A few weeks ago, my school held a professional development seminar given by two Baltimore City detectives who, very matter-of-factly, gave us the real details about gang activity within our school and the neighboring community. Listening to these two detectives, we learned about hiding knives in hair combs, gang initiation and the appeal of the gang lifestyle. While I appreciated that our administration had organized this meeting, where were the strategies for preventing more children from joining gangs? I just assumed that in a neighborhood traditionally terrorized by gang violence and drug activity, the school would provide preventative measures to help students break free from this lifestyle. Knowing that many of our students live in these violent communities and are not getting the familial support, protection, financial stability and love that they crave, it is easy to see why children join gangs. The fact that we are aware of the emotional needs of our children, needs that are driving them to gangs, leads me to believe that, as a school, we should be filling some of these needs. Unfortunately, this does not occur. It seems we are quick to acknowledge that our students are part of gangs but are unwilling to provide any extra supports necessary, in the early grades especially, to dissuade a child from joining a gang.
As a school community, it feels like we have given up on our children. Maybe the schools think the gang problem is too big for them or would prefer to ignore it, but whether we ignore it or not, this problem is only getting worse. For example, at 2:15 on Tuesday afternoon we were told that the school was in “crisis mode” due to a group of kids waiting outside the school for one of my 8th grade students in a gang related dispute. While of course it was upsetting to know that one of my students was in such serious danger, what upset me the most about this incident was the school’s reaction. Rather than taking a step back and realizing we had lost one of our children to some extremely dangerous gang activity, the school reacted as if there was nothing we could have done to prevent this or to help him now that he is in so much trouble. It was as if he was just another statistic and we were writing him off as another one lost to the “dark side”.
The hopeless mentality that I see at my school is extremely disappointing. Knowing that middle school is probably the most challenging and life changing stage in a child’s development, where they transition from childhood to adulthood and often choose their path in life, how can we give up on them so easily? As an 8th grade teacher, I have watched my students change significantly over the past eight months, some for the better, but many for the worse. The number of gang tags and tattoos has increased significantly and students who were once scoring 90’s are now in danger of failing. Our students are in crisis. The environments where they spend a majority of their time are not giving our children the support they need to make good decisions. For many of our students, their home lives are stressful environments where they feel invisible or even unsafe. As a result, to many students school is a safe haven where they can be protected and are given the attention they crave. When we do not believe that our students can be something besides a statistic and do not provide the supports that we as a school can and should provide such as after school activities, counseling, teachers who care about their students and administrators whose main goal is not to increase statistics, than we have failed as a school and have failed our students.
I realize it is unfair to blame our schools for the prevalence of gang violence in Baltimore City. However, the schools certainly deserve some of the blame when they sit back and do absolutely nothing to prevent our young children from joining gangs and resigning to a life of crime. Our children have names, stories and a tremendous amount of potential and it is our job to make sure they do not become nameless statistics. Until schools are able to provide supports for children at risk of joining gangs, the gang problem in Baltimore City will continue to grow, affecting children as early as elementary school
Friday, April 27, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Hmmm..Should Mayors run schools? I don't know...
The USA Today article, More mayors move to take over schools, discusses how Mayor Martin Chavez of Albuquerque, NM. wants to take over the city's school system. Chavez sees the city school system as a failure. However (surprise surprise), the current school board does not think this to be a good idea. According to the article "...one of the city's 12 high schools made adequate annual yearly progress". Chavez is not the only mayor who wants to move into the role of being head of a cities school system. There are several mayors, of much larger city's that are running the school systems and having success.
There are those who do not think that mayors are capable enough to run entire school systems, and I can understand why some may think that. To be honest, the article shows us that the school systems where mayors are in charge are also experiencing some major academic success. Now the school board in Albuquerque is arguing that they have had recent success with one school in the last three years that has met federal standards. But really, is it a little too late for school boards that are consistently failing?
Now, some education professors have declared that it may be a little too early to declare mayoral leadership in school systems a success. However, if mayors are getting the job done, why are so many people getting upset about this? I know that some say that having one person in charge of the system removes public opinion, but really a lot of times voter turn out is low for these school board elections. To be honest, sometimes elected school board members are elected by their close family, friends, and the teacher union. I am not saying that mayors should always be in charge, but if school systems cannot fix the problem, then something should be done.
There are those who do not think that mayors are capable enough to run entire school systems, and I can understand why some may think that. To be honest, the article shows us that the school systems where mayors are in charge are also experiencing some major academic success. Now the school board in Albuquerque is arguing that they have had recent success with one school in the last three years that has met federal standards. But really, is it a little too late for school boards that are consistently failing?
Now, some education professors have declared that it may be a little too early to declare mayoral leadership in school systems a success. However, if mayors are getting the job done, why are so many people getting upset about this? I know that some say that having one person in charge of the system removes public opinion, but really a lot of times voter turn out is low for these school board elections. To be honest, sometimes elected school board members are elected by their close family, friends, and the teacher union. I am not saying that mayors should always be in charge, but if school systems cannot fix the problem, then something should be done.
Towson U Takes Over...
