Has Technology Reduced Teachers’ Stress or Increased It?

Has Technology Reduced Teachers’ Stress or Increased It?

            Has technology reduced teachers’ stress levels or increased it?  Teachers are connected twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with electronic grade books, web pages, social media, text-message programs, and computerized instructional programs.  Although all of these programs increase both communication with parents and instructional effectiveness, does it decrease teachers’ stress levels or increase them? 

            What was teaching like forty years ago?  In February of 1976, I was hired in an inner-city high school to replace a teacher who had decided to move back to the middle school.  In those days, we recorded attendance and grades in roll-books containing many pages of large spread sheets.  Because the school had a large mobile population, students were frequently transferring out and transferring into my classes.  As this happened, my neat little alphabetized roll-books became disordered with students crossed out and others added to the bottom.  This meant I had to recreate my roll-books every quarter to maintain some order.  Of course, in today’s world electronic gradebooks hide students that are no longer enrolled and re-alphabetize students when new ones enroll. 

            To determine a student’s grades in those days, a teacher had to decipher that student’s percentage based on the tests and assignments that were given during his enrollment.  This meant that each student’s grade had to be calculated one at a time.  In today’s world, the electronic grade book does this for teachers every time a score is added.  Furthermore, the parents and students can access their grades through their computer, their smart-phone, or have text messages or emails sent to them regularly.  The old roll-book could not do that.

            What happened when the roll-book got lost or stolen?  It did happen.  It happened to me my first year of teaching.  I left my roll-book on the corner of my desk, locked my door and went to supervise a pep rally.  When I returned, my door was still locked, but my roll-book was gone.  Years later, a former student confessed to me the details of this crime.  Three students came to my room during the pep rally.  One of them stood as look-out; one of them unscrewed the vent in the bottom of the door; and the third crawled through the opening, retrieved the roll-book and crawled back.  Afterwards, they replaced the vent and its screws, took the roll-books three miles from the school to the Arctic Circle Dive-In Restaurant.  Next, they dug a hole behind the parking lot, threw the roll book into the hole, poured gasoline on it, and lit it ablaze.  Afterwards, they buried the ashes.  Quite an elaborate plot to get rid of the roll book, but as a novice teacher its loss sent me into a panic.  I asked my principal what I should do.  He suggested that I say nothing.  If I knew my students well enough, I should be able to estimate their grades.  I did and not a single student or parent questioned me about them. 

            I was not the only teacher to have their roll-book stolen.  The science teacher managed a movie theater at night to supplement his income.  One night at the end of quarter, he put a pile of uncorrected tests and his roll-book into a briefcase.  After his shift at the movie theater, he was locking up with briefcase in hand when a robber, thinking he was taking home the nightly receipts from the movie theater, pushed a gun in his back and demanded the briefcase.  The teacher gave it to him knowing how disappointed the thief would be when he discovered the uncorrected tests and the roll-book.  In today’s world if a student or a thief were to take a teachers’ roll-book (if they indeed had one) it would not matter.  If their school was to burn to the ground and all of the teachers’ computers were destroyed, it would not matter, because all of the grades are backed up on the cloud and no one really knows where that is.  

            Obviously, electronic grade books make grading easier and safer, but is it less stressful for teachers? The constant connection between parents and school has created many helicopter parents.  As these parents become more demanding, the stress level for teachers increases.   For example, at the end of seventh period one afternoon, one mother was waiting outside my door anxiously inquiring whether her daughter, Elizabeth, had turned in her assignment that period since she did not see it on the grading program.  I had to explain to this parent that I have to actually read the assignments before assigning them a grade or entering that grade into the electronic grade book. Since I taught seven periods (not six periods with consultation like I had 40 years ago) with 40 students in each class period, I had to read 280 papers before I could record the grades.  In another instance, on a Friday I had collected all 280 of my ninth grade students’ ten-page research papers and had gone home for the weekend.  About midnight, my husband went into Sudden Cardiac Arrest.  Needless to say during that next week while I sat next to my husband in intensive care watching him in his drug induced coma, the papers were not a high priority; nevertheless, I was bombarded with angry emails demanding to know when their son or daughter’s paper would be corrected and recorded on the grading program.  Electronic grade books are easier and improve communication, but I can’t say they reduce stress.

