have you heard of “a Bank too big to fail”? How about “a School too big to succeed”? I bet you have never heard this one, yet it reflects a sad reality…

Schools became industrial monsters with a mission to input as many students as possible and output them as fast as possible; preferably never beyond four years… what happens in between is a black box…

How do schools do that? How do they enter thousands of students through their gates and make sure that they do not entangle on their way out four years later? Well, this is a very big, well-oiled, machine that uses a huge amount of resources. With years of practice and history of experience, the system runs, technically, quite smoothly, but on the way to efficiency, it forgets its exclusive purpose – educating young people; it loses its human factor. Who has time for that?

Deans of discipline have tens of students lining up in front of their office every single day. Counselors never have enough time to catch up, being responsible for programming hundreds of students and for other endless duties, while their real job, counseling, is at the bottom of the list due to lack of time.

And what about teachers? Teachers at a public school see, typically, two hundred students a day! Imagine, first, trying to learn names of two hundred kids, and this is without counting those who come and leave, especially at the beginning of the school year. A good way to handle it is creating seating charts. It really helps, but it takes a long time to create, and even longer to maintain …

One of my yearlong assignments was teaching algebra to 9^th graders, replacing a teacher who left for maternity leave. It was the beginning of the school year and I had a pretty good start. However, as soon as I created seating charts, a special education teacher came to tell me that they are re-arranging class assignment for their students, and thus, number of students from each class had been replaced with new students… Few days later an administrator said that due to a crowding situation they are moving students around to create a satellite campus… again certain number of students were removed and others joined… Less than a week passed when another teacher announced that he is switching some of his students with mine so that he can continue a program that he started during the summer… By that time I realized that all my good students were replaced with not so good students, my seating charts are worthless, and it is going to be tough. And it was…

Even at classes that do not change that dramatically, sometimes it takes almost a whole semester to master all 200 names. At one school, where I started mid-year, teaching math lab to students who failed algebra, I had a tougher than usual time putting names and faces together. It was a new school, new material, and new students’ population, where, to my inexperienced eyes, many of them looked alike… To make it more confusing, some first names were similar, and even worse – numerous last names were the same. It took me almost the whole semester to learn who is who… At last, when I thought that I had it all figured out, all of a sudden I realized that during third period, there is a student that I could swear I had already seen at first period. I didn’t give it much thought until the next day when I had that same déjà vu. When, at last, I decided to check it out I discovered, to my great embarrassment, that these students were identical twins…

The amount of work that goes into monitoring two hundred students is quite impossible. A weekly quiz of only 5-10 problems, one minute each to check, becomes more than three hours job, without rechecking any. Add few rechecks, several notes and, of course, recording grades, and you have spent well over five hours a week checking just one tiny quiz. What about a chapter test every few weeks, a semi-final or final test? How about a project? An assay? And of course it will be nice to be able to check homework assignments from time to time, just spot checking, only twice a week… It will be eight AFTER HOURS hours!

It might not be the right place to talk about preparation since teachers have to do lesson plans regardless of number of students. It is, however, the place to mention that a teacher is supposed to create three different lesson plans – one for average students, one for the special need students that are probably part of your class, and one for the high achievers who need extra challenge. I don’t know too many teachers who actually do that on a regular basis, but this is what a teacher is expected to do!!! …And if you are in a teaching credentialing program, or some other program to upgrade your qualifications, (and teachers are always in one program or another), you are sure to be required to obey this rule…

So how did the system make this impossible time-frame possible? One of the most genius inventions of the twentieth century was the multiple-choice tests and the beloved scantron.  The happy noise of the scantron machine grading your students’ finals can be only compared to the noise of a gambling machine pouring rain of coins when you hit the winning combination (and they don’t even have those anymore L). Listening to the scantron doing the work for you and thus saving you hours and hours of work is just as exciting as winning big! Real big!

Yes, it is such an efficient tool – yet, with so many deficiencies… We are losing to its effortlessness a big part of teaching and learning. Using it, teachers are unable to see where students are mistaken, what part of the learning needs re-enforcement, and do students know the material or just guess the answers. To make it worse - we created a whole system that trains students in being good at guessing the right answer; a whole industry for teaching students how to work around the need of actually understanding the material, how to fake a knowledge… We teach them how to be successful test takers, not successful learners…

Do you think that students don’t get the message? You bet they do! They learn early in their school life that the main goal is to ace the test. They don’t bother too much with the journey, then, they just want a shortcut to the results. By the time they are in high school they are accomplished test swindlers… Seconds after receiving the test form, they already figure out how many versions the test has, and who is their best copying resource. They have more ways of doing that than we can imagine, including using technology. We, the teachers, joke that if students were only half as resourceful learners as they are swindlers, they would be ‘A’ students. Yes, the system is smart about mass evaluation, but students outsmart the system.