A recent article in the Baltimore Sun ("Towson U gets state's OK to run three schools" April 26, 2007) describes the takeover of failing Cherry Hill area elementary and middle schools by Towson University. I could not find information on the logistics of a university takeover of public schools, but there was some interesting information on the process of restructuring the schools. Apparently, a number of veteran teachers were transferred from one of the Cherry Hill schools in the interest of restructing the school in a way that would help it begin to meet AYP. The Baltimore City Teachers Union came to the defense of these teachers, arguing that experienced teachers who had been members of a specific school community for over ten years should have the ability to remain in the school despite the fact that the school had not been meeting AYP. Responding to the union and the displaced teachers, a TU representative explained that the teachers were not removed because they weren't good teachers, but because they weren't on board with the mission of the school, specifically the idea that "failure is no option for kids."
I find the TU representative's justification for removing teachers from their positions especially interesting for a couple of reasons. I have a really hard time imagining an effective teacher who believes that students should have an option (and should choose that option?) to fail. With this in mind, the TU rep's comments could be seen as a roundabout way of saying that, in fact, these teachers were not effective educators, and as such were contributing to the failure of the school. If this was the implication, I would tend to agree with TU's dismissal of these teachers, as a teacher who feels comfortable allowing (or thinking about allowing) students to fail would seem to have an inherently flawed approach to teaching (especially in elementary school, which preps for middle school, which preps for high school...AHH!).
The other possibility is that these teachers were dismissed for other reasons, and the justification given to the press was the old "not on board with the mission" excuse. However, there were teachers who were retained at each of the schools, and one would hope that the reason they were retained has to do with their attitude towards student ability and the potential for student achievement. A comment about the BTU's resistance to the kind of change that is in the best interest of students (par for the course) was also included in the article, which ties back to our discussion of unions, and their tendency to protect everyone, even teachers who possibly shouldn't be protected. My final question is, if these teachers couldn't get on board with "failure is no option for kids," and are simply being transferred to other schools, are they goign to take that attitude to the schools that they move to? And are the schools that they will be working in ALSO not on board with "failure is no option for kids?" Or are their new schools simply being forced to take them on because they are tenured teachers? Maybe the Cherry Hill schools will benefit from the dismissal of these teachers, but some other students, somewhere else in the city, may end up suffering. There should be a way for students in one area of the city to benefit without somehow taking from students in another area of the city.
If you would like to read the article, you can find it here:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-md.ci.board26apr26,0,2376730.story?coll=bal-education-top
I find the TU representative's justification for removing teachers from their positions especially interesting for a couple of reasons. I have a really hard time imagining an effective teacher who believes that students should have an option (and should choose that option?) to fail. With this in mind, the TU rep's comments could be seen as a roundabout way of saying that, in fact, these teachers were not effective educators, and as such were contributing to the failure of the school. If this was the implication, I would tend to agree with TU's dismissal of these teachers, as a teacher who feels comfortable allowing (or thinking about allowing) students to fail would seem to have an inherently flawed approach to teaching (especially in elementary school, which preps for middle school, which preps for high school...AHH!).
The other possibility is that these teachers were dismissed for other reasons, and the justification given to the press was the old "not on board with the mission" excuse. However, there were teachers who were retained at each of the schools, and one would hope that the reason they were retained has to do with their attitude towards student ability and the potential for student achievement. A comment about the BTU's resistance to the kind of change that is in the best interest of students (par for the course) was also included in the article, which ties back to our discussion of unions, and their tendency to protect everyone, even teachers who possibly shouldn't be protected. My final question is, if these teachers couldn't get on board with "failure is no option for kids," and are simply being transferred to other schools, are they goign to take that attitude to the schools that they move to? And are the schools that they will be working in ALSO not on board with "failure is no option for kids?" Or are their new schools simply being forced to take them on because they are tenured teachers? Maybe the Cherry Hill schools will benefit from the dismissal of these teachers, but some other students, somewhere else in the city, may end up suffering. There should be a way for students in one area of the city to benefit without somehow taking from students in another area of the city.
If you would like to read the article, you can find it here:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-md.ci.board26apr26,0,2376730.story?coll=bal-education-top
Its official folks…they have figured out how to find good principals…
In today’s Edweek.org posting, a miraculous happening has occurred. In the article, "Common Features of Effective Principal Preparation Programs Identified," several research groups have come together to actually list what it would take for principals to be effective. Although the wording in the article is a little more technical, I will give you a layman’s run-down of what was decided…
1. Seek out good candidates (don’t wait for them to come to you)
2. Provide mentoring (so they don’t go crazy)
3. Provide sustained support and development (to keep them on track)
4. Create cohesive lessons and curriculum for training purposes (make sense of jargon and red tape)
5. Peer observations, critical data-oriented feedback (like any other professional would)
6. Ensure that candidates are dedicated and well prepared (um…duh)
Hmmm…it seems as though the same things that make good teachers also makes good principals. Principals that received these types of supports and training reported feeling better about their jobs, more likely to stay in their positions, and spent more time focusing on instruction.
