Four Ways To Reduce Cheating or How is Cheating on a Test like Snagging a Bagel?

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Four Ways To Reduce Cheating or

How is cheating on a test like snagging a bagel?

By Jill Jenkins

Stephen D. Leavitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s book Freakonomics examines the story of Paul Feldman who rewarded his department by bringing a knife, bagels and cream cheese every Friday.  He set out a basket with a sign indicating that the cost of each bagel with cream cheese was one dollar.  Ninety-five percent of those who took a bagel dutifully complied and put a dollar in the basket proving that most people are honest.  When Paul Feldman quit his job to start a company delivering bagels to other business, he kept data on how honest people really were.  Despite that fact that Feldman’s business still operated on the honor code requiring people to pay for the bagels they ate unsupervised, he was able to earn a salary equal to that at his previous job.  It is true that in companies where the employees did not know Paul Feldman, the percentage of those who paid was lower, 80-90%, but it was not enough to disprove that most people are honest.  Although putting an open basket out to collect dollars in an environment where everyone knew him and liked him, was not as effective as putting out a locked box.  No one took the cash out of the basket, took the basket or the box, but they were more likely to pay if there was an appearance of security. Furthermore, when the employees liked their boss, they were more likely to pay for their bagels.  Likewise, in smaller businesses employees were also likely to pay for their bagels.  At businesses where fewer employees paid for their bagels a simple note indicating that he was going to have to raise the price of the bagels since not everyone was paying fairly, the percentage of those paying increase, probably due to peer pressure. 

What can we gleam from the bagel data to reduce cheating in schools? First, like those bagel munching employees most students are honest and don’t cheat.  They are motivated by incentives: economic (which means grades in school because that is how we pay them); social, and moral.  There are four methods teachers can use to reduce cheating: first, make it difficult to cheat; second, develop an amicable relationship with students (guilt works); third, develop a sense of comaraderie among students; and fourth, make the consequences meaningful and significant.

One: Make Cheating Difficult

            Just as collecting bagel money in an open basket proved less effective than a locked box, failure to properly monitor students during testing could prove too tempting for students suffering from wandering eyes.  Technology makes cheating even easier for students who often share log-in and passwords to make a few dollars or for the friendship of a pretty girl or a handsome young man.  As a result, it is imperative that a teacher set up her/his room so access to all  students and monitor logins and test taking.  Be visible. (Don’t you slow down when you see a highway patrol car on a freeway?) Do not correct papers or leave the room while your students are testing. Absolutely, do not go to the faculty room to eat a bagel.

            Another problem I encountered while teaching in an affluent middle school was students who either plagiarized papers or parents who wrote their students papers for them.  In fact, one young man confessed when confronted that he felt overwhelmed, so his mother sent him to bed and copied a paper from the inter-net for him to submit.  A colleague suggested a solution: have students write their rough drafts in class.  I took it a step further.  On the first day I gave students a prompt, modeled how to unpack it and create a prewriting activity: an outline or a cluster.  Then I passed prompts out to groups of four students and wandered about the room helping them as they unpacked each prompt and completed a prewriting activity.  On the second day, I gave each student a prompt and the class period to unpack it, create either an outline or a cluster and write a rough draft.  I collected these at the end of the class period and recorded them in the roll book.  The next day, the students met in the computer lab, picked up their pre-writing and rough draft as they entered and had another class period to type the paper into the computerized writing program, My Access.  Before the next week, I printed each student’s paper.  The next week, I returned the typed papers to a different student and walked the class through a rubric so the student could evaluate the paper they were given and make constructive advice stressing the motto: “Friends don’t let friends turn in bad papers” ensuring that they would make positive and civil recommendations.  The next day, the students met again in the computer lab, retrieved their papers and were given a class period to revise their papers.  The process eliminated the problem of parents writing their children’s papers; it reduced the students’ stress because they were completing the assignment during class time and were given enough support that they felt more capable to complete the work successfully; and it improved the students’ ability to write.

