Why Testing Is Important

 

Why Testing Is Important

By Jill Jenkins

When a mechanic repairs an engine, he first tests the various systems and focuses his repairs on the systems that aren’t functioning.  The purpose of the test is to make the car operate to optimum capacity.  He doesn’t berate the car for needing repair. (Unless he is my father who once beat an old jalopy with a hammer for not working, rather counterproductive.) Similarly tests in school should help improve student learning because they give the student a clear view of which material needs to studied; they help teachers have a better understanding of which material they need to approach in a different manner; and they give school administrators and districts an opportunity to identify effective teachers and ineffective teachers and use the stronger teachers to enhance the teaching of those weaker. 

Test to Grow

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts”

Winston Churchill

Students should be taught how to use the data from their tests to identify areas of weakness in their learning and be given additional learning opportunities using different methodology to improve their understanding of the material they did not master.  Students learn at different time lines and in different ways. When the student completes the additional study on the material, he/she should be given another assessment to show mastery.  Unfortunately like my father some use test results to determine the worth of the child which can lead to test anxiety or cheating.  Learning is a process and the student needs to understand that not all the flowers bloom at once.  Communicating disapproval of the student based on tests results is like beating your jalopy with a hammer. It is counterproductive.  Students need to be encouraged to take the steps necessary to master the skills and try another assessment. 

 

Test to Develop

“Failure is success in progress.”

Albert Einstein

Assessments of every kind are important teaching tools for educators.  Identifying specific areas of instruction that are successful and identifying specific areas of instruction that are not successful can help teachers identify which methodologies are reaching more students and which students need an alternative methodology to be successful.  Continually self-evaluating instruction can greatly improve student performance.  Teachers need to be exposed to a variety of new and different instruction methods to be effective.  The last thing schools need are teachers so tied to a teaching unit that they laminate and use it for decades after its effectiveness has waned.

 

Test to Adapt

“If you are afraid of failure, you don’t deserve to be successful.”

Charles Barkley

School administrators and districts need to use assessment data to identify teachers who are strong and teachers who are struggling.  Strong teachers can share successful teaching strategies with weaker teachers.  Teachers with poor testing performance should be given an opportunity to improve their teaching methods, but if they refuse to improve, they need to shown the door.  There is nothing more pathetic than a weak teacher being allowed to discourage the development of hundreds of students for decades.

 

Tests are important tools for improving learning and instruction if they are used as tools and not punishments.  However, tests need  to be carefully developed so they evaluate what has been taught and show no basis in their word choice.  A carefully worded and well-crafted test is essential. Learning is journey, not a destination. 

 

Should I Stay or Should I Go

 

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

By Jill Jenkins

Many schools across the United State face teacher shortages.  Why are so many teachers leaving the profession or like the musical group Clash sang wondering, “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”  It’s not hard to imagine that teachers mentally and physically exhausted from teaching both virtually and in-person classes simultaneously during the pandemic now facing over-crowded classrooms and traumatized children who might have lost a love one to COVID or terrified from the recent images of school shootings might want to seek alternative forms of employment.  After all teaching has never been a lucrative career and now being confronted by angry demanding parents organized by the extreme right to attack curriculum, books, libraries and educators might find it simpler to find a new career. Their guerrilla tactics might be an attempt to intimidate educators to make it easier to privatize schools and hire only like-minded friends?  Who knows?  The results, however, is many teachers, especially special education teachers are not renewing their contracts. 

 

Teaching has never been a lucrative career.  During my years in the classroom, I remember teachers begging the water department to give them a little more time on a bill or hurrying off to a second job with a briefcase full of papers to correct.  I remember one teacher who managed a movie theater at night and as he left the theater one weekend night, he was held up at gun point and his briefcase full of science tests was taken.  Boy, was the criminal in for a surprise.  Shortages in education started a long time ago.  First, the district couldn’t find substitutes willing to work for so little.  Some districts lowered their standards until some of us joked that they will be picking up homeless people with “Will Work for Food” signs and offering them school lunch.  Some districts offered teachers $10.00 to cover classes during their preparation period.  It wasn’t really an offer, because I offered the secretary $10.00 if I didn’t have to cover another class.  She didn’t find it funny.  As the district had more difficulty finding teachers, most of us had to give up our preparation period and teach seven classes anyway.  Seven straight classes of students with no consultation period or breaks led to more burn out and increased the problem.  Should we be surprised that when we burdened teacher with preparing and presenting both on-line teaching and in-person teaching while risking their lives with possible exposure to COVID that they might conclude that “there are some things that not even a pig will do.”