The potential for such common-sense information about a better way to prepare principals is limitless…you could replace all the bad principals in a poorly performing city. You could give hope to countless thousands who look to their school leader as a leader, not a well-paid paperweight…you could even begin to make the changes to the hierarchy of educational inequality that has eroded the integrity of thousands of schools across the country…
Sounds like a pretty good idea.
Check out the article at: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/05/02/35lead.h26.html
How exactly does Baltimore City lower its suspension rates?
In this week’s Education Week, an article about the suspension rates in Baltimore appeared. The article claims that there are some 9,266 students put on out-of-school suspension at least once last year…this begs the question – what did they do to be suspended? I ask this because, as a teacher in the city, I am often confronted with the harsh reality that students cannot be suspended because out discipline rates are too high. The article claims that students are suspended from our schools for infractions like cell phones, disrespect, tardiness, class cutting, and insubordination…HUH? What about the students who are bringing weapons and drugs to school? I apologize to anyone teaching in Mecca, The Land of OZ, or Shangri-La…but I just don’t see students being suspended because of cell phones and tardiness like I used to…The students who are being suspended SHOULD BE OUT OF SCHOOL, and moreover, they should be out longer.
The article praises Baltimore elementary schools for their innovative physical exercise programs that have been implemented after lunch where students play games and run around outside (but they are not recess, they are behavior management). Now…I am all for reaching out and trying alternate discipline for students who need it, but the fact remains that students who bring weapons and drugs to school shouldn’t be there…students who attack and threaten others shouldn’t be there…
The article mentions the fact that most of the students being suspended from Baltimore City schools are poor and students of color…which makes sense. The article also supposes that as Baltimore’s students are from these categories, they are almost always behind their white affluent counterparts (also makes sense). The article then states that the Zero Tolerance Policy (which has been in place since ’99 and is responsible for our outrageous suspension rates) keeps these students out of school, and therefore out of class. No students from poor, challenged backgrounds should be suspended, RIGHT? Well…If nearly all of our students are poor and students of color, there will have to be a lot of wishing on moonbeams and four leaf clovers in Baltimore, because I don’t see the problem going away anytime soon…
check out the article at http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/04/25/34balt.h26.html
The article praises Baltimore elementary schools for their innovative physical exercise programs that have been implemented after lunch where students play games and run around outside (but they are not recess, they are behavior management). Now…I am all for reaching out and trying alternate discipline for students who need it, but the fact remains that students who bring weapons and drugs to school shouldn’t be there…students who attack and threaten others shouldn’t be there…
The article mentions the fact that most of the students being suspended from Baltimore City schools are poor and students of color…which makes sense. The article also supposes that as Baltimore’s students are from these categories, they are almost always behind their white affluent counterparts (also makes sense). The article then states that the Zero Tolerance Policy (which has been in place since ’99 and is responsible for our outrageous suspension rates) keeps these students out of school, and therefore out of class. No students from poor, challenged backgrounds should be suspended, RIGHT? Well…If nearly all of our students are poor and students of color, there will have to be a lot of wishing on moonbeams and four leaf clovers in Baltimore, because I don’t see the problem going away anytime soon…
check out the article at http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/04/25/34balt.h26.html
Reform the schools, reduce the violence?
Responding to the recent tragedy that occurred at Virginia Tech, I have to wonder when the violence begins and how it becomes as pervasive, in our society, as it does. Over this past weekend, I attended a teacher training in Philadelphia. During a conversation with a colleague, I explained that I was going to be working at a certain high school and her response was “Wow—you are really lucky because they have metal detectors there…” Though this high school is not in Baltimore, and I will not be teaching there long term, it made me think about what expectations we set, as a society.
I think Jonah had it right in that “nobody wants to feel like they are entering a high security prison when they arrive at school, but it seems as though this is the direction we are headed.” However, I also believe that our safety may not be from the monitors, cameras and extra personnel he described. I agree that we should look at the root of the problem and help our students find more productive, ways of dealing with their conflicts and emotions that do not include violence. The question then, is how do we know about the violence and what can we do to stop it?
While not the center of my conversation, the metal detector statement stuck in my head. How is it possible that we have allowed people in our society to pervert the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms so badly? What are the expectations we set for our youth and how can we make sure those expectations don’t include an allowance for violence?
According to an article in the Washington Times, 81 percent of the nation's schools experienced one or more violent incidents in 2003-2004, the most recent school year reported by the U.S. Department of Justice. Thirty-six percent of urban school students report gangs in their schools. In 2004-2005, there were 48 school-associated violent deaths of students, staff and non-students, more than double the 21 of the previous school year. These staggering numbers suggest we do not know what to do about the prevalence of violence.
I am not suggesting that we allow the government to set ground rules about adults owning weapons to protect themselves or use for recreational activities, as is constitutionally guaranteed. However, there should be a social norm that shooting your classmates, professors, teachers and/or family members shouldn’t be one of those pastimes which is acceptable.
