EdObserver

Teachers and administrator love to use the expression “Let’s think-out-of-the-box.” The solution is usually not very far from the box. As in, we don’t have enough money to fund the astronomy club’s field trip, why don’t we have a bake sale? Or eight of my 23 students are failing, why not come up with an extra credit project? When there are some serious changes to be made, it is usually back in-the-box, business as usual.

We are completely renovating our high school. It is a $40 million project. The science department goes first. Our science rooms are pretty disgraceful, but it is much more an equipment problem than a physical plant problem. In the chemistry labs the cabinets are never cleaned, damaged equipment is not replaced, and there is not sufficient equipment for each lab station. And even though we have 90-minute block classes, there never seems to be enough time for the students to clean the equipment, so beakers and test tubes are always left a little funky. It does make for some fun comments when the students record their observations and lab station #3 has a test tube with a solution that turns bright pink, not milky white.

There is one problem with the physical plant: there are more science teachers than science classrooms. The newest teachers, in our case three of them, have no classrooms of their own. They are given a desk in a common working area, usually the space that has the department’s copier/printer, refrigerator and microwave. They are also given a cart to wheel their laptop, plans, and handouts from room to room. When they use another teacher’s room, they often have to use the desk, move papers, check for missing keys etc. And they can’t set up a lab in advance, so they have to take class time to do the set-ups.

And our chemistry labs are located in the back of a regular classroom. There are 28 desks jammed into the open space, almost touching the first lab stations. You can barely walk through the room. It lacks a professionalism that might encourage a respect for the subject.

But we only have four block periods a day. Each teacher has one block for prep and planning. So every block, one quarter of the science classrooms are empty, free of students. Is there any way we could put this empty space to use? Certainly at our school no one thought out-of-the-box to alleviate the pains.

Let’s think this through.

How about a full classroom space assigned for every six teachers, with desks, and bookshelves, a real phone, a work table and a place to hang their coats, or whatever? How about shared, dedicated lab rooms (They are never used more than twice a week.), with room for equipment, room to move around, and room to put the eyewash station in the same room as the students not in the supply room through a door which is not easily reached because there are 28 desks between it and the lab stations? Maybe the existing space could be completely renovated, made modern, well-equipped.

We’re building a new wing. Thinking-out-of-the-box in today’s schools more often than not, involves building a new box!

In these times, someone had better think-out-of-the-box when it comes time to pay for it.

I am assigned to a low level geometry class with a first year teacher who is first rate. I was in one of her Algebra II classes last semester. She knows her subject and maybe because her mother is an elementary school teacher, she handles her classes “old school.”  She gives the kids the respect of teaching a “real” lesson, and then assigns class work that she monitors, and helps them with, teaching the material the entire time. Homework is done at home, is collected and recorded. And she expects the students to treat her classroom as a place of business, with work accomplished and behavior respectful.

With today’s students, she sometimes doesn’t succeed. She may be the best young teacher I have ever seen. She is not tenured and at the end of this year, though she will  be offered a contract in this district, she will not have a position in our high school. That is our loss.

Our loss, too, is a tenured math teacher we will never be rid of. In a chemistry class, a student was studying for a math quiz. When asked who she “had”, the student answered Ms. B. Every eye in the room, rolled – rolled to the back of each student’s head. To a person, everyone agreed, “She is the worst.” Apparently she: doesn’t teach a lesson, can’t answer questions, lets the class get out of control, and cries at her desk when things really sour. She should not be teaching. She is not good at it. She is tenured. She has worked at this school for more than five years. She will never be fired unless she abuses a child or parent physically, sexually or perhaps, emotionally. She cannot be fired for being an incompetent teacher, even if the whole world agrees.

We have just finished three rounds of our state’s assessment tests, and there is one more to go. It is, as I have discussed previously, made as tedious as possible for the entire school. Then it is discussed endlessly, always concluding that they are worthless because they do nothing but encourage the dreaded “teaching to the test.” This is a term, a warning really, that I believe was coined by the teachers’ union to offer an argument against standardized testing.

Without standardized tests we do not have any real measure of what a student in a public school has learned. It is therefore imperative that the educational community encourages parents to think that these tests are invalid. Most parents have bought the argument. Start a discussion of the state of education in America, mention standardized tests, count to three, and some parent will tell you that they only encourage “teaching to the test.” Then look around and see how many heads are bobbing in agreement. The problem is really the reverse: what we thought was important to test was not taught. Our test scores reflect this. The problem with the testing is the lack of curriculum that supports the knowledge we test.