Two: Create a Positive Relationship

When the employees knew and liked their boss, more paid for their bagels.  Likewise, fewer students will cheat if they have a positive relationship with their teacher.  Relationships are important to people.  How do you create a positive relationship with students?   Spend time in the hallway chatting with your students about their lives outside of the classroom.  Complement each student, a little sugar goes a long way.  Find something positive about each student and send a note home to his/her parent describing whatever sterling quality or behavior that student possesses.  If the child does cheat, use it as a learning opportunity to help him/her understand what he/she did that was wrong, why it was wrong, and how he/she could avoid the same errors.  Sometimes appropriate restitution is in order.  For example if a student plagiarizes a paper, perhaps after conferring with his/her parent and the student, he/she could be given an opportunity to rewrite the paper at 80% of the assigned value.  Be cautious of your vocal tones. Do not use anger; instead be disappointed that such a good boy could make such a poor decision.  Guilt is strong force. Don’t attack the child; attack the behavior.  Students who made a bad choice must still accept the consequences, even if they are nice children.

Three: Using Peer Pressure

            In smaller companies with fewer employees, the rate of unpaid bagels was smaller.  Each employee cared that the other employees might think poorly of him if he took a bagel without paying for it.  Children and adolescents care even more about their peers’ opinions than adults do.  As a result, many will choose to cheat to please another student hoping to gain his/her friendship. Teachers cannot control the size of their classes, but they can enhance the effect peers have on each other.  When students are seated in rows and never allowed to interact with each other, they fail to gain a sense of community.  That isolation can lead to more cheating.  At my former teaching assignment, the district decided that each grade level would be assigned to teach Sadlier-Oxford’s Vocabulary in grade seven through twelve.  To our surprise, a clever student had published a webpage with all of the answers making cheating simple.  Although the publishers continued to have these webpages, removed, they would reappear.  As a department, we decided we would approach vocabulary differently.  First, we made the completion of the workbook activities less significant to their grade than the subsequent tests.  Second, we organized students in learning groups of two to four students and gave them class time to complete the workbook activities collaborative during one class period.  Third, we added a variety of learning games to ensure their learning. Fourth we offered extra credit for students who found their vocabulary words in their reading. (Mine were Jenkins’ Jewels worth one point.) Another Jenkins’ Jewel could be earned if your parents signed a note indicating the student had reviewed his vocabulary at home before the test.  Even though the teachers worked collaborative on the workbook activities, they took the tests independently.  Furthermore, we provided each student who received a perfect score a small rubber duckie, a valuable prize for a ninth grade student.  As a result, more students learned the vocabulary and fewer students cheated. When children feel confident in their ability and know the learning material, they are less likely to cheat.  When children feel they are part of a community, they are less likely to risk alienating others in the community by cheating.

Fourth:  Incentives

Incentives can be both positive and negative.  Positive incentives can backfire and result in more cheating if they are too enticing. For example, if I offered students a new I-Pod for perfect scores on their vocabulary tests, students would create a black market of test answers. Rubber Duckies are silly, but lack the value associated with the I-Pod.  The prize or the punishment should not be so insignificant that it does not have the desired effect.  In the book Freakonomics by Stephen D. Leavitt and Stephen J. Dubner, a daycare center in Haifa, Israel wanted to reduce the number of late pick-ups.  They introduced a negative incentive: a three-dollar fine for each child picked-up 10 minutes late.  As a result, the number of late pick-ups increased.  The parents rationalized that they no longer needed to feel guilty about picking their children up late.  If the fine had been more significant they may have reacted differently.   If the fine exorbitant, they would have felt hostile.  Students like these parents need to feel that cheating carries such a high penalty that it is not worth the effort.  Losing all of the credit for a particular test may not be enough, but a one grade drop in their academic grade might be.  Choose your incentive carefully because a penalty too large can create animosity and be counter-effective.  More important there is powers in numbers.  If the school develops a school-wide policy on cheating requiring all teachers to administer the same rigorous incentive, cheating will be reduced. However, this means administrators need to discipline teachers who do not comply with the policy. 