Then, there is the problem of the parents.  Trust me there have always been parent who complained: “I don’t want my son reading Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist because a woman is violently murdered in it;” I don’t want my daughter reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, because it makes White people look bad;” I don’t want my son reading Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame because there is too much sexual innuendo;” or “I don’t want my son to read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 because the language is horrible.” (That one I had to review the text to find the word “bastard”.)  Today, however, the parents are organized and they are coming to enforce a list created by far-right political groups to classrooms, PTA meetings  and school board meetings and they aren’t just concerned about their son or daughter.  They want their demands to be leveled against every student.  In the past some school districts distracted these complaints by organizing committees comprised of teachers, administrators and parents to approve lists of books appropriate to be “taught” at each grade level.  The committees served two purposes: first, they kept teachers from pilfering books from other grade levels; second, they kept parents happy because if they objected to what the teacher had selected, they understood it had been reviewed and if it was still inappropriate in their view, they could select another book from the list to assign to their child only.  In all my decades of teaching only one parent made such a selection because she felt J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit had too much magic for her religious beliefs. This approach might still work if the administration held strong.  Unfortunately, these parents want their demands met not just for their child and not just for book in the classroom, but want to control what is available in the library and want to control what all students read.   Frankly, if they want that much control, they should pull their kids out of public school and either home school them or send them to a private school.

 

What’s the solution? President Lyndon Johnson faced similar shortages in the ‘60’s and he offered to forgive educational loans for those who taught in low-income schools.  Since many teachers find it had to pay back student loans on a teachers’ salary, forgive all student loans for anyone who teaches five years in a public school.   Furthermore, district should offer more perks like free health insurance and a good retirement to teachers like they did 40 years ago.   Society should be celebrating what teachers do in the classroom instead of weaponizing parents to destroy public education.  Benjamin Franklin’s idea of free, public education was a great idea then, and it is still a great idea.  Celebrate our amazing teachers.

Keeping the Fox Out of the Chicken Coop: School Safety

by Jill Jenkins 

 "An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure" Benjamin Franklin

    My maternal grandmother owned a chicken farm (a chicken ranch in today's vernacular), but this was the depression and the eggs fed her large family and were used to barter for other food helping to supplement or husband's income as a glazier for Bennet's Glass and Paint.  Foxes could decimate a coop of chickens. They would bite off the heads of all the chickens burying those they couldn't carry back to their large litter of kits. To protect her chickens my grandmother used multiple layers of protection: an sturdy  outside fence protected the chicken's yard, a sturdy coop where the chickens were locked in the night, and two guard dogs.  First, she had a sturdy outside fence made from heavy steel chicken wire that foxes could not gnaw through. Second, the fencing was buried three feet underground so foxes couldn't burrow under it.  Third, the chickens were housed during the night in a locked coop made of heavy wood and strong chicken wire set atop of a thick pad of cement.  Finally the chickens were protected by two trained guard dogs: Chin, a Chow and Birdie, a Labrador Retriever. Students in schools need to be protected by multiple layers of protection. Educators have no power over legislation or police departments, but can prvide the same kind of protection my grandmother did for her chickens

.

Fencing the Perimeter

    Like the chicken coop, the perimeter of the school should be fenced. Obviously, the school doesn't need to bury the fence underground, but the fencing should be sturdy and tall enough that a teenager couldn't hop the fence as he recently did in Texas.  Security cameras are a must.  A combination of supervising teachers and aides with cameras surrounded by a high fence should ensure the safety of elementary students during recess and keep violent visitors with drugs and weapons from entering high schools and middle schools.  

The Chicken Coop: The Building

    Schools vary greatly depending on the level: elementary, middle or high school or the decade in which they were built.  In the late 1800's  to the early 1900's were built in multi-levels with many entrances and lots of windows.  In the middle of the 1900's they had less levels, but still lots of windows and entrances.  In the 1980's many schools were built as pods with the offices in the center of the school and groups of four classrooms separated by thin walls, moveable walls or a curtain.  Many of these rooms had interior doors for teachers to move within the pod easily.  The building had few or no windows; however,with the office centrally located, visitors had to pass half of the classrooms to reach the office putting those classrooms in peril if there was an intruder.  To create a safe barrier to protect students in any of these designs is going to difficult and costly. 

• One Entrance for Visitors

    Schools regardless of their design need to create one entrance for visitors that is isolated from the classroom and manned with an armed resource officer who verifies the validity of the visitors need to visit the school and makes certain the individual is not carrying any lethal weapons.  The officer provides a visitors pass after the individual signs in and states his/her reason for visiting.  

• Doors

    All doors need to be spring loaded so they automatically close when released and all doors exterior and interior should be locked during school hours.  Doors should be electronically locked and all faculty and staff should be given picture identification cards containing an electronic key to open the door when needed.  

• Hallways

    The hallways and the doors should be monitored with security cameras with an assigned armed resource officer in the command center monitoring all of the camera locations at all times.  He should have radio access to a third armed resource officer who who monitors the halls and/or the outside police department as the incident demands. 