            Other applications that have vastly improved communication between parents and teachers include: school and teacher web sites, Twitter, Facebook, and Remind 101 Scholastic Read 180, Accelerated Reader, Scholastic Reading Inventory Test, STAR, My Access Writing Program and many others improve instruction and allow teachers to evaluate students’ learning and individualize instruction. 

            Facebook and Twitter may allow student to access their teacher with particular questions about assignments, but also can create problems for teachers.  For example, I heard of one teacher who posted a picture of her enjoying a beer in the Beer Gardens in Germany during a summer vacation on her personal Facebook page.  When she returned to school the next fall, she was fired because a parent saw the picture and felt it was inappropriate for a teacher to be seen drinking alcohol.  Be very careful with social media. Make sure you have very restrictive security and be cautious about what you post.  If you use it to communicate with students make sure you are only communicating about how to complete an assignment.  Keep it very professional or it can create issues.  A better choice is Remind 101 which allows you to text reminders about assignments to parents and students, but they cannot respond to them.  If students or parent needs to communicate with you, they can still talk to you in class or email you.  

            Although technology improves communication and the quality of instruction, it adds extra work for teachers.  As a teacher, I usually arrive an hour early to answer emails, update my web site, sent out text messages on Remind 101, and update the agenda on my classroom white board.  After school each day, I stay an hour to respond to writing on My Access, enroll new students in Accelerated Reading, and update my grades on our electronic grade book.  It is like the laundry; if you don’t keep up, it will overwhelm you. 

            Teaching can be a stressful job.  Teachers need to take a break from it once and while, so learn where the off- button is on your computer.  Don’t always take it home with you. Don’t put your school email on your smart phone and know when to leave that computer at school.  When you need a break, take one. My dear Aunt Fae, once told me about a teacher she had an Onequa Elementary School who 70 years ago.  She told me how “Old Lady Kennelly pulled off her wig, and as bald as an eagle ran around the school and swung about the tricky bars.  Don’t be “Old Lady Kennely.”  A relaxed, happy teacher is a better teacher.

Corporation Created Computer Generated Tests or the Human Touch

Corporation Created Computer Generated Tests or the Human Touch

     In the 1920’s large corporations began buying up family farms in the Midwest and running them at factory speeds to ramp productivity using and reusing land to produce crops.  The result was the dust bowl.  Today corporations are taking over education.  Corporation created computer-generated tests are not an effective solution for schools, because first, they are costly; second, they make teaching less of a creative act, so schools are less likely to attract the best qualified teachers; and third, they bore intellectually-gifted students and worse yet they increase the anxiety of struggling students.  

                 These companies create weekly test to collect data and based on a student's performance assign computer-generated drills to maximize students’ performance on computer-generated assessments.  In fact, an entire industry has emerged to write common core tests, practice tests and teaching materials.  These corporations are getting rich on this new legislation.  Lucrative contracts with states and school districts are earning these companies a fortune while teachers’ salaries are stagnant.

                Teaching has never been a well-paid career, but has always had the benefits of interaction with children and a creative release when developing new ways to reach those students.  More teachers were like starving artist, because they enjoyed both the students and inventing new avenues to reach those students.  Since the corporations have taken over, more and more of the creative aspects of teaching, good teachers are leaving the profession and fewer creative new teachers are joining.  It is true that these testing programs can improve the teaching of those incompetent teachers who provide students with film festivals, rather than actually teaching, but they critically hamper the teaching of talented, creative teachers.  Basically they reduce teaching to a paste pudding.  

                Just like the soil in the Midwest that lost all of its nutrients from over use has a negative impact; our students are going to lose all of their motivation to learn.  Worse is what they do to the struggling at-risk students, because it removes the human factor. There is a high correlation between the students who do poorly on the tests and those with poor attendance or poor attitudes.  According the PBS program, Frontline,  “Omarina’s Story” , students who miss 20% or more of the days during any quarter, receive a failing grade in any of their core classes or an unsatisfactory citizenship grade in any core class are 75% more likely to drop out of high school.  They also found that intervening with these students during the middle grades improved their likelihood of graduating. These are the students who are already suffering anxiety because of outside pressures.  These are also the students who are failing the state standardized tests.  