The tests aren’t perfect, neither is the teaching.

Do you think all eleventh-graders should be able to solve a simple algebra equation, that many should be able to recognize and plot simple linear equations, and that some should know about quadratic equations and the graphs that go along with them? Then put that in a test and see how many students have been taught those concepts. If I successfully teach a student these concepts, did I impart the knowledge we value or did I just teach to the test? And if I taught the knowledge we value, why are the kids not passing the test?

We don’t use textbooks very much in our high school. I don’t know why. Teachers don’t like to talk about it. Maybe some of them think that they are outdated, or too politically correct, or too restricting. It doesn’t matter what the reasons are; we don’t use them.

In some classes, they aren’t even assigned. In others they are given out, with instructions to take them home and leave them there, because there are classroom copies that will be used. Or the students are told to leave them in their lockers, waiting for the few times that they will be told to bring them to class. In any case, I have been in no class, in this school, where students have been required to bring a textbook to class regularly. The lessons are never coordinated to the assigned textbook.
This is almost always the case in math and science, where it can create a big problem. It’s a problem for any student who would like to read ahead and come in prepared for the next day’s class, or a student who left class thinking he knew the lesson later to realize that he is still a bit confused, or a student who was absent and would like to read about the missed lesson in detail. It also hurts the parents who would like to see what their child is learning, possibly hoping to help. This last one is important because if parents can’t help, they lose a little bit of the connection between their child and the child’s education.

The textbooks are awful.

I have my own objections to today’s math texts. Our daughter was probably among the last students to use math texts (without four-color pictures that have nothing to do with the math process) which stepped you through the lesson. When she missed a geometry lesson on angles, I couldn’t remember all of the rules. But once you see an illustration of parallel lines with a transverse line and corresponding angles clearly labeled, you can come around pretty quickly. I’ve even helped Kathy with some topics I wasn’t familiar with, just by reading the textbook.

Look at the most recent math texts to see what I am talking about. They begin with applications, and then introduce the math process. There are four-color pictures of mathematicians, or track and field performances. There is sometimes a little PC philosophy tagged on: “Women in Science” (Their numbers are increasing.) or “the future with global warming” (If the temperature rises 0.01% every year… )  In the two districts in which I have worked, no math class has used a text, though both have recently purchased new texts for every grade level. By the way, there’s still a text for every student and they cost $75 – $100 each.

I went to school in a different time, but it sometimes seems like a different planet. For one thing, there was homework almost every night, even on weekends. And though teachers sometimes checked to see if you had done the assignment, if it wasn’t a long-term project, it was never graded. In other words, while you might get a demerit for failing to do it, you didn’t really get credit for doing it. Homework was practice. Learn a new lesson; reinforce the lesson with homework as practice .

I was not a perfect student. I should have spent more time studying every night instead of cramming before tests. But I almost always did my homework. I once got caught with a missing assignment only 30 seconds before the principal announced that President Kennedy had been shot. Everyone remembers what he or she was doing when they heard the news. I was getting a zero for not completing my homework.

Today, homework counts. In most classes it accounts for 10% of a student’s grade. It is usually not a letter grade; some cruder, more flexible grading system is used. Some teachers will evaluate each assignment on a five-point scale, or they will use “√ +, √, and √ ─.” This system lets a teacher assign a weighted grade at the end of a marking period that might more fairly reflect the student’s homework participation.

It doesn’t matter. For the “at risk” students, homework is a waste of time and they just won’t do it. Just doing it will give the student a score of 100% for 10% of your grade. It doesn’t even have to be done correctly, or completely. It doesn’t even have to be done at home.

In most classes, homework is merely the completion of the class work, worksheet or problems, which you didn’t finish in class – usually because you were talking, or texting a friend on your cell phone held under your desk. There seems to be an unwritten code of honor, in a group with an unofficial membership, and a slogan that says “We don’t do homework. No we don’t!”

I deal daily with the type of student that’s referred to in the education community as “at risk” whether they have an IEP (Individual Education Plan) or not. The “at risk” students are most frequently categorized by the baggage they come to school with: broken homes, busy or uncaring parents, peer pressure, learning disabilities, social and psychological difficulties. But a bigger problem is what they come to school without.