Wise Choices by Schools Improve Students’ Choices

Wise Choices by Schools Improve Students’ Choices

By Jill Jenkins

 

Decisions made in youth affect the economic stability and life-long quality of life.  Many factors affect young people’s ability to make effective decisions:  socio-economic factors, supportive, involved parents, available educational resources, perceived ability and sense of self-worth.  Educators may have no control over socio-economic factors or involved, supportive parents, but there are ways to improve their choices and thus their quality of life.

Lower Socio-Economic Groups

            Although teachers cannot change their students’ socio-economic status, there are ways to reduce its negative impact and enhance students’ ability to make productive choices. Many students from lower-economic groups lack access to computers and/or the internet.  Since success has become tied to technology, lack of access to technology can inhibit their ability to be successful.  To resolve this problem, schools can computer labs available to students before school, at lunch and after school.  North Kansas City Schools and the Coquille School District Superintendent Tim Sweeney have another solution.  Both school districts have put WiFi in their school buses so students can access the internet with Chromebooks. Many school districts in rural areas do not have access to internet providers and many students in urban areas cannot afford them.  Providing this service is less expensive than many districts may imagine.  According to the Kanas City Star, “Coquille School District Superintendent Tim Sweeney said that his district was able to convince the Oregon Department of Education to reimburse 70 percent of the equipment cost for two wireless routers, each one coming in at around $1,100. Sweeney said ODE regularly reimburses school districts for student travel-related expenses, since long-distance road trips are just part of the students' reality in rural Oregon.  The district would be responsible for paying the approximately $80 a month bill from Verizon Wireless, the Internet provider used by the district.”   Some internet providers provide low-cost internet connections and computers to low-income students.  For example, Comcast Cable offers $9.95 per month internet connections and low cost lap tops for $149.00.  Schools need to inform parents about this resource in their own language.

 

Supportive Parents

            Most parents want to support their students’ education regardless of their economic situation.  Language barriers and fear of being deported often prevents them from being actively involved.  To help parents become more involved, invitations to parent workshops need to be delivered in the parent’s native language either by telephone or in handwritten invitations.  The human touch will lessen the parents’ anxieties.  Workshops about how parents might help their children with their academic lessons, resources that might be available to help them, and the processes of enrolling in college and finding financial aid would help parents be more proactive in their children’s choices.  Some parents will erroneously believe that since they never received a college degree, their children certainly shouldn’t require one.  I understand.  My father supported a wife and five children on an eighth grade education.  However, those jobs either no longer exist or pay so little that the child’s quality of life would be significantly reduced.  Workshops for parents about the economic advantage of education should begin as early as preschool or elementary school and continue through high school.  Beginning the process in high school is too late.  

Resources

            Resources need to be available for students during, before and after school.  This means that communities need to financially support schools. At South Jordan Middle School in South Jordan, Utah, a group of teachers are paid to provide tutoring during lunch hour (Lunch School or No Zeros Allowed).  Students who are identified by their teachers are given a sack lunch and their classwork is collected in a centralized location.  The student arrives at the location to eat his lunch while working one-on-one on his/her assigned work with a qualified teacher.  The student gets the individualized instruction he/she needs and completes assigned that he/she has chosen not to complete.  Both skills and understanding are enhanced and his/her ability to make responsible decisions is enhanced as he/she is not allowed to choose to be lackadaisical.  Teachers are the greatest resource and computers and the internet are available.  Students who feel teachers’ care about them and want them to be successful are more likely to make more responsible decision in an attempt to foster that relationship.

