Before my students left for break, I emailed them, my parents, announced in class, AND posted on the board that there would be no work over break because it's BREAK.
I told them they were welcome to take their independent reading books home if they wanted. No assignment, now work, just read. But that I encouraged them to play, see friends, enjoy family, recharge.
When I was in high school, and later taught at the high school I graduated from, there was a math teacher (and sorry, but it's usually the older math teachers :-( ) who took great delight it seemed in assigning HUGE, MONSTROUS packets of work that not only had to be done over break but which the teacher insisted be MAILED by a certain date in order to be graded. They failed students if they didn't. Ignored tears about family issues.
I never understood one, why they were allowed to do this, and two, why parents and students did not revolt.
I kind of feel the same way about athletic events/conferences scheduled over break. It's a BREAK.
I survey my students at the end of the semester to see what I can do better, get them to reflect a bit, see what they're struggling with. Overwhelmingly this semester my students said they struggled with anxiety and depression and I think educators need to seriously consider how we're contributing to this.
This past semester as I helped struggling students with other classes' work or during Saturday school, I saw math and social studies packets upon packets. One student struggled with a social studies packet. I asked, honestly wanting to know, if doing that helped them learn. They said no, they just looked it up online and filled in the blanks.
Another students had missed a lot of school because of hospitalization. Was given a handful of packets to do for math. Now, I can build furniture, figure out lumber orders, cook, and balance my checkbook, so freshman algebra is about my limit. This student was an English Language Learner, and was struggling with writing out expressions. So I sat down, read them outloud, and we worked through them. Student started to "see" it. We did a whole page, which first of all was like 30 items. And poorly designed, not enough space to work through. I went to get up and the student said, oh no, there's a whole back.
That's ridiculous.
I truly believe that each teacher should be required to answer, for every assignment, "What is the pedagogical reason for assigning this?"
If you can't answer that, you are doing something wrong.
So, what is the purpose of homework? Most teachers will tell you it is for practice. But here's the problem with that. You spend a class period teaching a concept. Then you send the student home with work to practice. But what if they don't get it? How long do they struggle with those 30, 40, 50 problems? What about students who have no help at home? What does that do to the socio-emotional status of our students?
I know some teachers do better. The best practice I've heard for math is that the last 10-15 minutes of class were set aside for the students to start their homework, so if they needed help the teacher was there to help. When the bell rang, the students had to then do 5 more, wherever they were. That was it.
Homework does not replace teaching, instruction, but I think as what teachers have to cover has increased, and time to do it has decreased, homework has become a convenient place to dump "coverage." I've heard teachers point to Common Core State Standards and comment that they can't cover it all. I know math teachers in my school say they spend fall semester reteaching material from pre-algebra, getting further and further behind. And I sympathize with all of these challenges.
But sending work home that students can't do does not help. Homework that depends on technology and resources punishes your poorer students. Homework over breaks, weekends, and requiring hours and hours, hurts your students.
My students have 7 periods on Monday, 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 6th on Tuesday/Thursday, and 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th on Wednesday/Friday.
Let's do our own math. Let's say each class gives 30-60 minutes of homework (and from what the kids tell me, that's less than half of what they have). That's a MINIMUM of 2 hours of homework a night. Not including time spent on the bus. Or watching siblings. Or working.
Ask your students what a typical day looks like for them. Do the homework math.
We're doing active, avoidable, harm to our students.
My students do not have homework. We do all the work in class. The only time they have homework is if they did not finish work in class, and this rarely happens. I design my station rotations to include weeks of class time to work on projects, writing assignments, walk them through the steps, provide the technology, materials, resources.
Because a guiding principle in my class is that if it's important for them to learn it, it's important for them to learn it. Which is why I take make up work, late work, let them retake tests, revise assignments.
Most schools are on winter break, and I'm seeing more and more posts about parents angry, justifiably so, about their children having to complete useless assignments over break. Stressing about getting things done.
Instead of assigning book reports, on the day back, ask students to talk about what they did, read, watched. Share what you did. Start conversations, share. Show interest. Studies have proven that rote work robs students of a love of reading.
Do not assign packets.
Tell and show your students and families that you respect them, their time, their calendars, by not assigning work. Tell them, teach them, that unplugging, respecting family, taking time off is important.