It doesn’t matter what their socio-economic condition is; I have had kids who lived in low-income units, students from trailer parks and students from near million dollar subdivisions. They all come without pencils or pens, without paper or notebooks, and without their homework.

My previous high school of 1600 students used one million pieces of paper in the 2006-07 school-year. The assistant principal responsible for purchases noticed that the number of reams had increased steadily and she did the math. This includes plain white printer/copier paper, colored paper, and composition or lined paper. This is usually unpunched but it replaces the loose leaf paper that some kids still bring to school, but every kid brought to school in the old days.

The paper sits in a tray in the front of almost every class room. It may sit in a tray in the library. It is not in the larger spaces where kids have study halls, such as the cafeteria or in our case, the auditorium balcony. That may explain why you can enter most study hall spaces and see no one working. Or maybe it’s that in the large spaces they don’t have a teacher to borrow a pencil from.

The Derby Begins…

The level of class that includes a goodly number of the “at risk” never starts before a timeout for what I call the “writing stick derby.” Here’s how it goes: 1) Student who never has a pen or pencil asks the teacher for one. 2) If teacher has chosen to participate in the derby, he or she keeps a clear shoebox of pencils to lend. By the way, they are often not returned and by the end of the week there may be none left in the box. 3) If teacher has tired of buying pencils by the gross, he may lend one, if the student gives up something of value – a shoe, a cell phone, an iPod. The negotiation takes precious minutes from class time. 4) If the teacher is a non-participant in the derby, the student asks his best friend, who may be tired of buying pencils that are never returned, or may not have a pencil of his own. 5) Failing with BFF the student tries an acquaintance. No luck? 6) Student goes right for the class’ most serious student (who always comes prepared.)

When I worked in a middle school, our team of 125 students sold pencils as a fund-raiser; they didn’t sell. So we sold them at cost, as a convenience. Not only did they not sell well, but more often than not, when a student came back into class with a new pencil, a friend —yes, friend—would grab it and snap it in two.

Round two of the derby is when the riskiest students ask in every class, every day, where the paper is. I will talk about homework in my next post.

Back in the late 60’s when Miss Austerlitz told us we were never to use that term in her classroom again, she meant the expression, “Shut up.” It was rude, and unacceptable in her math class, in any class. We couldn’t chew gum either. Any time a kid was singled out and scolded, the worst that happened would be a few choice words under his breath – way under his breath. Maybe the kid in the next desk would hear that Miss Austerlitz was a fat windbag, but no one else. Certainly it was never loud enough for Miss A. to hear.

I thought of Miss A. the other day when one of the students in my math class told another kid to “f*** off.” When confronted by the young math teacher, he said “What the f***’s the matter? He made me mad!” Even Miss Austerlitz would have been happy to hear him just say “Shut up.” This was followed by the teacher taking the student out into the hall, having the student walk away, and the teacher finally “writing-him-up” This happens in many classes, two or three times a week.

Sometimes it’s just banter -no anger- just the language of the streets as it was called, student to student, in the classroom. When told to stop, the conversation inevitably turns into a discussion of whether the language is in fact unacceptable.

A little drama in the math class

Student: “Don’t ask me if I would talk to my mother like that, that’s how she talks to me!”

Teacher: “I don’t care what language you use at home, you will not use that language in my class.”

The rest of the students talk among themselves, sometimes discussing whether the teacher over reacted, or they remain enthralled, plugged in to an iPod. In the mean time no one is doing math, or social studies or English. The student gets “written-up.” The student gets a detention, doesn’t miss the bus because he drives to school, and starts over the next day. When we have no rules of behavior with no real punishments assigned, the problems are never solved. More classes get disrupted. More teachers are demeaned. More kids lose interest.

Why don’t teachers demand more of the administration? Why doesn’t the administration demand more of the parents? Why don’t the parents demand more of their kids?

Six years ago when high school students started having cell phones in great numbers, and everyone had a CD player, the school I worked for banned their use during the school day. Four years ago when almost every kid had an iPod, or wanted one, the PTA and the engineering club each ran a fund-raising raffle with an iPod prize. The ban was rescinded and each teacher set the rules for his or her classroom. The English department tried to ban them in all of its classes, but it didn’t work and they too let every teacher decide on their own.