Perceived Ability and Self-Worth

            Students who do not believe they are capable will not feel confident to make positive decisions.  According to Luis J Rodriguez’s book, Always Running, La Vida Loco: Gang Days in L.A, as a student who spoke no English, he was placed in the back of the room and made to feel inadequate and incapable. A positive, warm environment is essential for a student to feel inspired and motivated to learn.  As a result, teachers spend hours decorating classrooms and bulletin boards.  Classrooms like those in Detroit’s City Schools that are not clean, safe and appealing send a message to students that their learning is unimportant to society.   Education needs the support of the entire community to instill in students that their success is a priority to the larger community.  Students not only need to feel that they can be successful, but that their success is important.  Teachers and schools need to make every effort to support every student with the resources he/she needs to be successful.  Doing all of this to improve students’ confidence (which means no negative language or insulting attitudes) and self-worth will greatly enhance his/her ability to make constructive decisions.

Natural Consequences

            Every action has an equal, and opposite reaction; every choice has a natural consequence.  Students should not be protected from the consequences of their action: whether they are positive or negative.  In order to understand the consequences of hard work, students who choose not to work must be given more supervision to complete the work or suffer the negative consequences.  Lunch school, summer school or weekend schools all provide students with opportunities and consequences.  They get an opportunity to complete work, but they lose the freedom of socializing with their friends during lunch.  Furthermore, students who refuse to take advantage of the opportunity lose more freedom by having to make up the class in the summer.  Parents should not be allowed to interfere with this learning opportunity because teaching students to behave responsible is too important. 

Win-Win

            Having an educated, productive community improves prosperity, reduces those incarcerated, homeless or on welfare.  Everyone wins.  Urban areas are filled with homeless populations who are not only disenfranchised, but a drain on resources.  It is not their fault.  When schools fail to provide students with the skills to make good choices, those students become entrenched in poverty and unhappiness.  Their frustration results in both drug use and increased crime.  Nevertheless, if these same people are given the skills they need to make more appropriate decisions, they become an asset to communities.  Wasting the resources of a bright, capable individual is a travesty.  Properly funding education is an investment not only of the individual, but of the entire society. 

 

 

 

The New Three R’s of Education: Resourcefulness, Responsibility, and Respect

The New Three R’s of Education: Resourcefulness, Responsibility, and Respect

By Jill Jenkins

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” ― Nelson Mandela

                Formerly, education focused on the three “R’s”: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, but since the expectation of the world has become more complicated the demands on education have also become more complicated.  Students are not only expected to read complex texts from a variety of genres, but respond in a variety of well composed essays and apply a variety of mathematical methods to determine the answers to story problems.  Furthermore, students must successfully apply technology to every discipline and be able to code, decipher code, create webpages, presentations, podcast to name just a few.  What are the most important skills students should develop in school?  The new three R’s of education are Resourcefulness, Responsibility, and Respect.

Resourcefulness

                Technology is changing the world at an incredible pace.  Careers that are important today will not exist in twenty years. How do we prepare students for a world that is unknown to us?  During the industrial revolution, society was changing equally as fast.  The people who succeeded learned to be resourceful.  They continually changed their view, challenging all that they knew, and pushing technology by experimenting and learning from others.   By encouraging students to explore and experiment, teachers can provide students with opportunities to use resources and depend on themselves instead of adults.  How do we do this?  Project based education provides students with the most opportunity to become independent learners, to depend on themselves instead of the teacher.  Students who learn to solve problems and find solutions to simple obstacles make them more useful in the workplace.  For example, if a student does not have access to a computer at home and learns to access resources in the public library or arranges to work before or after school with his educator, he will be more adept to looking outside the box when he is facing challenges in the real world.   Learning to be Resourceful will empower students to succeed in a changing world.