Teachers get new starts twice a year, even if you're like me and teach year long classes.
So January is a new start.
Ask yourself why you give the work, assignments you do. What is the goal? Does the assignment meet that goal? If you're using homework to check a box, is there a better way to do it? There is, trust me.
Have you asked your students what you could do better? What they need? What would help them?
Dr. K. Shimabukuro
Friday, December 28, 2018
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
Failing My Kids Every Day: Questions About Teaching in Albuquerque, New Mexico
I have said again and again on Twitter that this has been my best year teaching, out of 18, in large part because of people of color, educators of color who give so generously of their time. Also groups like #DisruptTexts and #WeNeedDiverseBooks. They carry the lionshare of the water for the rest of us, and I am infinitely grateful for it, my classroom and students are better for it.
As I have done this reading, listened, taken notes, a couple of things have occurred to me, that worry me.
My school is above 1600 students. It may rise to 1700 with the recent redistricting.
85% of my students are Chican@.
7% Indigenous, mostly Navajo, but also Pueblo Indians
2% Black
5% White
The percentage on Asian students is not recorded but we have a fair amount of Thai and Vietnamese students.
95% minority enrollment
7% of our students are proficient in math, below the 21% New Mexico stat.
28 % of our students are proficient in reading, the same as the state state.
We're in the bottom 50% for performance.
Our graduation rate is 67% (which by the way is what it was back in 1972).
70% of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch.
The number of teachers we have is down 9% in five years. We have a large teacher turnover.
The majority of our teachers are white.
Last year I looked for resources, articles, readings, that would help me better serve my mostly Chican@ and Indigenous, New Mexican students.
I found two articles:
That was it. Today I found this 1972 study from the United States Commission on Civil Rights on the education of Mexican American students. It covers California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico. Reading through the statistics is sobering, considering that none of the numbers have changed. So in 40 years, we've made no improvements in how we serve our students.
I've also read websites and books about the Indian Boarding School system in New Mexico.
I can find no research that tells me how to best serve my students. What I am missing, lacking, how best to reach them. It's piecemeal of trying to take the lessons I learned from texts aimed at serving the needs of Black and urban students, students in poverty, with the piecemeal, often outdated, tangential works I can find about my type of students.
And PLEASE, if I have somehow missed some crucial book, article, blogger, research, TELL ME.
All of this has brought home just how deeply and how awfully, I am failing my students.
My students come from backgrounds that are deeply different from accepted, typical, Anglo culture. So how can mostly Anglo teachers serve them?
How can we know how they learn best?
How can we privilege their narratives?
Their history?
How can we honor and respect their elders, communities, and bring them into our classrooms?
How do we overcome fear and distrust of Anglo systems and institutions (like public schools) where they feel safe doing this?
How do we need to change how we teach our content AND the content we teach to best serve our students?
I do not have good answers. I can share what I've done, changes I've made to my classroom to try and do better.
I know I am still not doing what is best for my students. I do not speak Spanish. I get someone to make my calls to Spanish families, so they get contact just like my English speaking families do. But it's not the same.
I've tried in the past to reach out to the reservation school to open dialogue, and maybe do some shadowing, but I've not tried as hard as I could. We lose a lot of our reservation kids, they come freshmen year, and the almost hour commute, the culture shock, is often too much and they drop out. I know I am failing these kids.
I feel like I don't know enough about Navajo, Pueblo culture, and how to best serve those kids.
So, I don't have answers. I have questions. Lots and lots of questions. And a soul sadness that we fail these kids again and again. Systematically and individually.
I wish we had more Indigenous, Native, Chican@ and Black teachers for my students to see. I wish they would do this work, and share it. But I also get that white people need to stop asking marginalized groups to do all the work. On the flip side, I also don't think white teachers need to be studying these communities under a microscope divorcing the customs, literature, stories, and beliefs from the actual people and communities. I strongly believe that this type of work needs to be done by native New Mexicans, Chican@, Indigenous teacher scholars.
While my focus here is on my students who aren't being served, I know too that similar posts could be written about communities and schools that serve predominantly Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, other Native populations. How many students are we failing? How many Anglo teachers aren't even self-aware enough to know or care they're actively harming and failing their students, families, communities.