Cell phones were even more problematic. They were expensive; so how to confiscate them and not become liable or be charged with invasion of privacy. And parents argued that they needed to be in touch with their kids, what with work schedules (theirs and their children’s) and all. So the administration allowed their use up until the morning bell, the first ten minutes of lunch — only outside the caf’ — and right after the afternoon bell.

Turning a deaf ear

Both the  iPods and the cell phones became an increasing annoyance to many teachers. How many times can you ask a student to respond, only to find that he or she hasn’t heard a word because they were “plugged-in?” Text messaging on cell phones contributed to even more problems. Up to one-quarter of a class might possibly have their hands under their desks, texting furiously. In one of my classes, two girls were actually texting each other across the room.

Class after class, the teachers had to remind students to take out their ear buds; a lesson was about to start. The kids would only take out one. Then you can’t tell if they are listening or not; they must be questioned; the class is disrupted; and we do this up to three or four times per class. Cell phones under the desk are just as common. Any break in the classroom action and the cells come out, and mad texting begins. If you’ve never seen it, I don’t think you can believe it.

When the school finally banned cell phones—the penalty was immediate confiscation— with parents receiving phone calls to come and retrieve them. The outcry was deafening. Not only were the parents unable to reach their children during the day, but it was unreasonable to think that a parent had the time to come to school over so minor an infraction. So the ban was lifted during lunch, in the cafeteria.

Think about this. If a student were eating lunch with a friend, there would be no need to text. If  students were texting someone not eating with them, it was probably a friend who was sitting in a class. It is insane.

In my current school, in any given class, seventy -five percent of the kids are plugged-in at some time. Wires hang down from everyone’s ears. iPods are constantly being dropped, or being adjusted. More kids come to school with iPods than come to school with pencils or pens. I am serious.

We had a math test today. Eighteen students. Only one girl took the test without music in her ears. Six students had neither pencil nor pen; one took the test with a pen, which cost him two points on his overall score. Some educators even argue that the music helps some students to concentrate. I wish I had something to say. I don’t.

It was a four day week this week because Monday was Presidents Day. My only comment is to repeat something I heard one of the juniors say last Friday: (The teacher iterated the upcoming schedule of lessons, noting that the next class was Tuesday), “That’s right it’s a four-day week. I hate them; there’re always so long!”    Amen.

Some thoughts about a new technology that seems to sweeping the public schools — interactive white boards (IWBs). These are digital, touch-screen, projection systems that are replacing blackboards and “dumb” whiteboards, as well as the overhead projectors that are popular in every classroom. There are a number of brands, sizes, features and software, but they are all similar.

A teacher prepares a lesson on a laptop computer which interfaces with a projector which projects the document, pictures, videos or interactive presentations on to the white board. A digital pen allows you to write on, erase and manipulate the contents of the page. There is the potential for a fully integrated lesson for every class. And they can be used merely to write on, in real time, in multicolored script for emphasis.

We put them in our school this year, covering the primary blackboard in the classroom, so teachers would be forced to use them. Math classes were first, science second, and the teachers seemed to like them. The kids didn’t; which seemed odd. Give them a new cell phone and they program and customize it in an hour and talk about it with all their friends; but this was different. They had no time to fool around with the smart board, or customize it, or get proficient with it. And when high-schoolers go up to the front of the classroom to put problems on the board, they don’t want to find that they can’t erase a mistake, or their writing looks hideous in purple, and most of them rejected the use of the smart boards outright. Most of them have come around after one semester.

I expect that will be the case with our English and Social Studies teachers who have been dragged kicking and screaming into the second phase of installations. One of whom was so opposed to mandatory installation (covering the primary blackboard) that she turned all the desks around to face the small secondary board in the room. Sure enough, the installers were tricked into installing the gizmo over that blackboard. Yesterday I passed her room and she was giving a totally integrated lesson, including a video, projected on to the new IWB.

Once the decision was made to buy this new technology, which requires a laptop computer, a ceiling mounted projector and the white board (at a cost between $3,000 and $6000); it was essential to require their installation as the primary classroom board. It is also essential that the school offer the training necessary for teachers to become proficient, feel comfortable, and use as much of the system’s capabilities as possible. Then we can start assessing whether our technology dollars were well spent and whether teachers really want to participate in a new world of education.

Tom Hopper, a social studies teacher at Chippewa Middle School in Okemos, MI who is proficient in the use of a smart board, demonstrates how an interactive whiteboard works.