Responsibility

                Responsibility is the second key ingredient to becoming a successful person.  No one ever achieved anything without hard work and accepting the responsibility of his/her own actions.  When parents and teachers do not help students accept consequences for the decisions they make, students never learn to accept responsibility for their adult lives.  When a teen makes poor choice is allowed to escape punishment because of “affluenza,”  he does not become productive member of society. Instead his growth is retarded. Parents or teachers who enable students by helping them skirt responsibility are not helping them. Teachers who only use classroom sets of books because some students forget to bring their books to class regularly are enabling students just like the attorney who argues that his young client does not know right from wrong because of his parents' wealth.  Teaching students that their are both negative and positive consequences for their decisions helps them become more successful adults. Delegating authority with students is another way to teach responsibility. For some specific ideas please see my blog entry;Teaching Responsibility: Delegating Authority and Rewarding Good Behavior -delegating.html. Successful individuals make responsible decisions because they understand that “no man is an island.”  When they behave immorally, others suffer.   As a result, it is important for each student to understand that he is part of a society and his actions not only affect him, but everyone.  Therefore, learning to be a productive responsible member of that society is inherently good.  Again, project based education allows student to learn to meet deadlines in multi-step processes.   A student learns to be responsible for his work instead of depending on teachers to provide all of the learning activities.  Furthermore,  a student is more actively engaged in his/her own learning, so he/she increases his/her academic learning as well as his/her sense of responsibility.

Respect

                Finally, students need to understand the important of Respect.  The world is melting pot of different ethnicities, religions and races.  Showing respect and dignity to others is the only way that anything is going to get accomplished.  Regardless of an individual’s social-economic group, sexual orientation, race, religion, or belief system, he/she must learn to work co-operatively with others.  Manners and kind speech is the first step to accomplishing this.  Educators need to require that students treat each other with respect and dignity.  Teachers must treat all students with respect and dignity because students learn from models.  Students who are required to create projects in groups that are diverse are more likely to show respect in the workplace which may be more diverse than their school.  However, teachers need to actively observe and interact to ensure that students treat each other respectfully.  When my daughter was in fifth grade, one of the students in her class suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder.  The teacher was a young novice who did not teach the other students to show empathy for this disorder.  As a result, the students began moving her personal objects, knocking her books on the floor, and otherwise harassing this young lady to watch her reaction.  Finally when the parent of this child threatened to remove this child from the school, the principal intervened.   If this teacher had explained to the other students about this child’s disability, the students might have learned to treat her with empathy.  When I taught at a school with high functioning autistic students, before placing a student in our class, the school psychologist met with the student and described the strange sounds and behavior this student might display and why he couldn’t help these behaviors.  My students treated this man with respect.  Whenever they expressed frustration with one of his anti-social behavior, I reminded them of his disability.  The experience was a good learning experience for all involved.  Teaching students about cultural and ethnic differences can help them not only show more empathy and acceptance, but avoid behaviors that might be considered disrespectful.   Learning to respect others will help students work successfully in a diverse population.

 

Six Reasons States Are Failing To Attract or Retain Qualified Educators

According to NPR, many states are have a difficult time attracting and retaining qualified teachers and staff.  First, districts are woefully short of funds, thus they offer teachers little financial incentive and few benefits.  Second, the media attacks schools and teachers vilifying them while expecting teachers to use their own time and resources to reinforce the crumbling infrastructure of education systems.  Third, teaching no longer provides teachers with a creative outlet as districts are dictating every lesson, evaluation and procedure in the classroom.  Fourth, teacher-training programs fail to prepare teachers with a realistic view of the difficulties teachers face with social problems, crime and dysfunctional families.  Fifth, to save money, many school districts want to base teachers’ salaries on test performance.  This means that teachers placed in affluent, suburban schools will earn higher salaries than those teaching in lower-socio economic, urban schools.  Thus, the most challenging teaching positions will pay the least. If improving education is truly a priority, funding education, providing appropriate benefits and training teachers to instill a realistic view of the teaching profession. Finally teachers are overwhelmed with demands foisted upon schools and cost cutting methods districts have foisted upon educators making time for proper mentoring difficult. 