Here are books, recommendations, people, that I have learned from, and I believe contain valuable lessons that can be applied in some ways if not all to the communities we serve:
Addendum: I thought as I encountered them, I'd add articles, resources
As I have done this reading, listened, taken notes, a couple of things have occurred to me, that worry me.
My school is above 1600 students. It may rise to 1700 with the recent redistricting.
85% of my students are Chican@.
7% Indigenous, mostly Navajo, but also Pueblo Indians
2% Black
5% White
The percentage on Asian students is not recorded but we have a fair amount of Thai and Vietnamese students.
95% minority enrollment
7% of our students are proficient in math, below the 21% New Mexico stat.
28 % of our students are proficient in reading, the same as the state state.
We're in the bottom 50% for performance.
Our graduation rate is 67% (which by the way is what it was back in 1972).
70% of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch.
The number of teachers we have is down 9% in five years. We have a large teacher turnover.
The majority of our teachers are white.
Last year I looked for resources, articles, readings, that would help me better serve my mostly Chican@ and Indigenous, New Mexican students.
I found two articles:
- "Classroom Management in a Navajo Middle School" from Theory Into Practice by Jane McCarthy and Joe Benally, 2003. It addresses Navajo students in Arizona.
- "Cultural Implications for Navajo Students' Learning Styles and Effective Teaching Methods" from The Journal of Educational Issues of Minority Students by Rangasamy Ramasamy, 1996.
That was it. Today I found this 1972 study from the United States Commission on Civil Rights on the education of Mexican American students. It covers California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico. Reading through the statistics is sobering, considering that none of the numbers have changed. So in 40 years, we've made no improvements in how we serve our students.
I've also read websites and books about the Indian Boarding School system in New Mexico.
Education at the Edge of Empire: Negotiating Pueblo Identity in New Mexico's Indian Boarding Schools (Indigenous Confluences) is good, as is One House, One Voice, One Heart: Native American Education at the Santa Fe Indian School.
New Mexico has a complicated history, defined by class status due to Spanish land grants, Chican@ identity, Pueblo identity, Navajo reservations, mixing of cultures. As my students and I often discuss, there has always been a lot of movement back and forth across the border, and just because NM became a state in 1912 and an imaginary line was drawn in the air doesn't mean hundreds of years of culture and tradition changed.
In addition to this context, we need to add the fact that New Mexico has the largest amount of employees employed by the federal government, including Sandia Labs and Los Alamos. There's a complicated history with the federal government, from the eviction and erasure of Natives off of the Los Alamos plateau for the Manhattan Project, issues with Indigenous students being adopted off reservations by white people, a current distrust of Indigenous families of Children and Family Services.
The stamp of colonialism, the internalized lessons of this, is deeply stamped onto my students and how they view the world.
In addition to all of these complicated issues is the high poverty and urban setting of my school.
So my New Mexican students are not New York Latinx. They are not Los Angeles Chican@s.
I can find no research that tells me how to best serve my students. What I am missing, lacking, how best to reach them. It's piecemeal of trying to take the lessons I learned from texts aimed at serving the needs of Black and urban students, students in poverty, with the piecemeal, often outdated, tangential works I can find about my type of students.
And PLEASE, if I have somehow missed some crucial book, article, blogger, research, TELL ME.
All of this has brought home just how deeply and how awfully, I am failing my students.
My students come from backgrounds that are deeply different from accepted, typical, Anglo culture. So how can mostly Anglo teachers serve them?
How can we know how they learn best?
How can we privilege their narratives?
Their history?
How can we honor and respect their elders, communities, and bring them into our classrooms?
How do we overcome fear and distrust of Anglo systems and institutions (like public schools) where they feel safe doing this?
How do we need to change how we teach our content AND the content we teach to best serve our students?
I do not have good answers. I can share what I've done, changes I've made to my classroom to try and do better.
- I no longer teach folklore. First, folklore is often racist, in its approach and scholarship. Second, while folklore and folk tales is often used to check a diversity box, as Debbie Reese points out, these are not abstract stories, they are the personal, sacred beliefs of people. They are not tropes to "study" in the abstract.
- I made a concerted effort to buy books and comics by Native/Indigenous authors, although it is hard to find Indigenous authors from HERE. I was really excited when Rebecca Roanhorse's Trail of Lightning was released, but as Indigenous folx have noted, it's very problematic.