I am asking, however, if it is fair to use the freedoms guaranteed in our Constitutional rights against us… I recently read an article about a Minnesota high school that not only suspended a student for his creative writing in a creative writing class, but got him institutionalized for several days. Does free speech or expression extend to writing about violence in school? According to officials at Virginia Tech, probably not. Sent to counseling and watched by the authorities, Cho, the VT gunman was allowed back to class, which has been acknowledged as a mistake of prodigious proportions.
How does this connect to Baltimore City? The violence I see every day is pervasive—one high schooler “playin” with another by pushing him against a locker, threats against teachers and more likely at my school, other students, etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and on. This laundry list of violent actions in Baltimore City prompted a school reform effort in the late ‘90’s that has since petered out of high schools in the City. What penalties can be enforced for these students who “play” and how can we make sure that the violence in Baltimore City is curbed? How can make it so the Department of Justice statistic that “almost 10 percent of children in Baltimore and almost 9 percent in Washington, D.C., were afraid to go to school, aren’t afraid anymore? Clearly I don’t have a variety of answers or strategies to implement, but this is worth further discussion, investigation and most importantly, action!
I think Jonah had it right in that “nobody wants to feel like they are entering a high security prison when they arrive at school, but it seems as though this is the direction we are headed.” However, I also believe that our safety may not be from the monitors, cameras and extra personnel he described. I agree that we should look at the root of the problem and help our students find more productive, ways of dealing with their conflicts and emotions that do not include violence. The question then, is how do we know about the violence and what can we do to stop it?
While not the center of my conversation, the metal detector statement stuck in my head. How is it possible that we have allowed people in our society to pervert the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms so badly? What are the expectations we set for our youth and how can we make sure those expectations don’t include an allowance for violence?
According to an article in the Washington Times, 81 percent of the nation's schools experienced one or more violent incidents in 2003-2004, the most recent school year reported by the U.S. Department of Justice. Thirty-six percent of urban school students report gangs in their schools. In 2004-2005, there were 48 school-associated violent deaths of students, staff and non-students, more than double the 21 of the previous school year. These staggering numbers suggest we do not know what to do about the prevalence of violence.
I am not suggesting that we allow the government to set ground rules about adults owning weapons to protect themselves or use for recreational activities, as is constitutionally guaranteed. However, there should be a social norm that shooting your classmates, professors, teachers and/or family members shouldn’t be one of those pastimes which is acceptable.
I am asking, however, if it is fair to use the freedoms guaranteed in our Constitutional rights against us… I recently read an article about a Minnesota high school that not only suspended a student for his creative writing in a creative writing class, but got him institutionalized for several days. Does free speech or expression extend to writing about violence in school? According to officials at Virginia Tech, probably not. Sent to counseling and watched by the authorities, Cho, the VT gunman was allowed back to class, which has been acknowledged as a mistake of prodigious proportions.
How does this connect to Baltimore City? The violence I see every day is pervasive—one high schooler “playin” with another by pushing him against a locker, threats against teachers and more likely at my school, other students, etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and on. This laundry list of violent actions in Baltimore City prompted a school reform effort in the late ‘90’s that has since petered out of high schools in the City. What penalties can be enforced for these students who “play” and how can we make sure that the violence in Baltimore City is curbed? How can make it so the Department of Justice statistic that “almost 10 percent of children in Baltimore and almost 9 percent in Washington, D.C., were afraid to go to school, aren’t afraid anymore? Clearly I don’t have a variety of answers or strategies to implement, but this is worth further discussion, investigation and most importantly, action!
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Mixed Messages
For the past two years I have been teaching American Government to high schoolers. American Government just happens to be an HSA tested subject area in the state of Maryland. Maryland adopted the HSA and MSA test format in order to be in compliance with the famous No Child Left Behind Act, or as I like to call it “Every Child That Does Not Do Well On Standardized Test WILL BE LEFT BEHIND.”
So I sucked it up and tried my best to prepare my students for this large standardized test that they would have to take at the end of the year to determine whether or not they graduate…no pressure there. While I was trying to figure out what in the heck a good teacher even does in the classroom I was taking course work at Johns Hopkins to learn what good teaching looks like, and to refine my teaching, so that I could be the best teacher for my students.
For a long while I was bothered by the whole standardized testing craze that the whole country seems to be partaking in, and I could not understand why. I was sitting in one of my classes at Hopkins and my professor was talking about differentiating your instruction as a teacher to best reach all of your students, realizing students learning modalities and playing to them in the classroom, and using different kinds of assessments to allow all students to demonstrate their mastery. It hit me…if this is what good teaching looks like, how come this is no where close to how the powers that be test our students? I would hope that those that are involved in making education policy and those at the Maryland State Department of Education would have in this lifetime or another been an educator for a period of time, so how come they do not see that these standardized tests are not a good way to measure EVERY students mastery of content?
I am sometimes amiss as to why I as a teacher am checked on these aspects of “good teaching” on a daily basis, and yet when it comes down to it, my students will have to show that they really know how to take a standardized test? It causes me as a teacher to not only get the students the material that is on the test, but I also have to take a good amount of time to teach students how to take the test. I spend most of my days on BCR’s and ECR’s, which, lets be honest, students will not see again EVER!
