Mind the Gap

Mind the Gap

By Jill Jenkins

            During my last year of teaching before I retired, it was my pleasure to work with one of my most competent colleague to prepare our school’s accreditation.  Our research brought some enlightening data about the students who fall through the achievement gap.  Using data from both the Scholastic Reading Inventory Test, and the STAR test, we learned that one third of our student body read one or more years above grade level, one third read on grade level and one third were one or more years below grade level.  Only a small percentage of our students did not score proficient on the state C. R. T. (Criterion Reference Test)  test with about 80% scoring in the C.C.R. range (which I thought was Credence Clearwater Revival, but apparently it means far above proficient). In fact, our school out-performed almost every school in our district and every middle school in our state.  So, what about that two percent who did not pass their end of the year test?  Our principal decided we should focus all of our efforts on the two percent who fell through the gap.  He wanted us to mind the gap.   Our first question was: what contributed to their poor performance?  Our research gave us more answers.  We found there were three categories of poor performers: first, were the students who had been absent more than 10 days or 25% of any quarter; second, there were the students who did not speak English as their native tongue and were not yet proficient with the language, the English Language Learners; and third, there were the special education students some of who were mainstreamed and others who were enrolled in one of our two cluster units or in our resource program.   How to we help these small groups without losing the growth of 98% of our student-body?

            How do we improve the attendance of our not often here students?  In the old days, schools could just send a truant officer to the absent student’s home and retrieve him, but with some many students home-schooled, truant officers are a thing of the past.  The administrators could prosecute the parents of most blatant non-attenders, but they did not seem happy to do that. (It seems there is a lot of paperwork connected with any court case.)  Somehow we need to communicate to these parents that their children need to be in school every day if they expect to do well.  We need to communicate to those students that their education should be important to them, so they should insist on going to school every day.  Some schools have used rewards system.  One principal identifies those students and has them come to his office every morning and tell him good morning.  Sometimes there are a surprise candy bar and other times just a warm greeting.  Another principal identifies these students, meets with them regularly and if they improved their attendance, he takes them to lunch every two weeks: Lunch with the principal, what middle school student could pass on a deal like that? This might work in a school where less than one percent fall into that category, but in most inner-city school the problem of attendance is more difficult to solve.

            What about the students just learning English?  In my school all of these students are mainstreamed into the regular classes and only a few of them receive extra help from a study skills teacher.  Granted, all of these students could be counted on one and half hands, but still they are a subgroup.   For example, I had one student who was a refuge from a tribal group in Africa.  The counseling staff did not know from which country he was from or which language he spoke, only that he did not speak or write English. I am not trained as an ESL teacher.  I contacted the district office to ask if they had some materials I could use to help him.  They couldn’t help me because his foster parents had not indicated on their paperwork that he required language services.  I used my own money to buy material and at the suggestion of another teacher purchased some applications for my I-Pad to help him build a small vocabulary.  When the rest of the class read Treasure Island, he worked on my I-Pad at his desk.  Social Services moved him to a new foster home before we took the C.R.T. test.  He could write his name and he knew his alphabet and probably 100 words in English, but he was not ready to take his exam.  Teachers need the support of the school, the district, and the administrators if they have any hope of improving the education of students who are learning English.  Teachers need training, materials and class time to work one-on-one with these students.   

            What about the students in special education?  In our school we have two clusters: High Functioning Autism and Life Skills Cluster and three resource teachers.  Students in the Life Skills Cluster remain with their teacher for most of their academic classes, but may take one or two electives.  The students in High Functioning Autism are sometimes mainstreamed.  Many students who qualify for resource are mainstreamed and some only take one class with a resource teacher and are mainstreamed for the rest of the day.  The resource teachers and High Functioning Autism teacher offer support and advice to the rest of the faculty.  For most of these students concentrating long enough to complete a C.R.T. exam is difficult.  For many of them acquiring the skills to pass a state exam is problematic.

            The truth is all three of these groups do not do well on state exams for obvious reasons. Now, there is the Common Core Curriculum with a more rigorous S.A.G.E. test.  Students who did well on the C.R.T. tests are expected to do poorly on the new test.   At my school, we are preparing for the more rigorous test with a new program where for twenty-five minute twice a week students who had not mastered a specific learning goal in a class are retaught that particular skill again. This means that fifty minutes a week 98% of the student-body do enhancement or meaningless activities while the two percent relearned a specific learning goal.  That means 500 minutes of instruction time is lost each quarter to 98% of the students. Another words, teachers have a more rigorous curriculum to teach, but will be losing thirty-three hours and twenty minutes of instruction time per year to re-teach the skills for two percent of the population, half of whom are absent. Nonetheless, if the school spends all of its resources to help this two percent, they may be forsaking the 98%.  Wasting 500 minutes of valuable instructional time per quarter is counter-productive. Boring students with meaningless activities diminishes their desire to learn more and usually results in them entertaining themselves in inappropriate ways.  