- I also teach The Milagro Beanfield War, Underdogs, Y No Se Lo Trago La Tierra. Not all of these are by Chican@ authors, or set in New Mexico, but Milagro is about New Mexican land grants, and the students "see" themselves in the story. Underdogs privileges narratives they don't often see, and history they aren't taught. Y No Se Lo Trago La Tierra is set in Texas but students "get" the life is hell metaphor. I teach the Spanish-English edition which also lets a lot of my students show off their skills.
- I also bought a lot of books like The Hate You Give, Ghost Boys, Kwame Alexander's series, Miles Morales, Boondocks, All American Boys, because while my school does not have a lot of Black students, they are still under-served, and not seen. And I want my students to see themselves in what they read as much as possible.
- In the spring, when I teach Romeo and Juliet, I'm going to steal a page out of my friend Thomas Lecaque. When he teaches history, he starts with what that area that their school is on was like- 10,000, 5,000, 1,000 years ago. So when I teach Shakespeare, I'm going to teach it through the context of what New Mexico was like in 1595, both Pueblo and Spanish culture.
- On days like Columbus Day, before Thanksgiving, I teach lessons that ask students to research true history, dismantle myths, and do land acknowledgements, asking them to explicitly think about these things. When I teach American Literature in 11th grade, I start with Native stories, and focus on the tale of the Taino, not Columbus. We talk a lot about institutional racism, colonialism, and how people and their narratives are erased.
- I do not teach the canon anymore. And in our next unit which is novels, the students are researching who is left out of narratives in To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men. Whose story isn't told, or is erased. The issues with privileging white narratives.
- I speak out loudly, and often, in department meetings about decolonizing our texts, not teaching the canon, and how we're harming out students by continuing these practices. These mostly devolve into screaming matches, and nothing changes, but...
- Silly as it sounds, I make sure I wear my #DisruptText, We Need Diverse Books, Decolonize Your Syllabus, Decolonizer, 19 Pueblos of NM, Black Lives Matter, Cite Black Women, I Stand With Standing Rock t-shirts on a regular basis. Not as a replacement for actual action, but a signal to my students.
I know I am still not doing what is best for my students. I do not speak Spanish. I get someone to make my calls to Spanish families, so they get contact just like my English speaking families do. But it's not the same.
I've tried in the past to reach out to the reservation school to open dialogue, and maybe do some shadowing, but I've not tried as hard as I could. We lose a lot of our reservation kids, they come freshmen year, and the almost hour commute, the culture shock, is often too much and they drop out. I know I am failing these kids.
I feel like I don't know enough about Navajo, Pueblo culture, and how to best serve those kids.
So, I don't have answers. I have questions. Lots and lots of questions. And a soul sadness that we fail these kids again and again. Systematically and individually.
I wish we had more Indigenous, Native, Chican@ and Black teachers for my students to see. I wish they would do this work, and share it. But I also get that white people need to stop asking marginalized groups to do all the work. On the flip side, I also don't think white teachers need to be studying these communities under a microscope divorcing the customs, literature, stories, and beliefs from the actual people and communities. I strongly believe that this type of work needs to be done by native New Mexicans, Chican@, Indigenous teacher scholars.
While my focus here is on my students who aren't being served, I know too that similar posts could be written about communities and schools that serve predominantly Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, other Native populations. How many students are we failing? How many Anglo teachers aren't even self-aware enough to know or care they're actively harming and failing their students, families, communities.
Here are books, recommendations, people, that I have learned from, and I believe contain valuable lessons that can be applied in some ways if not all to the communities we serve:
- @ValeriaBrownEdu and her #ClearTheAir work is invaluable
- @juliaerin80
- @Ebonyteach I can't wait to read her new book The Dark Fantastic
- @TheJLV
- @diversebooks and https://diversebooks.org/
- @triciaebarvia and #DisruptTexts
- Teaching Tolerance
- Facing History
- #EduColor
- Rethinking Schools
- @MisterMinor
- @ProjectLITComm
- Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom by Lisa Delpit
- Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School by Carla Shalaby
- Being the Change by Sara K. Ahmed
Certainly not an exhaustive list by any means. By they have deeply informed my teaching, and let me better serve my students.