I sometimes feel that I am doing my students a disservice by making lessons which cater to their learning styles and needs, when in the end the state will just look at all the students in Maryland the same and give them the same old test that they give every other student.
To make matters even worse, I have bought into the fact that my students need to pass this test to graduate and it is not going to change anytime soon. So I plug to my students every day the importance of this test and how well they do on it, just to have Nancy Grasmick turn around and say a month before the test is given, that in the end she does not think that they are going to hold students accountable for not taking the test because they have not planned on what they will do with the number of students that will not be graduating because they have not passed the tests! It sometimes makes you wonder if any of the people that are working in the administrative side of education have ever been in the classroom or sat through a Hopkins course as I have to really try and reach all the students in the classrooms across the county.
So I sucked it up and tried my best to prepare my students for this large standardized test that they would have to take at the end of the year to determine whether or not they graduate…no pressure there. While I was trying to figure out what in the heck a good teacher even does in the classroom I was taking course work at Johns Hopkins to learn what good teaching looks like, and to refine my teaching, so that I could be the best teacher for my students.
For a long while I was bothered by the whole standardized testing craze that the whole country seems to be partaking in, and I could not understand why. I was sitting in one of my classes at Hopkins and my professor was talking about differentiating your instruction as a teacher to best reach all of your students, realizing students learning modalities and playing to them in the classroom, and using different kinds of assessments to allow all students to demonstrate their mastery. It hit me…if this is what good teaching looks like, how come this is no where close to how the powers that be test our students? I would hope that those that are involved in making education policy and those at the Maryland State Department of Education would have in this lifetime or another been an educator for a period of time, so how come they do not see that these standardized tests are not a good way to measure EVERY students mastery of content?
I am sometimes amiss as to why I as a teacher am checked on these aspects of “good teaching” on a daily basis, and yet when it comes down to it, my students will have to show that they really know how to take a standardized test? It causes me as a teacher to not only get the students the material that is on the test, but I also have to take a good amount of time to teach students how to take the test. I spend most of my days on BCR’s and ECR’s, which, lets be honest, students will not see again EVER!
I sometimes feel that I am doing my students a disservice by making lessons which cater to their learning styles and needs, when in the end the state will just look at all the students in Maryland the same and give them the same old test that they give every other student.
To make matters even worse, I have bought into the fact that my students need to pass this test to graduate and it is not going to change anytime soon. So I plug to my students every day the importance of this test and how well they do on it, just to have Nancy Grasmick turn around and say a month before the test is given, that in the end she does not think that they are going to hold students accountable for not taking the test because they have not planned on what they will do with the number of students that will not be graduating because they have not passed the tests! It sometimes makes you wonder if any of the people that are working in the administrative side of education have ever been in the classroom or sat through a Hopkins course as I have to really try and reach all the students in the classrooms across the county.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
landmarks and other things
While browsing through headlines in today’s Examiner, I came across one, in particular, that made me smile. “City College Honored as Official Landmark”, it proclaimed, with a picture of what the column cites as, “the castle on the hill.” Though the article is short, and really just focuses on the fact that the building is now, officially, a historic landmark, I found it symbolic, landmark if you will, of my growth during this experience with BCPSS. (I say symbol, here, not analogy. Very tricky.)
My very first trip to Baltimore was for the June job-fair in 2005. I had taught for seven hours that Friday, hopped in my car, and made the normally eight hour—but due to traffic on the George Washington Bridge and Jersey Turnpike turned into eleven hour—trek from Cape Cod to the luxurious Radisson at Cross Keyes only to find out, at 1 a.m., that my room was not available until Saturday night. At which point I was sent, exhausted, hungry, and soaking wet (for dramatic effect solely—though I do think it rained during my ride at some point), to a Holiday Inn forty-five minutes out of town. There I paid the front desk $110 for the only room, the penthouse suite, to rest my head for four hours.
I was going to the BCPSS job-fair in the morning. How very exciting.
Half asleep, awkwardly dressed in a new suit and heels, I stumbled up to City College’s table like a ten-year-old girl at a basketball banquet, donned in her older sister’s hand-me-downs and unaware. Shoulder pads, disheveled hair, no make up, frightened expression, silently rehearsing “don’t trip, don’t trip, …” while desperately trying to walk steady in uncomfortable shoes. I reached out my hand, introduced myself, and handed the then department head my resume. And after a brief “you outta be in movies, kid” sort of exchange, I was hired on the spot.
First interview. Done.
Excited to check into my actual hotel room and get some more sleep, I brought my papers to the TFA table, packed up my things, and got ready to go. That is, after I interviewed with a different school because apparently City College didn’t “need” me. So fine, I stumble up to the next available table without a line, Harbor City High School. And in a used-car salesman type pitch, I was, again, hired on the spot.
Second interview. Done.
Think: I chose the path less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.