• Emergency Button and Radios

    Staff members and faculty should wear radios with emergency buttons on their persons either on their wrist or around their necks.  In some school that I have taught in emergency buttons were installed on the walls, but teachers move around their classroom when they teach, or they take their classes to other locations on campus making the button useless.  Furthermore, if an intruder to enter the classroom. the teacher couldn't sprint across the classroom to push the button without being noticed.  The radios should connect the teacher to the security office command center where she gets immediate help instead of a secretary who answers when she has time. 

The Guard Dogs: Personnel

    Just like Chin and Birdie, the guard dogs at my grandmother's chicken coop, the staff should be properly trained on a regular basis.  Everyone from janitors, aides, cafeteria workers, teachers, counselors, and administrators should participate in training on a regular basis.  Most importantly is "buy In" so the administration needs to "sell" it to the staff.  Some eager beavers will follow the procedures enthusiastically and to the letter of law.  The administration does not need worry about this group.  A second group will complain or refuse to comply.  The administrators need to use both the carrot and whip with this group.  Since the lives of both students and teachers are at stake it is important that these teachers learn the importance and comply or maybe they don't belong in education.  The third group is the most dangerous. They are the staff who say "yes" but when the cards are on the table they do whatever they want.  They are difficult to identify, but take a look at other activities they have given lip service to and let them know that there are consequences for not  complying and be sure to follow through with those consequences.  

The Chickens: The Students    

    If you have ever lived next to a chicken coop you know chickens are noisy. If you have ever lived next to a school, you know children are noisy.  Both are even louder when they are frightened.  Therefore, it is imperative to to trains students how to shelter silently in place.  Their lives depend on it. They need to be able to identify and report potential danger that they observe in the school or on social media.  Creating an environment that is both comfortable and safe so student feel safe confiding in teachers, counselors, administrators and resource officers is paramount.  However, providing an on-line site for students to report such dangers could be another layer of protection.  These reports would go to the security command center and be acted on urgently.  Training staff to react and communicate dangers in a urgent manner could make all the difference.  

In Conclusion

    Schools can be safer if multiple layers of protection are instituted.  Yes, it will be more costly, but students' and teachers' lives are worth it. 

  

A Return To The Dark Days

 

By Jill Jenkins

Across the United States extreme conservatives are attacking curriculum, school districts, schools and educators. The environment is toxic.  Teachers who already spent countless hours adapting lessons to on-line formats for the pandemic before returning to the classroom to help traumatized students who have lost family members to COVID 19 and the security of a classroom community while feeling isolated learning on-line at home. Many parents were balancing teaching their children and working at home in financially difficult time where housing costs and food insecurity made life difficult . All of this negatively impacts many students. Teachers have stepped up and should be celebrated as heroes.  Instead of embracing and supporting these heroes, parents are asking to scrutinize textbooks, curriculum and even teachers.  These are dark days.

 

In Lehi, Utah a young educator revealed her LGBQ status on Tic Tock happy that her students were using her classroom to share their own LGBQ status with her after hours.  She felt she had created a safe place.  Instead of accepting her, the school suspended her while they blasted the local television news  with her post until the conservatives were aghast and then fired her after an hour-long school board meeting.  She could have sued for discrimination or first amendment rights to free speech, but instead she accepted her fate, ending her career as an educator in this state.

 

Although many teachers share family pictures and stories with their students in attempt to make them less alien and more human to young people, this might not be the right time for that.  We are entering a dark age and protecting a teacher’s career might mean staying off of social media.  School districts are so fearful of these conservatives that some have began accepting student teachers only from colleges affiliated with the dominate religious organization and hiring only those teachers.  As a result, they are populating schools only with people of the same religious beliefs and cultural beliefs as the majority of the population. The districts want to avoid controversy.  Unfortunately, not every student shares the religious belief, and culture, so those students feel alienated and the majority of the population is not prepared to deal with a more diverse world when they leave the confines of the community.  No one wins.

Even more difficult is those in a teaching career who do not share the same religious, cultural, or even race as the majority.  Not only will teachers who are gay lose their career, but teachers who are a member of another ethnic group, teachers who have a child out of wed-lock or teachers who have an abortion. are all in danger.  We have to return to a time when students were shocked to see a teacher at a store, where teachers have no life outside of school and above all that teachers never use the restroom.  Stay off of social media, remove all the pictures of your family from your desk and quietly endure until the time that teachers can be celebrated as heroes. Remember if we lose emphatic teachers, it will be the lost children who will suffer, not the loud mouths trying to politicalize education. 

 

 

Our Legacy: What is Important

 

Our Legacy: What Is Important?