Addendum: I thought as I encountered them, I'd add articles, resources
Monday, December 24, 2018
The Political Devil Book Progress (almost done)
There is a lot that grad school doesn't teach you. Some programs don't teach you how to teach. Some don't teach you how to publish. How to present. How to write a book proposal. How to turn your dissertation into a book. How to create an index, get image permissions. There are a couple of books that offer some advice, but it's often a gap.
I defended my dissertation in October 2017.
In November I had a book contract.
I graduated in December.
Once I had the book contract I started a notebook for the book project. I divided it into chapters with tabs. For the next several months as I thought of things, revisions, additions, ideas, I would jot them down in the chapter they belonged in.
I did no writing other than this.
The whiteboard was again my guide. I jotted the main ideas for the chapter, then updated with Post-Its about word counts and pages. I knew the manuscript had to be longer than the diss, and while I thought the extra chapter would get me there, I was still a little nervous.
In May once school was out for the summer, I printed out the dissertation, and read through it all. I made copious notes. Which ended up being sort of a useless exercise. Kind of.
I read the whole thing. I did make notes, but this exercise proved to me, exposed to me, how the book would not be the diss. The dissertation also revealed that I knew what was at the heart of my argument all along. The subtitle was: Devilish Leaders, Demonic Parliament, and Diabolical Rebellion. The dissertation worked through chronology but my subtitle made me realize that the trends should go thematically. And that reoriented my entire thinking. I also knew that I was going to explicitly put back the folkloric work the English political devil does even though I'd been told to take it out from the diss.
In June I started with the new chapter I knew I needed to write, on the devil in English pamphlets, that would be the ending, culminating, chapter. I wanted to have as much time as possible to do this new work. The first version of the diss had a different version of a chapter about pamphlets.
In July I rewrote Chapter 1: Devilish Leaders. In August Chapter 2: Demonic Parliament which I changed to Fiendish Constructions. In September Chapter 3: Satanic Speech. In October Chapter 4: Diabolical Rebellion. This chapter took longer than I expected, but because I knew I only had the intro and conclusion to revisit in November I knew I had some leeway. Also, my contract said the manuscript was due 31 January, but I really wanted to get it to my editor before I went back to school, 3 January. But if I needed it, I knew I had a cushion.
The first thing I did was outline the whole book. At the beginning of each month I would revisit the outline for the chapter, adding, going through. Then I would draft the chapter. Then add scholarship. Then print out, read through, with the outline to track organization. Then final draft.
When I started drafting I knew I'd be reorganizing the material but still thought I'd be keeping a lot of what I had. I ended up throwing out most of it. Or rewriting so much as to be unrecognizable. I boiled things down to their most important aspect. I cut a lot of the dependence on other scholars' voices. I wrote clearly.
In many ways it was similar to when I wrote the second version of the dissertation. I know this material back and forth. I knew where things needed to go, how it needed to flow, what to cut, what wasn't needed. I knew what pages of what research filled which gaps.
I kept the bibliography at the end of each chapter at first. Once everything was done I transferred the chapters and bibliography to single documents.
I ripped out all the pages in my notebook that were addressed. Instead, I redid chapter tabs and wrote down throughlines, things to connect, include, based on the other chapters.
I took the beginning of December off for a couple of reasons. The first is I knew the last couple of weeks of school were going to be hectic- grades to post, exams to grade, the teacher's classes I was lesson planning and grading for. I also thought that taking a couple of weeks off from the book before reading the whole thing through for last looks would be good distance.
I have two weeks off for break, and I mapped out one chapter per day to read through, reading through all at once, with the table of contents, and throughline notes in front of me. I also have my notebook to make sure I add the notes I had. Once I've read through it all I'll then type up the notes. It was important for me to get into a flow and stay there.
As I read, the Post-Its on my monitor are consistency notes I need to double check with the whole manuscript.
I printed out the bibliography so I can check/add sources if I needed to.
Going through the Introduction took all day Saturday. It took me a while to get back into the groove of the book and frankly fighting the voices in my head that tell me I'm rubbish for thinking I could write a book. I procrasti-cleaned, rearranged furniture. It took all day.
Sunday Chapter One went well. So either it's really good, or I'm delusional. The work went better, and I was done by lunch.
Today Chapter Two is on deck. The chapters get progressively bigger, so the work day may get longer. But I don't have anything to do. I may go see a movie or read a book, but my time is mine, with just this to do.