About two weeks into my first year at Harbor City I began to resent City College and all that it stood for. I’d drive past it on my way home from the grocery store and scowl. Or I’d be stuck in traffic on 33rd and stare up at it’s majestic stone walls with ivy climbing them and think “now that’s a real school.” I’d even dream, some nights, of walking through the halls wearing a plaid coat with leather elbows, listening to students recite Robert Frost and wake up smiling. And bitter. I was so convinced early on that my struggles were simply because I was at the “wrong” school. That if I could just get back into the “castle on the hill,” I’d be golden. Literally. Thankfully, however, reality hit and I recognized that, despite appearances, even the best schools in Baltimore were dealing with some rough spots. Even City was rumored to have lowered test scores to maintain acceptance rates. Even City had teachers with classroom management issues.
Even City, despite being a castle, was no fairytale.
During the ceremony Baltimore Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm states, “A school is more than ivy-covered walls and buildings. It’s about the people as well.” I couldn’t agree more. I think the big push in Baltimore right now is to create the appearance of learning. Is to create the appearance of success. Is to advertise. And to fool. The problems in our schools are solvable. Most of them.
But none of them will be fixed until we—and I use we loosely (administrators, city officials, anyone?) admit to serious issues in such a way that we are forced to do more than in-home repairs.
But, how do you bulldoze a historic landmark?
My very first trip to Baltimore was for the June job-fair in 2005. I had taught for seven hours that Friday, hopped in my car, and made the normally eight hour—but due to traffic on the George Washington Bridge and Jersey Turnpike turned into eleven hour—trek from Cape Cod to the luxurious Radisson at Cross Keyes only to find out, at 1 a.m., that my room was not available until Saturday night. At which point I was sent, exhausted, hungry, and soaking wet (for dramatic effect solely—though I do think it rained during my ride at some point), to a Holiday Inn forty-five minutes out of town. There I paid the front desk $110 for the only room, the penthouse suite, to rest my head for four hours.
I was going to the BCPSS job-fair in the morning. How very exciting.
Half asleep, awkwardly dressed in a new suit and heels, I stumbled up to City College’s table like a ten-year-old girl at a basketball banquet, donned in her older sister’s hand-me-downs and unaware. Shoulder pads, disheveled hair, no make up, frightened expression, silently rehearsing “don’t trip, don’t trip, …” while desperately trying to walk steady in uncomfortable shoes. I reached out my hand, introduced myself, and handed the then department head my resume. And after a brief “you outta be in movies, kid” sort of exchange, I was hired on the spot.
First interview. Done.
Excited to check into my actual hotel room and get some more sleep, I brought my papers to the TFA table, packed up my things, and got ready to go. That is, after I interviewed with a different school because apparently City College didn’t “need” me. So fine, I stumble up to the next available table without a line, Harbor City High School. And in a used-car salesman type pitch, I was, again, hired on the spot.
Second interview. Done.
Think: I chose the path less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.
About two weeks into my first year at Harbor City I began to resent City College and all that it stood for. I’d drive past it on my way home from the grocery store and scowl. Or I’d be stuck in traffic on 33rd and stare up at it’s majestic stone walls with ivy climbing them and think “now that’s a real school.” I’d even dream, some nights, of walking through the halls wearing a plaid coat with leather elbows, listening to students recite Robert Frost and wake up smiling. And bitter. I was so convinced early on that my struggles were simply because I was at the “wrong” school. That if I could just get back into the “castle on the hill,” I’d be golden. Literally. Thankfully, however, reality hit and I recognized that, despite appearances, even the best schools in Baltimore were dealing with some rough spots. Even City was rumored to have lowered test scores to maintain acceptance rates. Even City had teachers with classroom management issues.
Even City, despite being a castle, was no fairytale.
During the ceremony Baltimore Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm states, “A school is more than ivy-covered walls and buildings. It’s about the people as well.” I couldn’t agree more. I think the big push in Baltimore right now is to create the appearance of learning. Is to create the appearance of success. Is to advertise. And to fool. The problems in our schools are solvable. Most of them.
But none of them will be fixed until we—and I use we loosely (administrators, city officials, anyone?) admit to serious issues in such a way that we are forced to do more than in-home repairs.
But, how do you bulldoze a historic landmark?
A Look at Contract Negotiations for Principals
In a New York Times article today, there was a report of a tentative agreement between the Bloomberg administration and the union representing
Stunned by this 6-digit figure, I wondered how, and if, this compares to incentives being offered to teachers. Now, despite a lot of bad stories and experiences with administrators, I do believe that a good administrator could come into a struggling school and make a big difference. The power they wield over making decisions and influencing teacher and student behavior makes that seem theoretically possible. And maybe an administrator could have a much larger effect on a school as a whole than one teacher could. However, shouldn’t something comparable be done to draw good teachers to struggling schools?
Currently, new, highly-qualified math or science teachers who begin teaching in
It seems to me that most teachers in
"What Teaching Really Takes"
I often viewed those movies such as “Freedom Writers,” “Dangerous Minds,” and “Stand and Deliver” with a kind of awe before I began teaching. Now, as a teacher, I really did not know what to think of them. Do they portray urban youth correctly? Do they portray urban teachers correctly? My answer to both was no, but I could not really describe why. I knew I was not seeing my reality on a movie screen. But if asked what needed to be changed, I could not quite pinpoint my argument. Thankfully, in an article first published in the New York Times and later reprinted in American Educator , tenth grade teacher Tom Moore explains it more eloquently than I ever could have.