       How do we really solve the problem?   To solve this problem teachers and administrators need to ask “why” these students are absent and intervene to help them solve their problem.  For example, Ted, one of my past students, communicated to me that his mother had abandoned the family, his father had lost his job and the family was homeless.  He often didn’t come to school because his clothing was dirty and ragged and he did not even have a place to shower or brush his teeth.  I discussed this information with his other teachers and the gym teachers offered to allow him to shower and brush his teeth in the gym before school.  Another member of the team picked up a few outfits for the boy at the Good Will.  The gym teacher agreed to wash them for when he washed the football uniforms.   Ted’s attendance improved and so did his grades.  If a student like Ted is bombarded by weekly tests in every core class and suffers failure after failure on computerized tests, he will become more anxious and instead of helping him become successful, he will drop out.

                Other problems are not as simple and may manifest themselves in other ways than poor attendance.  For example, a student may have lost a parent, been physically or sexually abused, or is suffering from a custody battle.  All of these students are in highly anxious states and may act out or have poor attitudes.  Adding more pressure is not helping them.  For example, another student, Lasandra, a bright girl, but an angry one was not performing as well as could be expected.  The school where I was teaching had developed a program, “Century Club,” where teachers identified students like Lasandra, enrolled them in honors classes, and  a small study skills class for added support.  That was my class.  One morning arriving early, as is my custom, I found Lasandra waiting outside my classroom.  She wanted to talk.  She shared her story.  Lasandra had been living with her mother, a heroin addict, in Florida with four other siblings.  To supply herself with drugs, her mother regularly would bring men home and allowed them to have sex with Lasandra, then eleven.  On top of the countless incidences of sexual abuse, her mother would disappear for days at a time leaving Lasandra to care and feed her four younger siblings.  Her mother’s absences continued to be more frequent and longer.  Eventually, after an absence of two weeks, food supplies were depleted and the rent was due.  Desperate, Lasandra called her aunt in another town.  The aunt came, picked up all the children and contacted each child’s biological father to take custody of his child.  Apparently, each child had a different father; thus they were all separated.  Lasandra was sent to live with a father she had never met in California.  Although she was apprehensive about her father as her mother had painted a grim picture of him, she was more concerned about the fate of her mother and worried about her siblings for whom she had cared.  Luckily, for Lasandra her father and new step-mother were caring parents who after hearing Lasandra’s story got her counseling and helped her contact her siblings.  Nevertheless, imagine burdening such a child with repeated failures one computer generated tests.  It would only increase her anxiety instead of motivating her to learn.

                These types of problems are in every school and every social-economic level.  For example, Juanita's father required dialysis twice a week. Fearing deportation her mother took all of the children out of school to sit with husband.  The children got further and further behind.  She too would be over burdened with the added pressure of these computer generated tests.

                 Schools are not factories and teachers are not robots.  To improve education we need to identify the students who are struggling, learn why they are struggling and give them the tools and resources to help them overcome their difficulties.  If we spend our resources working systematically to solve the problems of these students instead of lining the pockets of corporate America, we will not only lower our drop-out rates, but increase the number of students who are empowered to succeed in life.  The human touch is important.  Fertilize our fields and let our children grow, one child at a time, not the corporate giants.  Do you want to know why America’s schools are behind the European schools?  Take a closer look at each child and don’t let them become the next dust bowl.  

The Common Core and the Dreaded Research Paper

The Common Core and the Dreaded Research Paper

                In an effort to prepare students for the academic writing required to perform successfully on the end-of year tests required in the new Common Core, teachers are going to have to go beyond the traditional once a year research paper.  What problems do teachers face preparing students?   First, students often have depended on the old copy and paste format, a collage of plagiarism, to prepare these reports and strongly believe this is an acceptable technique.  Secondly, the internet provides a plethora of ready-to use essays that are available to all students for a nominal fee.  Third, parents are more than willing to write their child’s essay, but have not been trained in the use of parenthetical footnotes required in M.L.A. citations and still use end-notes.  (Should we just retrain parents?)