It seems really weird that something that has taken up so much of my life is coming to an end. I know that once the manuscript is submitted there's still a lot of work to do, I'll start work on the index, start working on image permissions. It'll go out to peer reviewers, then I'll have those notes. Copyediting. But despite all that work, none of that will be equal to writing the book while teaching high school full time.
So I'm excited. This is big. And this book is good. And it does important work.
I defended my dissertation in October 2017.
In November I had a book contract.
I graduated in December.
Once I had the book contract I started a notebook for the book project. I divided it into chapters with tabs. For the next several months as I thought of things, revisions, additions, ideas, I would jot them down in the chapter they belonged in.
I did no writing other than this.
In May once school was out for the summer, I printed out the dissertation, and read through it all. I made copious notes. Which ended up being sort of a useless exercise. Kind of.
I read the whole thing. I did make notes, but this exercise proved to me, exposed to me, how the book would not be the diss. The dissertation also revealed that I knew what was at the heart of my argument all along. The subtitle was: Devilish Leaders, Demonic Parliament, and Diabolical Rebellion. The dissertation worked through chronology but my subtitle made me realize that the trends should go thematically. And that reoriented my entire thinking. I also knew that I was going to explicitly put back the folkloric work the English political devil does even though I'd been told to take it out from the diss.
In June I started with the new chapter I knew I needed to write, on the devil in English pamphlets, that would be the ending, culminating, chapter. I wanted to have as much time as possible to do this new work. The first version of the diss had a different version of a chapter about pamphlets.
In July I rewrote Chapter 1: Devilish Leaders. In August Chapter 2: Demonic Parliament which I changed to Fiendish Constructions. In September Chapter 3: Satanic Speech. In October Chapter 4: Diabolical Rebellion. This chapter took longer than I expected, but because I knew I only had the intro and conclusion to revisit in November I knew I had some leeway. Also, my contract said the manuscript was due 31 January, but I really wanted to get it to my editor before I went back to school, 3 January. But if I needed it, I knew I had a cushion.
The first thing I did was outline the whole book. At the beginning of each month I would revisit the outline for the chapter, adding, going through. Then I would draft the chapter. Then add scholarship. Then print out, read through, with the outline to track organization. Then final draft.
When I started drafting I knew I'd be reorganizing the material but still thought I'd be keeping a lot of what I had. I ended up throwing out most of it. Or rewriting so much as to be unrecognizable. I boiled things down to their most important aspect. I cut a lot of the dependence on other scholars' voices. I wrote clearly.
In many ways it was similar to when I wrote the second version of the dissertation. I know this material back and forth. I knew where things needed to go, how it needed to flow, what to cut, what wasn't needed. I knew what pages of what research filled which gaps.
I kept the bibliography at the end of each chapter at first. Once everything was done I transferred the chapters and bibliography to single documents.
I ripped out all the pages in my notebook that were addressed. Instead, I redid chapter tabs and wrote down throughlines, things to connect, include, based on the other chapters.
I took the beginning of December off for a couple of reasons. The first is I knew the last couple of weeks of school were going to be hectic- grades to post, exams to grade, the teacher's classes I was lesson planning and grading for. I also thought that taking a couple of weeks off from the book before reading the whole thing through for last looks would be good distance.
As I read, the Post-Its on my monitor are consistency notes I need to double check with the whole manuscript.
Sunday Chapter One went well. So either it's really good, or I'm delusional. The work went better, and I was done by lunch.
It seems really weird that something that has taken up so much of my life is coming to an end. I know that once the manuscript is submitted there's still a lot of work to do, I'll start work on the index, start working on image permissions. It'll go out to peer reviewers, then I'll have those notes. Copyediting. But despite all that work, none of that will be equal to writing the book while teaching high school full time.
So I'm excited. This is big. And this book is good. And it does important work.
Friday, December 21, 2018
Redesigning and Reorganizing Big Schools
The first school I taught in was in Brooklyn. It had three floors, and each floor was divided into a school, a response to the large 1500+ students the building, and original school, housed. Enterprise Business Technology, the School for Legal Studies, and Progress. It worked. Each floor had separate staff, principals, students, lunches. We shared the facilities, but did not interact.