Perhaps my favorite part of the article is when Moore discusses Hilary Swank’s character in “Freedom Writers.” He says that as soon as a fight breaks out in her classroom, the security guard appears immediately. Has this ever happened to anyone? He goes on to say that the only people running down the hall in his school would be kids because they heard about a fight. Now that sounds more like it.
But the main point of Moore’s article is what he calls “The Myth of the Great Teacher.” Basically, these movies portray “good” teachers as people who martyr themselves to the cause. They give up their personal lives, spend all their time and money on their students, and expect nothing in return. Also, these movies portray urban youth as simply needing someone to believe in them. Forget the basic skills, just give them a hug and a smile and everything will be fine.
But what does it matter? It’s Hollywood. Nobody really believes that movies portray real life, right? But as Moore puts it, “no one believes that hospitals are like ER…[but] no one blames doctors for the failure of the healthcare system.”
However, our profession is constantly trivialized and the idea that love and dedication will overcome is broadcast. I don’t want to be considered a terrible person because I expect to get paid for my job, and I expect to have a life outside of my classroom. Just because I am part of a system that is not successful does not mean that it is my fault. I couldn’t fix it by giving up my life, even if I wanted to.
(Unfortunately, I cannot find a free link to this article online, but it is available from the New York Times. It is entitled “Movie Fantasy vs. Classroom Reality: What Teaching Really Takes.”)
Perhaps my favorite part of the article is when Moore discusses Hilary Swank’s character in “Freedom Writers.” He says that as soon as a fight breaks out in her classroom, the security guard appears immediately. Has this ever happened to anyone? He goes on to say that the only people running down the hall in his school would be kids because they heard about a fight. Now that sounds more like it.
But the main point of Moore’s article is what he calls “The Myth of the Great Teacher.” Basically, these movies portray “good” teachers as people who martyr themselves to the cause. They give up their personal lives, spend all their time and money on their students, and expect nothing in return. Also, these movies portray urban youth as simply needing someone to believe in them. Forget the basic skills, just give them a hug and a smile and everything will be fine.
But what does it matter? It’s Hollywood. Nobody really believes that movies portray real life, right? But as Moore puts it, “no one believes that hospitals are like ER…[but] no one blames doctors for the failure of the healthcare system.”
However, our profession is constantly trivialized and the idea that love and dedication will overcome is broadcast. I don’t want to be considered a terrible person because I expect to get paid for my job, and I expect to have a life outside of my classroom. Just because I am part of a system that is not successful does not mean that it is my fault. I couldn’t fix it by giving up my life, even if I wanted to.
(Unfortunately, I cannot find a free link to this article online, but it is available from the New York Times. It is entitled “Movie Fantasy vs. Classroom Reality: What Teaching Really Takes.”)
Monday, April 23, 2007
NPR's Take On B'more's Small School Reform
Just two weeks ago Baltimore City teachers and students we enjoying a much need time off. It was Spring Break! While some teachers hung around B’more, and others visited exotic destinations like the Dominican Republic and Turkey, I chose to drive 16 hours to visit my sister in Mississippi. It was on the return trip that I was privy to something that both excited and frustrated me.
Throughout my drive I entertained myself with the exhilarating guitar riffs of Led Zeppelin, episodes of the highly acclaimed television drama “Battlestar Galactica, and doses of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Having been addicted to my local NPR affiliate over the past two years, it was comforting being able to tune into these staples of news as I made my trip across the country. On Wednesday, April 11th just thirty miles outside of Memphis, NPR broadcasted a story as part of “Tales from Northwestern,” their continuing series examining the impact of No Child Left Behind and urban school reform through the lens of Northwestern High School here in Baltimore City.
This particular story focused on the small school/learning community movement that has become popular in pretty much any urban setting across the country. When Steve Inskeep read the plug for the story “Trouble Schools Turn Around by Shrinking” I was excited. I thought, “Great NPR will present an objective look at the small school movement in Baltimore City!” By the end of the story I was no longer excited, but frustrated and very disappointed.
The story begins by describing how the idea of the large comprehensive high school like Northwestern was a response the need to educate the baby boomers while reducing cost by eliminating redundancies in administrations. But, now in the modern urban setting they fail to appropriately education our children. The story showcases several small schools in Baltimore including Digital Harbor High School and Baltimore Talent Development High School. It touts the benefits of smaller schools including the ability to “reduce overhead.” Additionally, “’New schools are just easier,’ . . . Comprehensive high schools are more challenging, because "the number of supports that you need in these comprehensive high schools are significant.’” The CEO is even interviewed where she discusses Baltimore’s larger plan for developing many smaller high schools throughout the city"
. . .there will be no more "zoned schools." Instead, she says, Baltimore students will be able to choose their school, "understanding that they can go to the school that will help them implement their career options and choices."