One of my colleagues tried a way to control different test versions. Being a very well organized person, he created color-coded versions. This method might have worked for him, having excellent class control, but it didn’t work quite as well for me. As soon as the students realized what the colors meant, a secret trade started immediately. As naïve as I was I didn’t catch the trade on time, and was quite surprised to find a pink next to a pink and green next to a green. It was not until I saw an actual trade happening in front of my eyes that I realized what was going on… students were making sure they have the same color as their resource …

I tried to outsmart the students by numbering all the tests and secretly coding the version (even numbers, numbers ending with 5). I don’t know that it worked. I suspect that, somehow, they managed to break the code (never underestimate students) but one thing is sure, it didn’t help my reputation with students…

Additional, interesting, comment about copying - it always surprised me that some students would rather copy a test from someone, anyone, and not try themselves …

Another masses nightmare is communicating with parents. To shield teachers from the need to meet with all 200 parents, frequent report cards are mandated, 8 report cards a year!  If you are not a teacher you don’t know how much work it involves. Every single grade has to be well thought and well documented; it is a very time consuming process that has to be done every 5 weeks! Is it a good system? Better than nothing, but the problem is that it cannot replace the value of meeting with parents face to face. For one thing – some parents never see those report cards. Their students have a way of hiding them. Others do not know the whole picture or cannot use their authority to push the student in the right direction, and when at last they realize how poor their student’s performance is, in many cases it is too late…

Some schools use automated phone system to inform parents about students’ absence from school or class. Some schools use automated calls to inform about bad behavior or academic problems… And yes, it is better than nothing… but in order to really solve problems and keep students on track there should be a direct communication between teachers and parents. But with all good intentions, it is not realistic for a teacher to call periodically every student’s home, let alone schedule a10 minutes meeting with 200 hundred parents, because 200 appointments times 10 minutes each, equals 2000 minutes… over 30 hours of extra work…

Ch 7 of 20: Books

Remember those light weighted books that our parents would buy us at the beginning of the school year? Well, maybe what I remember from a different country, in a different era, does not apply to my generation’s experience in the US, but I am sure someone remembers, even here, a time when a textbook was just that – a text book. Not an artistic creation with colorful pictures and short sophisticated clips, but just a book with text. Don’t get me wrong – I am all for enrichment of the mind and the senses, and teaching with open horizons is more than just a good idea… but…

How many students do you know that are looking at those additions just because they find them interesting? We do; the teachers, the parents, the adults who are holding the textbooks, but most of the children do not. “So what?” you would say – “if only one in a hundred students looks at the enriching part then it is well worth it…” And you may be right. However, this enrichment comes with a price… each text book weighs more than an average person can hold for several minutes… if I need to move two or three books at a time I really have a problem – and I am a fit adult who is able to handle more stress than many teachers I know. “Well, students are younger and stronger” you may claim, and you may be right again, but what happened when they have to carry five or six books that are just as heavy? My daughter suffers from backaches for years now, since she was in middle school. Being the ‘A’ student that she is, she carried all her books back and forth, as she was told to do, in a backpack that was as heavy as her skinny early teens figure… I used to watch her with pain as she carried those torturous heavy books, and I would frantically call the middle school office begging them to delay the school bus departure for several minutes so that students would have enough time to get to their lockers and get rid of the weighty burden at the end of the day, but of course my appeal was never listened to.  Yet, as a parent, I was quite impressed by the quality and richness of the textbooks, and considered their weight as a trade-off. I changed my mind when I became a teacher…

I realized that no one of my students had ever read or paid any attention to the extra information. Few of them might have found some of the information mildly interesting if I read it to them, and even that slight interest happened only in the higher-level classes. I found the over-loaded information too confusing for the average student, the pages too busy, and the important information too hard to find. My favorite Algebra and Geometry textbooks were two simple books that were assigned to me when I was teaching special education class on my first year; basic, colorless small books, with the learned material simple, clear and easy to find. I used those books whenever I could do so without risking my career…

One of the hardest and least effective battle that I had to fight with my students was making them bring textbooks to class. It was just a losing game. Once you sent the books home with students, at the beginning of the school year, as you were supposed to do, most probably you would never see them until the end of the year (usually still brand new and untouched...) If you allowed students to leave their books in your classroom, most probably they will soon disappear, and not only that would not be used, but you, the teacher, will be blamed for their loss. Officially, teachers are not allowed to store students’ books in their classroom.