                As a Language Arts teacher, I have received an assortment of plagiarized or even fabricated essays over the years?  One was just three pages printed from Encarta with the copyright still printed at the bottom.  Most have been a collage of stolen quotes and data simply pasted together without footnotes or any form of analysis.  When I have confronted these children, they seemed surprised because their other teachers have always accepted these creations.  (Seriously, I doubt that.)  When I offered them an opportunity of “re-do” the assignment at a reduced rate of credit, their parents were often angry.  Some even removed their child from my class.  The most humorous paper I ever received was a research paper on an historical figure who had behaved honorably.  The student had selected George Washington as his topic.  He wrote about Washington’s valor in the Revolutionary War, The French Indian War, the Civil War, World War I and World War II.  (I suppose I should have been happy that he didn’t include The Korean War, the Viet Nam War and the Gulf War.)   When I confronted this student about his lack of footnotes, lack of accurate information and his outrageous fabrications, he replied that he didn’t know teachers actually read their essays.  (I think he was testing me to see if I read student papers.)

                How do we teach students to select appropriate and accurate information, synthesize it into a paper as supporting evidence with proper parenthetical citations required by the M.L. A. documentation method that supports their analysis of a problem or a situation? To do this well, the teachers needs to spend a lot of time and break the process down into small steps.  By developing assignments that are unique with specific guidelines, the student is not as likely to find an on-line essay to purchase.  Teachers need to communicate to parent that performance on the test is the real goal, not performance on a particular assignment.  Without completing the practice assignments, it is unlikely that the student will gain the skills he needs to do well on the state writing test. (Since the state test does not count on the student’s grade or determine his advancement to the next grade level, convincing the parents of its importance may be difficult.)

                Another problem the teachers faces is that student needs to be in attendance every day because each skill the student learns builds on the next skill and they are all needed to write this type of essay.  Not only are students excused by parents due to chronic illnesses, but the parents often take students out of school to go on cruises or visit and ill relative in another state.  When you combine those absences with the band is playing a concert in New York, the school play needs five dress rehearsals, the choir will be out for a week singing at every mall in Utah, the basketball team is in the state finals, and countless other assemblies, dances, and activities, it becomes increasing difficult to give each student enough practice to master every skill required to write a research paper. 

                 Some methods that I have discovered work well is to begin the first day of school preparing students for this test.  Begin your first quarter with argumentative writing.  Get a copy of the book, Teaching Argument Writing by George Hillock, Jr. It has great exercises and writing activities and provides a structure to combine facts with analysis, a skill that most students struggle with.  Second, write a research paper together as a class showing how evaluate reliable sources and cite them correctly using M. L. A. documentation.  After they have successfully created a paper as a group, have them write their own paper. During the third quarter give them bi-weekly writing assignments requiring them to read two of three articles, synthesize the appropriate information into a five or six paragraph essay that includes parenthetical footnotes and a works cited page.  Most schools give the writing section of state test at the end of third quarter.  Invite as many other departments to give similar assignments.  Even though it is time-consuming, fewer students plagiarize essays; even fewer parents compose their student’s essays.  Because their quarter practices are in-class writings, all students get some practice for the test. 

                To be successful on these state tests, language arts teachers need the support of administrators, parents and actual time in the classroom to develop their students’ skills.  Treating plagiarism seriously would be a great help, communicating with parents that being successful on a single writing assignment is not the most important goal.  Helping students develop the skills they need to pass the state tests and perform well in their future academic career is the most important goal.  Remember helping students become critical thinker, better communicators, and an effective writer is the entire school’s responsibility.

               

               

                               

Gotcha—Why Do Children Cheat?

Gotcha—Why Do Children Cheat?
by Jill Jenkins
 

                Why do children cheat? It is a complex question with many answers.  Some students cheat because they feel they are unable to meet their parents’ high expectations.  Some students cheat as a challenge to see if they get away with it.  Some students cheat because they know they can get away with it.  Some students cheat because their parent enable them to cheat.   Some students cheat because our society glorifies the Jesse James and the Billy the Kids in media and they see this reflected in the behavior of adults in their personal life and in our government.   This problem is endemic, so how do we promote ethical behavior?