By Jill Jenkins

As an educator and as a parent, I wondered what is the most important lesson I wanted to instill in my daughter and my students. I recognized that the world I was preparing them for would be so immeasurably different from the world I knew or could imagine.  Do we find the answers in the countless lessons: karate, violin, soccer, little league baseball, volleyball or is it something we need to provide in our homes like the lesson I learned from my maternal grandmother who always served tea at ten A.M. with toast and at four P.M. with a sweet treat?  She made the tea from tea leaves and let it seep for a long time before pouring it into china tea cups. We sat together and chatted about our lives. She would explain that the Americans are always in such a hurry, but by taking our time and enjoying each other’s company is how we became civilized.  I found this advice useful when I taught alternative education.  When a student needed correction, I provided refreshments although not in china tea set, let them talk about their situation and quietly asked questions to lead them to resolve whatever behavioral problem I wanted them to correct.  The conclusion was theirs or so they thought and they felt someone cared because I took the time to listen.

My Family’s Legacy

My mother’s childhood revolved around surviving the great depression. My grandparents used whatever means was possible to feed, and house their children including bootlegging, illegal cock fighting, running a family chicken farm while my grandfather worked full-time as a glazier. My maternal grandparents not only raised six children of their own, but my grandmother’s two brothers and her sister’s two children after her sister’s husband shot his nine-month pregnant wife, and abandoned his two children. Furthermore, they shared the responsibility of caring for my grandfather’s eighty-year-old, widowed mother.  Although my mother wore dresses made from flour sacks, the family still found the resources to feed sack lunches to whatever stranger knocked on their door who might be riding the rails to California.

My father lived with his divorced mother after his alcoholic, philandering father abandoned the family.  His mother took her two young boys: John, five years old and Keith, three years old, to live with her affluent parent’s house.  My father told me he learned the value of a job well done from his grandfather who paid John and Keith five cents for mowing his lawn, which was enough money to go the theater on the corner and I buy an ice cream afterwards.  Each time the boys completed the task, his grandfather would shake his head and say, “It’s not good enough.” They often mowed it three times before they earned their nickel.  Seeing the devastation that his father had caused his mother made him vow that he would always take care of his wife and children and never allow his wife to work. 

 

My Life

My family was never affluent or even middle class, but we did have a loving mother who was always home when we came home from school and a father who provided not only a split-level in a working-class neighborhood, but weekend camping trips and vacations to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Disneyland, and we traveled from the Northwest Territories, Alberta, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Mexico in our Chevy Suburban and Shasta Trailer. Although we didn’t have the luxury of little league, violin lessons, piano lessons, karate lessons, soccer practice or football little league, we did take tap lessons for twenty-five cents at the Neighborhood House and we had a large extended family who loved us and enjoyed our BBQ on our back patio and our famous Christmas parties.   There was love and structure.  For each meal the table was heaped with food and if an unexpected guest arrived my mother reminded us of our manners, only take a little so everyone gets some.  The food was passed from right to left after a blessing was said and each only took his or her share. Once everyone was served my father would begin and we were free to eat.  It was a happy place but all of us remembered our manners and showed respect to whatever guest we were sharing our meal with. Service to others was one of the most important legacy that my parents left me. My father never passed a stranded motorist without stopping to render assistance. My mother’s house was filled with children of neighbors, friends, and family that she gladly watched while their mothers ran errands, worked or just took a break.  For three years she cared for her elderly mother until she succumbed to the cancer.  They both offered financial assistance and meals to children, grandchildren and neighbors.  When my father’s childhood friend’s daughter found herself pregnant with an out of work teenage husband, they sent her to Utah, where my father helped them find work, an apartment and helped paid the medical expenses for the birth of their baby. 

My College Years   

Although my parents could not understand why I wanted to go to college, with the help of my high school counselor, Dee Anderson, I applied, and got a scholarship to a prestigious, private, liberal arts college.  I soon realized that I was woefully unprepared to compete with my more affluent classmates, who had attended private, parochial or more affluent public schools. I was socially handicapped because I could not swim, ski, ice skate, water ski, ride a horse or a bike and I didn’t play any musical instrument.  My solution was delayed gratification. While my friends partied, I studied, asked a lot of questions and read everything I could. I graduated early with honors. The legacy of my grandparents and my parents had served me well. I had been resourceful to get into college and arrange the scholarship and I used my work ethic to succeed.

Teaching

  Burdened with student loan debt, instead of continuing my education and becoming the attorney I dreamed of being, I took a teaching position at the same high school that I had attended.  I thought I would postpone the dream that I had had since the government had taken my grandmother’s house to built the interstate.  They didn’t give her enough money to buy another chicken farm, so she had settled in a small cottage and my aunt and uncle still living at home had taken out a mortgage to finishing paying off the difference.  I thought this was a huge injustice to a 65-year-old woman with cancer and I dreamed to rectifying such injustices.  However, I soon learned I could make a difference by teaching high school.  I was determined to provide my students with a more rigorous education than I had received. I would cringe when I heard my older colleagues announce that my more rigorous curriculum was unnecessary because these were working class students who rarely attended college.  Like my parents, they saw the world through a generation that had already passed and I felt it was wrong to pigeon-hole students in predetermined futures. My parents legacy of serving others had provided me with a satisfying career.