So… many schools came up with a solution – they offer a class set. Sounds like a great idea? (especially for the books’ publisher…)  Not so fast! These books are not assigned to a specific student since they are being used by all learners that take the same class, and thus they are subjected to neglect and abuse… I saw classroom books flying in the air toward unsuspecting student, being torn, left on the floor and stepped on, being transported to random locations at the school grounds, and most of all – being an open space for graffiti, innocent in the better case, but quite often inappropriate and vulgar.      

Different teachers have different solutions for the books dilemma. One of my colleagues, whose classroom was next to mine, a tough guy who was also a respected coach, did not give in to the books situation. He did not agree to have a class set and demanded that students bring their own textbooks. Students that came empty-handed had to stay standing up for the entire period… It took me a while to figure out why some of his students would come to my classroom and ask to borrow an algebra book, with a solemn promise to bring it back (and they did). But, when more and more students showed up with the same request … I, at last, asked him what was going on and found out what the reason was…

Other teachers’ answer to this impossible situation is not using textbooks at all – they use only worksheets… Imagine the expense that results. Not only that the school spends hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars on textbooks (and they are mandated by the district!) it wastes many additional thousands of dollars on duplications. Most of those papers are just for a one time use and being tossed (or become flying objects) very soon afterwards. And the worst part of using worksheets is not even the waste, but its poor value as learning materials. Students get into a bad habit of just plugging in an answer in the “fill in the blank” area (makes the job of copying real easy...). I was shocked to discover, when teaching Algebra II to eleventh graders, that doing homework means for them just writing the answers on a piece of paper, without even copying the problems (and in most cases just copying the solution from the back of the book…)

So how did we get ourselves in such an impossible book situation? The answer is, unfortunately, quite common in the education business – money! Someone is making money, a lot of money, out of those textbooks. Think about a large school district that enforces a certain textbook on all students in its domain. Each of these hard covered, heavy with hundreds of pages, books, cost the district many tens, if not hundreds, of dollars. How can the publisher charge so much for its product? By padding it with very many un-necessary colorful pages so it can justify the price. This is not a new trick by any means. Restaurants, for example, give us enormous and unreasonable amount of food just so that they can charge us a lot more…

Of course, this is not the only way to get the district pay unbelievable amount of money for textbooks… Every so often, the school district is committed to buy a new edition of the same books… well, hard covered books don’t get destroyed very easily so there must be another way to move and re-vitalize the book business -  new edition... They do that also to the colleges and universities textbooks, although probably not with as much revenue as in the K-12 industry.

So, here we are again… Teachers (and students) pay the price for a system that is completely ignoring their needs. Books that are impractical for use by teachers and don’t fit the needs of students. A situation where teachers are scrambling to find a way around the system to supply their students with what they really need. And in doing so, not only they, quite often, use their own money to supplement a budget of millions of dollars used inefficiently, but they are also prevented from doing what they really want to do – teach efficiently…

Ch 6 of 20: Discipline

From: Cubs Pre-School

Picture going to a lecture on your favorite subject, on a topic that you are anxious to learn about. What are the chances that you will comprehend and learn from it if the people who are sitting around you are constantly talking? What if right in the middle of the most interesting part of the lecture your friend at the other end of the hall calls for your attention to something she wears or a good piece of gossip. What part of the interesting lecture would you understand, or even hear?

And, what if this lecture is not that interesting to you? You need to take it in order to qualify for something, but it is not really your favorite subject? What are the chances that you learn anything from it at all?

This is the situation that teachers face every single day in their classroom, when trying to compete for students’ attention… Imagine a history teacher trying to teach about the French Revolution, not a bad subject at all, and can be interesting even to a non-history enthusiasts… But can the history teacher win the attention of a fourteen, or even eighteen years old student who listens to a real juicy piece of news about a classmate, a friend or a teacher? No way!

Now… think about a teacher trying to teach not history – French Revolution, but math… geometry, for example, a mandatory subject for all students…

You would say, it is the responsibility of the teachers to keep the class quiet and make sure the students’ attention is focused on the lesson, and teachers who are unable to do so are “ineffective teachers”. Really!