For my experience, it was successful. We were a small staff, everyone knew each other. All the English teachers prepped together, shared, we worked with social studies to make interdisciplinary lessons, we knew the science and math teachers, we talked. It was a closeknit group. Don't get me wrong- it was not all laughter and giggles. We weren't all best friends. BUT the structure that was set up made it easy to share and collaborate.
This week, I've been thinking a lot about this model, these experiences.
My current school is over 1600 students. In fact, I think we're over 1700 students with the influx of new students from rezoning.
I've written before about our issues with chronic absenteeism, abysmal graduation rates, below 20% achievement on state reading and math tests. We say we're implementing Tier I interventions. We say we're a Jensen school addressing poverty. In my 3 1/2 years there, I haven't seen anything change.
We re-started a freshman academy this year, and many teachers are expressing frustration that we're paying lip service to stuff, but when we think outside the box, are told no.
So today I sat and mapped out what reorganizing the school would look like.
Divide our campus into three schools. We have three main classroom buildings with roughly the same amount of classrooms, so that seems an easy, natural, division.
Each "house" or academy would have roughly 550 students. We have a principal and three assistant principals. So each one would get a house/academy. We have 5 guidance counselors, a school focus would not mean a reduction in loads for them, but might enable them to work more efficiently with the teachers and principals.
We would still share facilities like the gym, fine arts, performing arts center, etc. But, the schools would have separate lunches.
Our school currently runs on this bell schedule:
We could keep this, but to accommodate the separate lunches, we'd do this:
Monday:
5th: one school goes to lunch at 1130
6th: one at 12 then class. One class, lunch at 1230, then back to class.
Tuesday-Friday
4th/5th: one school goes to lunch at 1130
6th/7th: one at 12 then class. One class, lunch at 1230, then back to class.
I know many schools that break up like this assign the schools themes, topics. They get community sponsors/buy in for support. I think at first, it would be easier to randomly split the schools by numbers, just reorganize, then see if topics/themes come about.
Some choices based on our students would be:
Each house or academy could have a color, an aspect of the school colors- scarlet, blue, gold? Each could have their own name. Our mission statement is Knowledge Today...Success Tomorrow. What if the bilingual academy was Success? Science and Tech was Tomorrow? Humanities was Knowledge?
Some subjects like PE, Science, fine arts, might serve more than one school, but certainly would weigh more one way than the other. So most of the fine arts might be in the humanities school, lower science might be spread evenly, but higher ups like AP and physics, might be in the science and tech. A lot would depend on the teacher, ideally these academies would allow staff to pursue their interests.
I think especially the bilingual/ELL academy would honor our 86% Chican@ population, encourage participation in the bilingual seal program, and better support our ELL students.
Within these schools, there would be roughly 30 faculty, so it'd be easier for them to get to know each other, work together. If it was divided into these schools, then the math, English, history teachers could work to design curriculum, interdisciplinary projects, within those themes/topics, each class supporting and adding to the others.
We'd keep the same mascot, sports teams, clubs, so there'd be that shared set of experiences. Same with dances and such. But the academies could "compete" for spirit things versus grades competing.
The smaller schools, divided on campus, would also mean that we would know all the students in our school. We'd see them in the hall, know their names, be able to intervene, know our families.
Research is a little iffy on this type of division. Some schools who did it say it didn't work, but also couch that by saying that it didn't work because they broke into smaller schools but kept the same structures, so things didn't change. Like freshman or sophomore academies, just breaking down into smaller pieces doesn't fix things. They require perspective shifts and a willingness to do real work. In the schools where the reorganization DID work, graduation rates rose, sometimes as high as 30%. Chronic absenteeism dropped. Test scores rose.
I don't know. I've experienced a LOT where great ideas, easy to execute, were suggested to improve schools, but administration wasn't willing to try them, or tried but didn't support and follow through.
But I am also a worker bee. I am really incapable of sitting by and not trying to help.
Anyone have thoughts- experiences in smaller schools? Successes? Failures? I'd love to hear.
For my experience, it was successful. We were a small staff, everyone knew each other. All the English teachers prepped together, shared, we worked with social studies to make interdisciplinary lessons, we knew the science and math teachers, we talked. It was a closeknit group. Don't get me wrong- it was not all laughter and giggles. We weren't all best friends. BUT the structure that was set up made it easy to share and collaborate.