Parenting

After twelve years of teaching, I became a parent.  As a parent I made a list of all the activities and skills that would have made my colloquial experience easier and I made certain that my daughter experienced them. I sent her to parochial schools, gave her violin and guitar lessons, took her ice skating, roller blading, bike riding and horseback riding. I sent her to drama camp, museums, theater and all kinds of musical performances. I sent her traveling all around the United States and Europe while sacrificing my own vacations, new clothing, and selling assets to pay for her trips: my piano, and my car.  She did well, receiving a BA from my alma mater and MA from a prestigious college in New York.  Although I rarely see her, she has become a successful photojournalist and musician in the Big Apple.

In Conclusion

Life isn’t fair.  Some people have abundance and waste their lives because they never learned to appreciate their luck. Some people have little, but are rich in all the ways that really matter, because they freely share their meager bounty with others.  Lucky for me, I experience life with people of that nature. They gave me everything I needed to be successful and happy.  What is important for children to know:

·         First, a sense of responsibility for themselves, their families, their community and the world;

·         Second, a sense of being loved and valued as a human being;

·         Third, this is a highly competitive world and they are going to need to be highly skilled in some auxiliary activity:

o   The arts

o   Sports

o   An intellectual endeavor.

Schools and parents need to recognize this and provide opportunities for students who are financially handicapped. We can not know where our children’s or students’ lives are going to take them, but we need to teach them to respect one another, have a generous heart, and how to challenge themselves to develop skills.

Why We Must Teach the Consequences of Hatred

 Why We Must Teach the Consequences of Hatred

by Jill Jenkins 

I have always loved science fiction because the literature freely exposes social evils and ethics without overly offending “those so blind they will not see.” For example in H. G Wells novel, War of the World, aliens attack and invade earth destroying everything and everyone in their path, until they are killed by a virus.  Likewise, the European attacked, enslaved and murdered indigenous people in the Americans, but unlike the aliens in Wells’ novel, the indigenous people are destroyed by the virus.  The parallel between the science fiction is rarely discussed in schools, because revealing the atrocities in history are often denied by some parents and may cause conflict.  Education should not be controlled by the prejudices of a few loud parents.  Truth should triumph. 

The recent destruction and disrespect demonstrated in the United States Capital reminds us that this hatred leads to violence. As a results, schools shouldn't ignore the threat, but should  teach about the pain such groups have imposed on marginalized people in our history.  The problem created by hate does not get resolved by sweeping it under the rug.  We must embrace the mistakes we have made in the past, teach the consequences of such hatred and teach students the ethics of our constitution: “All men are created equal." 

Even though America is suppose to be haven for free speech and fee thought, schools rarely teach controversial historic incidents.  For example even though I have lived in Utah for 60 of my 66 years, I knew nothing of the Bear River Massacre where over 200 Shoshone men, women, and children were massacred just over the Idaho border along the Bear River. The plight of Native Americans aren't the only persecuted group in the United States.  Recently I was watching a documentary on PBS American Experience “The Chinese Exclusion Act” which described how mutilated and decomposing bodies of Chinese Americans floated down the Snake River in the spring thaw.  A group of Chinese American gold miners were attacked by local White ranchers on the border of Idaho and Oregon who tortured, mutilated them my slicing off body parts before shooting them and discarding their bodies into the Snake Rivers.  Were the murders apprehended, prosecuted and punished? No, they were released and never punished.  

I was reminded a story my husband told that he heard from his grandfather.  As a child his grandfather lived in the small mining town of Winter Quarters, Utah.  A community of Chinese American lived and worked in the mining camp.  Fearing the Chinese workers might take their jobs, the mine collected the Chinese population, forced them into a train car and sent the car careening down the canyon.  In the morning, the miners walked to tracks to find the remins of the Chinese workers, but all they found was an empty train car lying on its side.  Despite the horrors of these acts, they were never mentioned in any school curriculum in schools.  Never allowed to be mentioned. 

What about justice for all?

In the November 29, 1864 675 man force in the Third Colorado Cavalry under the command of Colonel John Chivington killed and mutilated 70-500 old men, women and children. Sand Creek Massacre where Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians were wintering.  Since many of the men were on a hunting trip, the majority of victims were women, children and old men.  To distinguish themselves the soldiers created souvenirs from the body parts they severed from their victims.  The outrage felt by Sioux tribes probably led to the destruction of General Custard and his men at Little Big Horn.  I never learned about these events until I was in my 60’s.  Certainly, these events should been taught in schools. 