            The reason “No Child Left Behind” worked well in theory but not in the real world, is there are students we can improve, but not all of them may become proficient in a single year.  English Language Learners way take up to ten years to become proficient in a foreign language; special education students learn at different rate than students without learning disabilities.   We do need to improve the attendance of the non-attender; we do need to find more effective ways to meet the needs of the English Language Learners and the special education students; however, the truth is we may not be effective with every student. A better approach to solving the problems left in the learning gap is to look at the data from the new S.A.G.E. test when it becomes available (September or October), and improve instruction on the skills that students had difficulty with. Ask the right questions: why did they performing poorly and why is this student missing so much school?  Perhaps it is a problem that is easy to fix. Don’t forget to mind the gap.

Victims of Violence

Victims of Violence

By Jill Jenkins

                As educators we often use differentiated instruction to reach students who are on different learning levels or have learning disabilities. In fact, since mainstreaming came into practice, teachers provide instruction to a more diverse group of pupils.  In one class, a teacher might have a student with an I.Q. of 155 sitting next to a student with an I.Q. of 65.  She may have a student who recently arrived from Ghana who not only does not speak any English, but has not learned the Phoenician alphabet sitting next to a student whose parents both have PhD’s in English literature.  Still through the magic of scaffolding, the teacher will make certain all of these students pass the Common Core Exam with proficient marks. Despite her diligent efforts one group of students sometimes are not recognized.  These are the students who are suffering from emotional disabilities because they have been the victims of violence.  When children witness violence or suffer it first-hand it can affect them in different ways depending on their age and their temperament.  Some students may become disruptive in class and others may withdraw.  Those who act out are easy to recognize, but the more depressed students who are compliant with the rules but reserved may go unnoticed. Some of these students wear heavy coats even in warm weather and pull their head almost inside disappearing like turtles. Perhaps they are trying to disappear from the pain.  Teachers have a responsibility to these students.  Their emotional disability makes it difficult for them to perform well in school, especially on tests, and more importantly their disability makes it difficult for them to become a productive, self-reliant person.    

                When I was growing up in a lower-economic neighborhood in the 1960’s, children never told adults in authority anything.  You didn’t “rat” people out to the teacher or the police or even your parents.  I knew things that could have saved a young man’s life if I had not lived by the code of street.  When I would stay with my grandmother and later my unmarried aunt after my grandmother passed away, there was a family of children with whom I often played, the Doe’s.  They had three children:  Jane, who was my age; John, who was a year younger; and Bill who was two years younger.  Their mother had died in a car accident.  That is the official story of how she died, but that isn’t the story they told me.  They said it had happened on snowy winter night.  Their father was driving the car when he opened the passenger-side door and pushed his wife out.  Then he drove the car back and forth across her body until she was dead.  All three children were in the car and saw what transpired, but because of the threats made by their father, none of them said anything.  Children who witness violence are forever affected.

                Mr. Doe owned a local tavern.  When I spent the night at my aunt’s house, I would hear a group of drunken men arrive late at night or early in the morning.  The father allowed the men to carouse with his then 13 year old daughter in inappropriate manners.  At school, Jane was always silent and obedient to teachers, but extremely withdrawn.  From my younger brother, I learned that John and Bill were also obedient, but withdrawn.  Teachers may have had no knowledge of what was happening in that house.   One winter day in the eighth grade, John hung himself with his belt from his bunk bed.  Even though everyone who knew him was horrified, the tradition of the 1960’s meant that no one talked about it.  Suicide was a taboo topic, especially the suicide of a child.  To this day I wonder if someone could have saved John if I had spoken to a teacher.  There are children today who live by that code of silence especially in inner-cities.  To help these students you must create a nurturing environment where students feel safe and cared for.  If students feel comfortable with you, if they feel that you are a person who is trustworthy and caring, they are more likely to share these problems with you.  Without that communication, you cannot direct them to the professionals who can help them.