 

Reason One:  Funding Education
 

Districts are woefully under-funded and often spend their resources on palatial building and not on teacher’s salaries or benefits.  Regardless, teaching has never been a lucrative career, but teachers in the past still pursued careers in education knowing they were never going to get rich.  Teaching careers offered a stable career where women could work and still share the time on holidays and in the summer to raise their children as their calendars and those of their children were often the same.  It offered both men and women time to explore other careers or travel the world (even though it might be in an old VW bus) and explore other hobbies and interests.  The career offered great medical benefits and an opportunity to retire with both social security, and a stable retirement from the state. Unfortunately, because of cost saving methods in the school districts most of these advantages have disappeared. Many of today’s graduates cannot afford to become teachers because they are overwhelmed with educational loan payments.  Fortunately for me, I graduated in the 1970’s when Lyndon Johnson’s National Defense Loans were available.  If a teacher took an assignment in a Title One School, that teacher’s student loans were excused.   Perhaps, the country could attract more qualified teachers if they offered to excuse the student loans of any student who chose to teach in a public school for five years or more.  The overbearing costs of insurance have been passed onto the teachers.  Perhaps education needs an influx of money, so educators could be offered better health insurance and retirements.

Reason Two: Respect
 

Teachers were once respected and admired by the public.  Today, the media often villifies teaching blaming them for students’ poor performance without considering the social problems that have created the decline in academic performance.  Wealthy Americans design programs that are foisted upon districts with little or no input from teachers.  No one would disagree that schools need to improve, but the number of people who live below the poverty level and the influx of people who have special educational needs including special education and language skills have increased.  All of these factors affect student test scores.  The teaching career has become much more complicated as all of these students are mainstreamed into over-crowded classes.  Without the resources and training to reach the individual needs of all these students, many teachers are leaving the profession in search of a less difficult job.  For example, one of my former students told me that I had inspired her to become a teacher.  After two years of working day and night to keep up with the demands, she quit and went back to law school.  She is now a lawyer making four times more money while she said working considerably fewer hours.  The workload, the pressure from parents and the disrespect by students were key elements in her decision to quit teaching.  Teachers need the support of our community to continue in the profession.  This includes the support of the press.

Reason Three: Stifling Curriculum Demands
 

Teaching used to be a creative outlet where teachers shared ideas and developed new methods, and assignments independently to approach a list of learning goals provided by state curriculum committees.  Today, teachers are often asked to collaborate on units provided by the district or by The Gates Foundation.  Teachers are expected to all teach the same lessons in the same way simultaneously and participate in the same weekly tests.  This homogenous view of instruction is stifling to educators.  Most teachers loved the independent feeling of creating new methodology and assignments to approach learning, but that has all been replaced with a factory version of education. Since the career is no longer personally rewarding, many teachers are leaving the profession.  Yes, there are teachers who are not effective, but they are not the majority of teachers.  Treat teachers as professionals.  When an administrator identifies a teacher who is ineffective, eliminate that teacher.  Do not treat teachers like they are all unprofessional, ineffective individuals who cannot be trusted to do their job.

Reason Four: Teacher Preparation
 

Many students are attracted to teaching because they imagine that teaching will be a continuation of their days as a cheerleader.  They imagine that all students want to attend school and are excited to participate in all of the activities.  Teaching is hard work. Teachers need a strong understanding of the horrors many students face every day before they arrive at school.  Many students arrive at school hungry because their families are homeless.  Many students are abused by parents or have experienced such violence in their neighborhood that they are overwhelmed.  I have had a parent who called her children home because she wanted to commit suicide, surrounded by everyone she loved.  I have had a student who arrived as refugee after watching his families murdered.  He was not only emotionally distraught, but unequipped with the language skills or the cultural knowledge to be successful in his new home.  I have had students who were fourth generation gang members.   The horror stories that most teachers could tell are endless and grotesque.  The students who experience these situations do not behave in class like many others.  Simply because they are disruptive or distracted, only means that teachers must work harder to reach them.  When some novice teachers discover that teaching these hard to reach students is part of the reality, they often request that those students be sent to other more experienced teachers or they leave the profession.  Teaching preparation programs need to prepare students for the reality of public education.  Yes, there are still the cheerleaders who join every club and love school, but they are not the only students in the school.  If teacher preparation programs allowed students to interact with the real world problems before their first teaching profession, those teachers who have an unrealistic perspective of education might choose a more appropriate career before they damage these fragile children. 