What about the miners in Winter Quarters?  I guess there was some justice, but it was not delivered in our court system, because on May 1, 1900 the largest mining disaster in Utah and for a time the United State occurred when an explosion killed as many of 246 miners.  Even this disaster was never mentioned in any classroom in Utah. 

Justice for all will not be learned because a teacher wears a t-shirt with the words “Be Kind” emblazoned on it. Hatred is dangerous, as the recent incidents have shown us.  Schools need to hold active discussions abut what respecting one another looks like. Furthermore, those who attack others verbally or thought their actions need swift and appropriate consequences.  Students need to be empowered and taught appropriate ways to confronting and stifling those bullies who continue to derogate others. In Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of our Discontents she describes an incident in the first class section of a plane, where a white man inappropriately pinned her in while getting his luggage and no one spoke out in her defense.  Students need to learn to recognize inappropriate behavior and stand up for those being marginalized by others.  Empowered children become empowered adults.  This also doesn’t mean that teachers and staff can keep order in their classroom and ignore inappropriate behavior in the halls or the internet. I have seen some truly abhorrent behavior in my teaching career.  Students once filled an expectant girl’s locker with feces because they felt being an unwed mother was immoral.  Children need to learn that treating another human being with such disrespect is even more immoral.  Children who behave in such a manner are capable of behavior even more indecent. Teaching ethics must become the job of the entire staff and administration.  I know of principal who was dismissed because a gym teacher allowed a student to perform in black face.  The principal had no knowledge of the pep rally performance, but he was responsible for happened in the school.  

How do school approach teaching tolerance.  Maybe using science fiction is a start, or discussing the results of other hate filled incidents that have happened in United States, so students are aware the actions have consequences and hatred is a problem in the United States and not just in places far removed from them.  Teach student how to show respect and kindness and how to confront others who treat their peers with disrespect.  Stomping out hatred and violence that results from should be the goals in every school.

This is A Teachable Moment: Using the Pandemic as a Learning Situation

This is A Teachable Moment

By Jill Jenkins

            With the media blasting statistics on the death toll from COVID 19, parents protesting face mask mandates and social distancing and schools struggling to create a safe way to reopen schools, educators have an unprecedented teachable moment to teach curious students about how the human immune system works, the history of pandemics and medicine, and how they can protect themselves today and in the future from viruses. The fruit for learning is ripe for the picking.

Luckily there are some great sources out there. National Geographic just published a great article entitled Stopping Pandemics: What We’ve Learned from History’s Deadliest Outbreaks” by Richard Conniff in the August, 2020 edition. The article includes descriptions of how the small pox outbreak could have been prevented or eradicated in 1721.  It describes how even earlier the European devastated the native population with small pox, measles and other diseases that had native population had no immunity.  Throughout the history of the world, new diseases and virus have decimated the world’s population.  Knowing that the world has faced pandemics in the past could help students cope with the current pandemic.  The article included this list of pandemics throughout history and the number of deaths: 

·         The Plague of Justinian 541-48 in Byzantine Empire 50 million deaths

·         Antionine Plague 165-180 Roman Empire 5 million deaths

·         Black Death 1347-1351 Global 50 million deaths

·         Cocoliztil 1 1545-48 Mexico 15 million deaths

·         Small Pox 1519-1520 Mexico 8 million deaths

·         Cocoliztil 1576-78 Mexico 25 million deaths

·         Russian Flu 1889-1890 global 1 million deaths

·         1918 Flu (Spanish Flu) 1918-1919 Global 80 million deaths

·         3^rd Plague Pandemic 1894-1922 Global 10 million deaths

·         Cholera 6 1899-1923 Global 13 million deaths

·         Asian Flu 1957-1958 Global 13 million

·         Hong Kong Flu 1968 Global 1 million

·         HIV/AIDS 1981-present Global 32 million

 

Furthermore, the article gives detailed descriptions of medical advances beyond those in the small pox developments of 1721. During the Chorea outbreak of 1842 Edwin Chadwick’ revolutionary idea that the cause of the disease was raw sewage in the drinking water was revealed in his publication of The Sanitary Report. Chadwick led people into the home of an impoverished citizen where three feet of human waste had backed up. He described that the filth from the jailhouse holding 65 prisoners ran down the street. Making the connection between sewage and drinking water revolutionized sanitation through out the civilized world. Learning about his accomplishments could help students understand how pandemics advances medical development

Another example of how pandemics promotes solutions to medical problems is the story of John Pringle described in this article. The article describes how 75% of Napoleon’s solders died of Typhus in 1812 and more soldiers in every army died from disease than war wounds, until John Pringle an army physician suggested sanitation changes in his book Observation on the Diseases of the Army.