Well, how exactly does the teacher supposed to do just that – keep the class quiet and focused? In an upper middle class, sub urban areas, there is some leverage for a teacher. He/she may ask students to stay after class or after school and talk to them, appealing to their reasoning. If it does not help he/she may call students’ parents, and if not enough invite them for a meeting. Teachers may assign students extra work, and of course can always use the mighty threat of report card grade. If none of the above helps – the last resort may be used - referrals to an administrator or dean of discipline. Teachers do not like to use that as it reflects right back at them, perceived as not being in control, but it is an option...

But…What are the tools for a teacher who teaches in less favorable areas – in a lower socioeconomic or inner city areas, where many students don’t respond to the usual measures, and a bad grade is not a threat.

I can’t even count the number of times when I asked students to stay after class or come after school and they just did not show up.

So, I would try the next step, contacting the parents. Often I would not be able to reach them because contact phone had been disconnected, or, family had been relocated…  If reached, parents would usually be supportive; however, chances are that they are struggling with basic life’s necessities, working several different jobs, trying to feed kids and elders. They do want to help but many times are unable, and sadly, sometimes, they have little or no influence on their kids…

Teacher’s choices, then, are very limited, and they have to use their last resort - appealing to the help of the school administrators or deans, and thus pay the dreaded price of being labeled by them as “ineffective teacher”, because the other option is even worse – being labeled by the… students as “ineffective teacher”…

When I happily graduated from the teaching credentials program, I knew it is not going to be easy, but no one prepared us, the future teachers, for the ruthlessness of some students, or told us how exposed and helpless teacher really are. It is not that students are necessarily bad or mean; it is just that they know exactly how far they can go without being panelized. They completely understand that the system is a hundred percent behind them while their teachers are practically defenseless.

I used to be very resentful toward the deans of discipline, feeling that they don’t help enough, until I heard, unofficially, a dean speaking his mind and telling how helpless he is when it comes to strict measures of discipline. He was describing situations where students caused so many problems and yet he was just unable to expel them. Every time he did, they would, somehow, be back at school… This was when I realized that the system’s incompetence is far deeper than I thought…

You see, discipline is not only an obedience problem, it is an academic problem! If a teacher tells a student to bring a notebook and a pencil, to open a book or to copy from the board, and he refuses to do so just because he is not interested, this is not a disciplinary problem anymore, but an academic issue that its implication goes far beyond one individual. It influences every person in that learning environment.

Yes, some students, maybe ten percent of the classroom population, will always be able to learn. Some students, maybe another ten percent, will never learn (at least not for now), but what about the other eighty percent?

I am not exaggerating when I say that we lose eighty percent of our students’ population every single day, every semester and every school year, to the disturbance of ten, maybe less, percent of the students. The major part of a classroom population is missing its chance to learn because they are taken hostages by a small number of students whose sole purpose is to divert others’ concentration from the learning, and become the center of attention…

I saw an example of a creative solution in one school, at a satellite campus, where teachers and administrators, enjoying some independence, dealt with the problem in an innovative way. On the second semester of the school year they decided to get rid of the disturbance and removed the failing students (those who failed algebra on the first semester) from their regular program and created a new class for them. Their goal was to give the algebra teachers a chance to progress without the constant interruption, and thus give their full attention to the motivated students. I was assigned to teach the failing students. Not surprisingly, it worked great for the regular teachers. They were able to teach, at last, and kept thanking me for talking the problem students. The real surprise, though, was that it worked well for me, and my students, too. I was not pressured to move in a certain pace and thus was able to go back to basics and concentrate on subjects with which students were struggling. As tough crowd as they were, it actually worked quite fine, and at the end of the semesters students came to me and said that now they are able to understand concepts that they had never understood before. Unfortunately, the program was cancelled once the satellite campus returned to the main campus, and creativity gave way to rules and regulations…

We must realize that discipline is the main obstacle in the way to a better education structure, and that teacher’s “shortcoming” is a direct result of the system’s shortcoming …

I challenge all politicians and “education specialists” to step into one of those schools in an unprivileged areas, where administrators and teachers are losing sleep over students achievements, and to spend only one month there as classroom teachers… Of course, a whole semester would be much better. Few days or even a week, are not enough time to be part of the effort…I want them to experience what teachers are facing every day. To see how a small number of teenagers are holding hostage the learning experience, and how highly educated adults turn blind eye toward the real problem. I want them to feel the frustration of teachers, the essence of education, as the system turns its back to them…

From: Cubs Pre-school