This week, I've been thinking a lot about this model, these experiences.
My current school is over 1600 students. In fact, I think we're over 1700 students with the influx of new students from rezoning.
I've written before about our issues with chronic absenteeism, abysmal graduation rates, below 20% achievement on state reading and math tests. We say we're implementing Tier I interventions. We say we're a Jensen school addressing poverty. In my 3 1/2 years there, I haven't seen anything change.
We re-started a freshman academy this year, and many teachers are expressing frustration that we're paying lip service to stuff, but when we think outside the box, are told no.
So today I sat and mapped out what reorganizing the school would look like.
Divide our campus into three schools. We have three main classroom buildings with roughly the same amount of classrooms, so that seems an easy, natural, division.
Each "house" or academy would have roughly 550 students. We have a principal and three assistant principals. So each one would get a house/academy. We have 5 guidance counselors, a school focus would not mean a reduction in loads for them, but might enable them to work more efficiently with the teachers and principals.
We would still share facilities like the gym, fine arts, performing arts center, etc. But, the schools would have separate lunches.
Our school currently runs on this bell schedule:
We could keep this, but to accommodate the separate lunches, we'd do this:
Monday:
5th: one school goes to lunch at 1130
6th: one at 12 then class. One class, lunch at 1230, then back to class.
Tuesday-Friday
4th/5th: one school goes to lunch at 1130
6th/7th: one at 12 then class. One class, lunch at 1230, then back to class.
I know many schools that break up like this assign the schools themes, topics. They get community sponsors/buy in for support. I think at first, it would be easier to randomly split the schools by numbers, just reorganize, then see if topics/themes come about.
Some choices based on our students would be:
- A bilingual/ELL school
- Spanish
- ELL
- French
- Bilingual classes
- Science
- Math
- Social studies
- A CTE/Science and Tech
- Autos
- Woods
- Physics (AP)
- ROTC or their ROV/tech focus
- Culinary
- Computers
- Jewelry
- Photography
- Yearbook
- Another would be fine arts/humanities.
- English
- 9-11
- AP
- Film Criticism
- Shakespeare
- Creative Writing
- Psychology
- History
- Sociology
- Music (band/orchestra)
- Theatre
- Fine arts (ceramics, art, drawing)
Each house or academy could have a color, an aspect of the school colors- scarlet, blue, gold? Each could have their own name. Our mission statement is Knowledge Today...Success Tomorrow. What if the bilingual academy was Success? Science and Tech was Tomorrow? Humanities was Knowledge?
Some subjects like PE, Science, fine arts, might serve more than one school, but certainly would weigh more one way than the other. So most of the fine arts might be in the humanities school, lower science might be spread evenly, but higher ups like AP and physics, might be in the science and tech. A lot would depend on the teacher, ideally these academies would allow staff to pursue their interests.
I think especially the bilingual/ELL academy would honor our 86% Chican@ population, encourage participation in the bilingual seal program, and better support our ELL students.
Within these schools, there would be roughly 30 faculty, so it'd be easier for them to get to know each other, work together. If it was divided into these schools, then the math, English, history teachers could work to design curriculum, interdisciplinary projects, within those themes/topics, each class supporting and adding to the others.
We'd keep the same mascot, sports teams, clubs, so there'd be that shared set of experiences. Same with dances and such. But the academies could "compete" for spirit things versus grades competing.
The smaller schools, divided on campus, would also mean that we would know all the students in our school. We'd see them in the hall, know their names, be able to intervene, know our families.
Research is a little iffy on this type of division. Some schools who did it say it didn't work, but also couch that by saying that it didn't work because they broke into smaller schools but kept the same structures, so things didn't change. Like freshman or sophomore academies, just breaking down into smaller pieces doesn't fix things. They require perspective shifts and a willingness to do real work. In the schools where the reorganization DID work, graduation rates rose, sometimes as high as 30%. Chronic absenteeism dropped. Test scores rose.
I don't know. I've experienced a LOT where great ideas, easy to execute, were suggested to improve schools, but administration wasn't willing to try them, or tried but didn't support and follow through.
But I am also a worker bee. I am really incapable of sitting by and not trying to help.
Anyone have thoughts- experiences in smaller schools? Successes? Failures? I'd love to hear.
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