            In my lifetime Polio afflicted 15,000 people in the United States every year according to the article.  Most of my generation knew a friend or a family member who was afflicted.  Now the disease has been virtually eradicated from earth.  The article discusses the development of the vaccine by Dr. Salk, who began human trials in 1955, but it wasn’t until 1957-58 that communities were given sugar cubes soaked in the vaccine in local schools.  Students will gain a greater understanding of the difficulties in developing a vaccine for COVID 19 and how important community support is to eliminate a disease, but it can and has happened with other diseases. Giving students hope is paramount.

     Understanding past pandemics means understand the history of medicine. For years people believed disease was caused by bad humors or filth and refused to believe a germ too small to see could cause disease.  Germ Theory developed by Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur’s research significantly changed the approach to infectious disease.  The article describes their work and even describes the Ebola disease in Africa. Inspiring students who might want to pursue a career in medicine or medical research is possible.

     The article describes the development of penicillin by Howard Florey.  This was particularly interesting to me because during World War II significant amounts of penicillin was manufactured (2.3 million doses for D-Day).  My father was serving in the Philippines when he fell ill from bacteria spinal meningitis.  He was the second sailor to be given this new medicine, which had never been given for that malady. He was the second sailor whose life was saved by a disease that until then was a death sentence. Students believe that history is far removed from them.  Helping them understand the medical developments have happened in their parents, their grandparents and even their lives will give them hope. 

Knowing how important these medical advances have been, I think it is important to grasp this moment and teach children about them.  Having students read this article and select a disease or medical breakthrough to research on their own and write a research paper could help them understand the situation we are now facing. 

Other important materials that a teacher might use might include either of the two books:

The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John Barry.

 

  Or even more fascinating is Pale Rider: The Spanish Flue of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney

Since students learn more from a variety of mediums, an appropriate film for students to view to gain greater understanding is the CDC movie, The Influenza of 1918.

 

     The teachers could create a variety of writing assignments from researching one of the many pioneers of medicine and writing about how their work and dedication is an honorable pursuit.  The teacher could coordinate with a history, a science and/or a health teacher and write about how individuals contributed to modern medicine. More importantly by studying the past, students who might be fearful about COVID 19 may learn how people in the past protected themselves and the mistake that were made and develop a personal plan to move through the current pandemic.   

According to National Geographic Magazine November 2020 Volume. 5 “The Science We Must Trust by Robin Marantz Henig LIn Andrews, director of teacher support at the National Center for Science Education have created a five-part lesson plan with ten of her colleagues. The unit focuses on epidemiology and the scientific process. By exploring milestones in epidemiology like when the British scientist, John Snow traced the outbreak of cholera to the drinking water even before germ theory. Check out the article if it could be useful in creating a teachable moment from an educational dark age.

 

Black Lives Matter: Make Education More Inclusive

Black Lives Matter: Make Education More Inclusive

By Jill Jenkins

The NAACP proclaimed in a public service announcement,  “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” This is still true today.  Education is the key to improving the quality of life and upward mobility to all people and with the growing gap between those who have and those who have not, quality education is even more important for the success of any individual.  More Black and Brown people have been provided fewer financial and educational opportunities for decades, but making education more inclusive could make a tremendous difference in the quality of education they receive.  How do we make education more inclusive are: first, invite unrepresented minorities to join extra curricular activities; second, provide academic and emotional support; and third, help families solve problems with flexible and personal solutions.          

Invite Students to Join Extra Curriculum Activities

In many schools Black and Brown students often do not participate in any extra curriculum activities beyond sports like track, basketball and football.  Although these sports often help elevate these students by offering scholarship opportunities, they do little to help the student who is not athletically inclined.  Even though participation in drama, debate, journalism, creative writing, student government or even chess club also help students earn scholarships, many of these activities are dominated by White students.  Students may avoid participating because they are working to help their financially strapped families.  Others may not join because they don’t see any of their peers participating.  Adolescence is a very social period.  To alleviate this problem, one school where I taught personally invited groups of friends to join.  It worked, they joined and they did well.

Problems

As the debate coach and drama teacher, I experienced some difficulties.  For examples, when I took a group of debaters to an predominately White school, two of my debate team members were cornered by a group of White students who were jeering and yelling derogatory racial slurs.  Luckily, another team member retrieved me and I was able to intervene and ended the incident.  However, at another school a similar incident happened to a student with less self control who retorted to their ugly comments with some vehement of his own.  The principal of that school asked me to give him bus fare and send him back to school.  When I consulted my principal, he agreed with the solution; however, today, I would have taken my entire team back and ended the competition.  When I sponsored an after school debate meet at my school, one little girl from a local parochial high school was so frightened that she locked her knees when she stood up to speak and fainted. 