Reason Five: Connecting Salary to Test Performance
 

Basing teacher’s salary on test performance is counter-productive because the students who are the most challenging to teach are housed in schools that are the most likely to have the lowest scores and those scores are the less likely to improve quickly.  According to the Center for  Public Education, although most states differ in their definition and approach to English Language Learners (ELL), most agree that it takes at least six years for these students to become proficient in English.  This means that they are not going to show significant growth in test scores until their language skills to improve.   As a result, we are rewarding teachers for taking the easiest jobs in the most affluent neighborhoods where parents are involved in their student’s education and often pay for additional training beyond their education in the school.   If we are going to attract teachers to teach in challenging schools, we need to pay them accordingly.  

Reason Six: Time

Teachers are overwhelmed with the demands foisted on schools by outside organizations and cost-saving methods leaving little time to properly assist new recruits.  Teachers have been asked to employ new technologies, new teaching methods and a new, demanding curriculum while many districts are taking teachers’ consultation periods: thus, teaching more students with fewer teachers and less insurance costs. Adding extra pressure to over-worked teachers means all planning and correcting is done at home.  As a result, an eight hour a day job becomes a twelve to fifteen hour a day job.  All of this leave little time to properly supervise or mentor young recruits. 

Leveling the Playing Field

Leveling the Playing Field

By Jill Jenkins

     For the seventeen years of my career, I taught in inner-city high schools where students often struggled.  Some were homeless; some worked eight hours a night at an after school job to help support their families; some watched younger siblings while their single parent worked two jobs; and one was raising his younger siblings because both parents were incarcerated.  Excelling in academically demanding classes was difficult for them and so was participating in extra-curriculum activities.  Properly preparing for the rigors of college is difficult for a student who has to negotiate with the gym teachers to shower at school because his water has been shut off.  For twenty-three years of my education career, I taught in an affluent, suburban neighborhood where helicopter parents not only ensured that their children arrived at school everyday with their homework in hand, but insisted that they received every educational advantage that their child was eligible for.  These students were tutored, took voice, violin, dance and guitar lessons.  They played sports outside of school and had private coaches.  They traveled the world and attended workshops and camps in the summer where they learned about computers, science, biking, swimming, basketball and the arts.  When these students graduated, they had already completed two years of college in concurrent enrollment, or A.P. classes while applying for several colleges, visiting campuses with their parents and applying for every available scholarship.  These students are prepared for the rigors of college; however, they are stressed from their parents’ high expectation and relentless pushing.  How can we level the playing fields, so students with language or financial barriers have an equal change for a quality education?

AVID

A Visa In Determination, AVID, is a program that teaches students critical skill, learning skills, literary, and math skills.  It supports teachers with new methodology and it provides students with a mentor teacher who supports his/her learning and helps him/her set goals for higher education.  This means that students who do not have the support system at home to develop their skills and establish high expectations for the future education can get that help at school.  By keeping class sizes small, students individual learning and motivation issues can be answered more effectively.  If you are teaching in an urban school with students who struggle, AVID could provide support for those struggling students.

Collaborating, Caring Staff

Students may choose only a few staff members with whom they share their struggles.  If those challenges are going to be solved, that information needs to be shared with all of his/her teachers and support staff including the counseling staff, social workers and outside agencies designed to assist at-risk students.  Working together and given the freedom to think outside the box, the collaborating team can help the student overcome his/her situation.  For example, one of my past students was forced to attend my school by a father who wished to take him away from the influence of a gangs in his home school.   Because he was unhappy about the situation, he was often withdrawn or arrogant.  Since we were aware of the situation, the team made an effort to help the student adapt, but just when he began to flourish, his father died from a drug over-dose. Since the teachers were all made aware of the situation, each member of the team could give the student a little leeway in completing assignments and offer him emotional support. Regardless of the students’ economic situation, all students can benefit from individualized attention, but students in urban schools more often encounter complications in their lives that are better addressed by the collaborative effort of a caring staff.  This also means that poisonous teachers who ridicule and bully students need to be identified and relieved of their position.  Such teachers can do damage that is difficult to undo.  In many urban schools, teachers are the only stable adults in students’ lives.  As a result, it is important that these adults are well-adjusted, caring role models.