                I know teaching is a hectic job.  The curriculum is too large for the number days of instruction available, there are assemblies, papers to correct, and your email is filled with parent’s questions and complaints, but we teach children, not just a subject.  The teacher is the only connection to the outside world these students have.  I know you are not trained as a psychologist, but you don’t need to be a psychologist.  You just need to listen to these children, watch for signs: in the writing, in their behavior, even in their dress.  Encourage students who know information that could help another child to come forward.  Then, connect these children with the school counseling staff, the school psychologist or sometimes even a parent.  You not only have a moral obligation to do this, but in many states you have a legal responsibility to report any incidents of child abuse or suspected child abuse.  The legal agency do not reveal who reported the incident, but they investigate it and if it is valid, they provide counseling to the child, the family and if necessary remove the child to a safe environment.

                Depressed teenagers often commit suicide, so you must take students seriously if they talk about suicide or if they write about it.  Since you do not know when they may act on their thoughts, it is imperative to act quickly and notify a parent or a counselor that day.  My second year of teaching, I was teaching in an Alternative Program and many of our students had issues.  One particularly quiet, withdrawn student who seemed perpetually depressed told me that he was going to commit suicide.  I called his mother that day.  Thirty years later, he called me and told me that I had saved his life.  He had planned to commit suicide on his way home from school that day, but because I had called his mother, she picked him up and took him to his psychologist. He was angry at first that I had called her, but in the end his life turned out wonderful and he was so grateful to me for stopping him.   Most of the time, as teachers we never know how we affect our students’ lives, but I in that particular instance I know that one phone call made a difference.

My dad, my grandmother and my uncle

                Witnessing violence affects children in different ways.  They may become violent or act out, or they may become depressed and withdraw like the Doe children.  My own father’s earliest memories were of his father, an alcoholic, beating his mother and holding a gun to her head.  My father was probably four years old at the time, but it affected his choices the rest of his life.  Lucky for me, he decided that he did not want to be like his father, so he never raised his hand to anyone. Children feel the need to protect the parent who is being victimized  and often feel guilty when they are unable to protect them.  Domestic violence knows no limits of social-economic status, so regardless of where you teach watch for the signs. 

                The world is a violent place and since many of our students have experienced war first hand, they have seen untold violence.  My former in-laws were both in hiding in Holland during the Holocaust.  As a boy, he watched people boiled to death in oil, women raped and a baby thrown into the air and caught on a bayonet. He also listened from his hiding place as the Gestapo beat his father to death.   Both my father-in-law and my mother-in-law shared with me that smallest thing could set off the paralyzing fear:  seeing  a highway patrol officer’s high boots, because they were like those worn by members of the Gestapo, the sound of gun shots from the firing range near our house, or even thunder. Some students may show no signs like Juan, one of my former students, who had lost both of his arms when his parents threw him from their fifth story apartment and his arms hit the electrical wires burning both of his arms off when they were escaping a Coup in Colombia.  Juan was one of my best students writing three page essays at record speed with his pencil held between his teeth.  Hard work and humor were Juan’s weapons against his past.  Other students who have experienced war have resorted to violence shooting other people in shopping malls, or turning the violence inward and committing suicide.

                Many students in your class could have witnessed domestic violence and some may be refuges from war zones.  As a teacher, you are the eyes and ears of the school. You need to study these children carefully and if you see a student who needs help, do not hesitate to get it for him. A student's life may be in the balance. When you are scaffolding instructions, be aware of the victims of violence.  It is not only your moral obligation, it is a legal one.

               

The Inundation of Inexperience

The Inundation of Inexperience

By Jill Jenkins

            Historically schools like older corporations had a  hierarchy of teachers who had worked 20 to 30 years in the industry and young, novice teachers were added a few at a time.  The more experienced staff mentored the new teachers.  Advanced courses and older grades were taught by the more experienced staff and younger staff members worked their way up the ladder to succeed them as they retired.  The less experienced members of a staff learned from the more experienced staff members and treated their experience with respect, but today the majority of faculty members are first and second year teachers and some have no respect for the experienced staff and no patience to work their way up the ladder. This is especially true when there is an extraordinary number of inexperienced teachers.

            Does this create a problem? According to the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching:

“The high number of inexperienced teachers in public school classrooms is a largely unrecognized problem that undermines school stability, slows educational reform, and, new research suggests, hurts student achievement. These are among the findings of a report released today by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.”