                After teaching honors Language Arts for decades, I am still amazed at the number of intellectually-gifted students who resort to copying their friends’ assignments, reading Cliffs Notes instead of reading an assigned novel or having another student provide answers for a test.  I have always asked why would a gifted, young person with the skills to do his own work resort to unethical means to achieve his goals.  The problem is especially profound in upper-middle class neighborhoods, where parents push their children beyond their capabilities.  Students are expected to be sports stars, master an active social life and take every advanced class offered while playing in the school band, singing in the choir and performing the leading role in the school play.  These parents check their student’s grades daily and if any assignment is missing or any grade deviates from perfection, they will be talking to their son or daughter and his or her teacher.  High expectations are wonderful and can help a child become all he can be, but a helicopter parent can put undue pressure on a child causing him to do the unthinkable—cheat.

                For other students cheating is a game.  They are especially motivated by the teacher who takes pleasure in catching him.  I must admit at the beginning of my career I was one of those teachers.  I would wander the aisles of my classroom stalking any child who exhibited the wandering-eye disease and then I would spring like a cat over desks, snatch the test, shred it and toss it dramatically into the trash can hoping to make an example for anyone even thinking of cheating.  What it actually did was motive those who wanted a challenge.  “I’ll show her.  I’ll figure out a way to get around her glaring eyes,” they would mutter with a string of deleted expletives.  (They would carve these same deleted expletives into my desks.)  A better approach is to communicate how disappointed the teacher is to find such a capable, bright student who is a leader would stoop to such inappropriate and unnecessary behavior.  This is a good child who has made a bad choice and needs to be reminded that he/she is capable of better choices and succeeding without losing his/her sense of right and wrong. 

                Some students cheat simply because they can.  If no one is monitoring their behavior, they assume that the teacher just does not care, so why not.  I was one of those students in eighth grade.  In U. S. History, Mr. Spencer would distribute the tests and go to his desk in the back of the room and grade papers.  He never monitored or spoke to us whenever we took a test.  I would either sit at an angle or hold my test above my head so the two boys who sat behind me could copy the answers.  I know I would have never done that if he had made some effort to monitor us, because I never tried it in any of my other classes.  Plus, it had an added benefit.  It is really important to feel accepted in middle school.  My mother had told me that boys did not like girls who were too smart, but they certainly liked you when you gave them the answers to the test. 

                Next, there are the parents who enable their children to cheat.  These are the parents who buy them Cliffs Notes and encourage them to read it instead of the assigned novel.  These are the parents who sign their child’s reading chart without actually monitoring his reading.  These are the parents who blame the teacher when their child is finally caught cheating.  What these parents don’t understand is they are not helping their child.  

                Finally is the bigger problem: the glorification of unethical behavior.  In the last few years of teaching, there has been a growing trend: students networking with other students to cheat for each other.  Some of these students are social engineers using social media, accepting bribes and making cheating an industry.  These are the students who need to learn that Bernie Madoff  and others like him who cheat others out of million for their own personal gains are not heroes. In fact a new business has emerged that will complete students' homework for them for a price. Write My Paper.com will write papers for students or complete math problems for a price.  

                How do we solve this problem?  First, as adults, both teachers and parents, we need to talk to our children about why trust is so important.  If we didn’t all follow the rules and stop at stop signs, there would be more automobile crashes.  Ours is a society depends on trust.  We need to talk about pride in our work.  We need to talk about the reason we get a good education.  You certainly wouldn’t want open-heart surgery from a doctor who cheated his way through medical school. Second, we need to model ethical behavior as parents and teachers.  Third, when students do cheat, we need to tell them how disappointed we are, and help them accept the consequences of their behavior.  Fourth, as teacher and parents, we need to monitor their behavior and set up procedures that make it difficult to cheat.  Fifth, we need select heroes who behave ethically by carefully selecting the movies and books that demonstrate honorable behavior.  Finally let’s give our students kudos (the big thumbs-up) for behaving ethically.