Identifying Talented and Bright Students

            Students who attend more affluent schools often have parents who spend considerable resources identifying and developing their child’s talents.  Students who feel successful develop the confidence to improve their abilities in other areas.  For example, students who are given music lessons young develop both sides of their brain. According to Psychology Today, “Musical Training Optimizes Brain Function” when a child is given musical training before the age of seven, the child communication between different parts of the brain increases. This means that these students perform better in their other disciplines.  However, when funding for education becomes difficult the arts are often the first cut.  This means that students in elementary schools in most inner cities rarely have an opportunity to learn to play an instrument.  By identifying students’ talents and helping them develop those skills, students feel successful and proud of their abilities.  When students have a sense of accomplishment, they are motivated to try harder and as a result become more successful.  It doesn’t matter where the student’s talent lies; help him find it and develop it.  Schools need to offer classes not only in music, but sports, the arts, technology, shop, home economics, foreign languages and solid academics.

Respecting Each of Other and Cultural Differences

         Since most urban schools have diverse populations, it is even more important that students’ learn to respect each other and the cultural differences.  Giving each ethnic group an opportunity to share their culture’s music, food, and customs is the first step.  Teachers need to continually reinforce the importance of treating other’s religious beliefs, customs, food, and music with respect.  Often conflicts occur when students’ are ignorant of other’s beliefs. They need to learn in embrace differences and accept others with differing views. Sometimes there will be disagreements.  Giving students’ skills to respectfully disagree with another student is a life skill that will serve them in the real world.

Access to Technology

      Research shows that at-risk students are enhanced by technology, but many of these students lack the resources to afford computers or the internet to complete their studies at home.  There are resources that teachers can use.

·      Comcast offers $10 internet to financially disadvantaged students.

·      In Tacoma, Washington the local school district and KBTC offer summer workshops on technology

·      The Gates Foundation

·      DonorsChoose.org

·      Public libraries offer computers and internet resources

·      Many corporations have offered grants to increase technology in school according to Latino Magazine. Com.  They include:

o   Cigna

o   Comcast

o   National Instruments

o   National Grid

o   BP

o   Symantec

o   IBM

o   Shell

o   Samsung

o   Lockheed Martin

o   Ingersoll Rand

o   Northrop Grumman (Exxon Mobil)

Writing grants to help your students have the resources they need and informing parents of the resources available to them can help students have access to computers and the Internet. 

Comprehensive Language Development Programs

            Finally, for students to be successful they need a well-developed vocabulary and a solid grasp of the English language.  Many students live in homes with limited access to books and with parents who have little or no education.  Many students live in homes where English is not spoken.  It is difficult for these students to compete with students from more affluent neighborhoods where parents are professionals with advanced degrees and who have had access to books long before they entered school.  For this reasons, teachers in all disciplines must make a concerted efforts to make teaching vocabulary part of their curriculum.  Reading a variety of genres with also help to expand students’ vocabulary.  Mainstreaming students who speak little or no English in traditional classes of 40 students will do little to help them develop the language skills they need.  These students require a ESL language class where they can receive the help they need to learn to speak, read and write in English.  The instructors of the ESL classes must be well trained and certified to help these students develop the language skills they need to be successful.

In Conclusion

            Furthermore, counseling staffs need to walk students through the process of selecting colleges and applying for them.  The entire staff needs to become the student’s advocate helping them make appropriate decisions to prepare for a successful academic career beginning in grade school through high school.  Providing these services for all at-risk students will not be cheap, but it is a good investment.  Students who are not prepared are condemned to live in poverty, and often either fall prey to crime or perpetrate it.  Solving these problems create expenses that far exceed the money needed to prepare these students.  Furthermore, “a human being is a horrible thing to waste.”  It is time to level the playing field and help all of our students succeed.