Teachers do not enter the profession with all of the skills that are needed to be successful.  Many academic programs are designed to prepare students to teach their subject to like-minded college students, but middle schools and high schools are filled with students who lack any motivation or desire to analyze great pieces of literature or compose a thought-provoking essay.  In fact, some won’t even write their name on their paper, let alone turn it in.  Developing ways to motivate these students to tackle the rigor of the Common Core Curriculum requires the age and wisdom of teachers who have experience.  This is way mentoring programs are so essential.  Even in the field of medicine, doctors complete their internship and a residency before they practice medicine independently.  Even then, many medical doctors still work within a team of doctors.  It seems unthinkable that many of these new graduates believe that they can step out of a four-year college program, enter the teaching field and take over a department.    

            Ironically, many schools are choosing to replace older teachers with new college graduates, because administrators feel that only the newly graduated teachers are familiar with the new teaching ideas.  Many of these teachers arrive believing that their new ideas are the only sensible ideas and try to foist their ideas on the department.  They are surprised when more experienced teachers resent their attitudes. They are also surprised by their students lack of proper behavior in the classroom and their lack of productivity. Some even become involved in inappropriate relationships with students. This could be avoided if the teachers are provided proper supervision and direction by a more experienced teacher. 
        Furthermore, many of these new teachers do not stay at a school for longer than one to two years.  According to Forbes,” teacher attrition has grown by 50% over the past fifteen years.  The national teacher turnover rate has risen 16.8 percent.  In urban schools it is over 20 percent, and in some schools and districts, the teacher dropout rate is actually higher than the student dropout rate” (Forbes). Who is leaving the teaching profession?  According to National Education Association, thirty percent left because of retirement, but 56% left because of job dissatisfaction or a desire for a new career.”  Teaching is a stressful job.  Giving new teachers the support of experienced teachers for several years before they a put in the more demanding subjects with the more demanding parents could eliminate some of this stress.  School administrator, also, need to address a new teacher who is not teaching the curriculum or not maintaining good classroom control.  If it is support the teacher needs, the principal should help the teacher get it.  If it is arrogance, the principal should address that appropriately. 

             Why are districts doing this? Could districts motives include trying to save money on salaries?  Inexperienced teachers earn are significantly less than experienced teachers and if they leave the profession before they retire the state and district saves money again.  Are schools attempting to save money while forgetting the most important task, providing a quality education?  Many schools and districts have forced older teachers into retirement by changing their retirement packages and eliminating access to health insurance.  Yes, this saves money for the district, but is it fair to the teachers who entered into a contract with the district 25 or 30 years ago only to find that if they don’t retire now they will lose a portion of their benefits or all of them? 

            Regardless of the reason, the result is the same:  placing too many first and second year teachers in one school or one department reduced the chances that the students will receive a quality education.  Schools need a balance of older, more experienced teacher in each school and a few inexperienced teachers learning how to become good teachers if we expect to pass on the torch of high quality education. 

The August Nightmares

The August Nightmares

            Every August the nightmares reoccur.  I am wandering lost in a labyrinthine of high school corridors and staircases searching for my classroom.  I have no lesson plans, no roll book, and no textbooks.  I don’t have the slightest clue what I am teaching. I am in a state of sheer panic.  When I arrive at the room, there is nothing, but a disarray of desks filled with disorderly students.  In some versions of the dream I am lacking my clothing and try desperately to hide my vulnerability.  What do these dreams mean and why do they stop occurring once I begin teaching my first classes every year?

            Beginning teachers tell me they have similar dreams, but I have been teaching just shy of forty years and they still occur.  Being a teacher is such a difficult job that regardless of the years of experience, we all feel very vulnerable because we are aware of how easily a class can become chaos.  Obviously each of us who share these nightmares understand the importance of proper preparation and organization and understand that is the only thing that stands between us and chaos.  Maybe for us, the idea of losing control of our students and being unprepared is the most frightening idea of all.  Perhaps that fear is the reason that as students we were the overachievers and as teachers we not only have one lesson plan each day, but two alternative plans just in case. 

            Lucky for me the dream didn’t occur this year.  This August I have awakened from a calm sleep by two dogs, Bubba and Rufus, leaping on me and licking my face.  To Bubba and Rufus this is time for our walk.  The nightmares of August are over.  My new students are these two obedient dogs that sit at each intersection and wait for my “Good Boys” signal to walk safely across the street. Two dogs who sit when I stop and watch a hawk perched three yards from us sail off. There are no more lesson plans, no more papers to correct, and no more nightmares.  . . oh, the joy of retirement.