Solutions:

•              1.  Luckily the district decided to cut costs, and required that the three high schools share buses when going to week-end debate meets.  The social interaction between the students from the poorer area of town (my students) with the more affluent areas created a community that looked out for each other.  As a result, there were less incidences of racial conflict.
•             2.  Collaborative work with people from differing race groups and social-economics improves relationships and understanding.  A better approach to help all stud enters interact in a more positive way and learn the argumentative skills for debate might be a workshop where suburb and predominately White schools and urban Black and Hispanic schools take workshops taught by debate coaches from both types of schools.  Activities might include discussions on controversial topics, not necessarily racism, where each student has to paraphrase what the speaker before him says before adding to the discussion.  It teaches listening and the students learn that they have more in common with each other than they believed.  Then, pair the students with a student from the other schools mixing races and economic backgrounds and given the research material and the time, they collaborate to debate together as a team.  The next day, the new teams debate one another. Although winning the debate for the school, would be lose, but learning to work with new people could be an invaluable life skill.

Another Problem
 

            Another problem that I encountered is when I cast an experienced young acting student as Alice in Alice in Wonderland who happened to be Black.  I was called into the principal’s office because a parent had complained that she didn’t understand why I had cast a Black student when her daughter, who had no experience in theater, looked exactly like Alice. When I was the artistic director of Self Inc., an improv psycho-socio drama troupe, I was called into the principal’s office again because another parent had complained that seeing mixed racial families in improvised scenes about communication in the home made her feel uncomfortable.  Be prepared as a teacher to justify doing the right thing and if that doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to call in members of the community, ACLU or NAACP.  They are all friends to education.

Add Emotional and Academic Support Programs

At another urban school where I taught 90% of the students enrolled where minorities and 10% were White, but the enrollment in the honors programs was 90% White and 10% minorities and most of them were Asian.  The administration designed a program called Century Club, similar to AVID developed in San Diego.  Low performing, but bright students were identified and interviewed.  Forty students were selected and enrolled in honors classes, but given a support class where the teachers monitored their grades, made certain they did their assignments, tutored them and taught them study skills. Since many of these students were from parents who worked several jobs to support their families or were single parent households, some lacked the language or academic skills to help their children, the school simply stepped in and helped the student get the support that was usually available in most middle class families.  As a teacher, I also helped students get counseling, social work or drug rehabilitation help when they brought me a problem I couldn’t solve. 

            In other schools I have seen students fall through the cracks because schools failed to provide additional support.  For example, I taught one young man who was a refugee from a village in Africa.  He spoke a language that no one in the district spoke and understood and spoke, no English.  He was enrolled in a class with 35 other 9^th grade Language Arts students and expected to do the curriculum.  When I complained to the administration, I was told to buy a few programs for your IPad for him and just pass him.  I tried my best to help him, but feel it was less than adequate. Many students fall behind for reasons that aren’t in their control. I had another student whose mother was so afraid of ICE she would pull her children out of school and take them to sit in the hospital whenever her husband went into the hospital for dialysis. As a result, all of these students were years behind their classmates.

Flexible Rules that Solve Human Problems with a Flexible Approach

            Schools are designed to accommodate the “Leave It To Beaver” families of the 1950’s and few families, especially families in Black neighborhoods are that family. In most working class families are financially unstable as a result both parents work and older children either work or are burdened with caring for younger siblings.  If one or both parents are incarcerated, the high school student is often attending school, raising younger siblings and supporting the family financially.  Families in stress often need a little wiggle room in the rules to survive.  Often it is a small alteration, like one of my students who watched her younger siblings when her mother left for work.  When her father arrived home, he took her directly to school, but she was usually five or ten minutes late.  Excusing such a tardy seems trivial, but it can help a family immeasurably.  I had two students who were failing their first period because they were terminally tardy, when I called their mothers, I learned that both students were single parents and woke their children before leaving for work, but the two lollygagged about and were tardy.  I suggested a solution.  I would call the two everyday before I left my apartment and pick them up on my way to work (something because of liability teachers could not do today).  For a week the two were on time, but because teachers are required to be in the building 30 minutes before school started, they decided that they could get to school on time without my help.  They did. 

             Another situation arose where a young Black student began submitting papers that were illegible and illogical.  I showed his papers to the counselor who decided to call his parents in for a meeting.  From the meeting, we learned that the student’s mother had recently passed away and he was living with his father and paternal grandfather.  Since his father was an elementary teacher two blocks from the high school, we decided that during his last period of the day, we would walk to his father’s school and tutor his father’s students.  The extra time and the helping other students, brought out of his depression and his academic skills returned.  Thinking outside the box often helps student who are suffering some personal loss.

In Conclusion

            In conclusion, schools need to become more inclusive if students of color are to succeed.  We need to invite students to participate in extra-curricular activities and advocate for them when they meet obstacles.  We need to provide emotional and academic support for students to perform in a rigorous academic curriculum.  We need to communicate with families and in a personal and flexible manner help them resolve problems they might be facing.  “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Lets not waste any.