The story presents a pretty rosy picture of the state of the small high schools in Baltimore city, and a doomsday one for the large comprehensive high schools. Nevermind that two of the best schools in the state of Maryland are comprehensive schools located in Baltimore. Based on the evidence in this story it would seem that moving to a small school model would be a no-brainer, but unfortunately it is far from reality. All it would take is to ask a teacher at one of Baltimore’s many other small schools to see not all is as it may seem. Even their description of Digital Harbor seems a bit from the truth when you talk with a teacher that works there.
What frustrates me the most about this story is that it reflects what seems to be a common theme in the media – small schools are perfect. Article after article, and story after story seem to present small schools as the cure-all to the educational problems afflicting our urban youth. Nowhere in the media have I seen an honest and open discussion of the painful realities of these small learning communities.
This story by NPR and many like it seem to say that the comprehensive high school has nothing going for it. But is that really true? After all how many of us went to a comprehensive high school? Is it really the large school model that inhibits our students from getting the education they need and deserve or is it something else? After all I teach at a “small” school that doesn’t seem any more successful than Northwestern. What really causes a school to succeed? Are small schools really cheaper to run?
I see this article as a warning sign to where the small school movement is leading us: All we need to do, and all we will do, is make the schools smaller and this will lead our students to academic success. This is wrong, and it is the easy out that many of us would like to take in order to avoid asking the hard questions.
Large or small there are benefits. Large or small there are disadvantages. But, large or small, schools must be run right or, large or small, any school can fall. But, if they are run right then, large or small, any school can stand tall.
Throughout my drive I entertained myself with the exhilarating guitar riffs of Led Zeppelin, episodes of the highly acclaimed television drama “Battlestar Galactica, and doses of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Having been addicted to my local NPR affiliate over the past two years, it was comforting being able to tune into these staples of news as I made my trip across the country. On Wednesday, April 11th just thirty miles outside of Memphis, NPR broadcasted a story as part of “Tales from Northwestern,” their continuing series examining the impact of No Child Left Behind and urban school reform through the lens of Northwestern High School here in Baltimore City.
This particular story focused on the small school/learning community movement that has become popular in pretty much any urban setting across the country. When Steve Inskeep read the plug for the story “Trouble Schools Turn Around by Shrinking” I was excited. I thought, “Great NPR will present an objective look at the small school movement in Baltimore City!” By the end of the story I was no longer excited, but frustrated and very disappointed.
The story begins by describing how the idea of the large comprehensive high school like Northwestern was a response the need to educate the baby boomers while reducing cost by eliminating redundancies in administrations. But, now in the modern urban setting they fail to appropriately education our children. The story showcases several small schools in Baltimore including Digital Harbor High School and Baltimore Talent Development High School. It touts the benefits of smaller schools including the ability to “reduce overhead.” Additionally, “’New schools are just easier,’ . . . Comprehensive high schools are more challenging, because "the number of supports that you need in these comprehensive high schools are significant.’” The CEO is even interviewed where she discusses Baltimore’s larger plan for developing many smaller high schools throughout the city"
. . .there will be no more "zoned schools." Instead, she says, Baltimore students will be able to choose their school, "understanding that they can go to the school that will help them implement their career options and choices."
The story presents a pretty rosy picture of the state of the small high schools in Baltimore city, and a doomsday one for the large comprehensive high schools. Nevermind that two of the best schools in the state of Maryland are comprehensive schools located in Baltimore. Based on the evidence in this story it would seem that moving to a small school model would be a no-brainer, but unfortunately it is far from reality. All it would take is to ask a teacher at one of Baltimore’s many other small schools to see not all is as it may seem. Even their description of Digital Harbor seems a bit from the truth when you talk with a teacher that works there.
What frustrates me the most about this story is that it reflects what seems to be a common theme in the media – small schools are perfect. Article after article, and story after story seem to present small schools as the cure-all to the educational problems afflicting our urban youth. Nowhere in the media have I seen an honest and open discussion of the painful realities of these small learning communities.
This story by NPR and many like it seem to say that the comprehensive high school has nothing going for it. But is that really true? After all how many of us went to a comprehensive high school? Is it really the large school model that inhibits our students from getting the education they need and deserve or is it something else? After all I teach at a “small” school that doesn’t seem any more successful than Northwestern. What really causes a school to succeed? Are small schools really cheaper to run?
I see this article as a warning sign to where the small school movement is leading us: All we need to do, and all we will do, is make the schools smaller and this will lead our students to academic success. This is wrong, and it is the easy out that many of us would like to take in order to avoid asking the hard questions.
Large or small there are benefits. Large or small there are disadvantages. But, large or small, schools must be run right or, large or small, any school can fall. But, if they are run right then, large or small, any school can stand tall.
Could communities be to blame for Baltimore’s failing schools?
In a city where less than 15% of the adults 18-25 are enrolled in colleges or universities and less than 40% graduate high school, education in Baltimore is in crisis. In the article, “Get Real: Here’s the Boost that Poor Children, their Teachers and their Schools Really Need” from the Spring 2007 issue of American Educator, Antonia Cortes explains that one of the major problems causing the education gap in cities like Baltimore is the socio-economic status of our students. Cortes goes on to explain that children from low-income households are three times as likely to score in the “bottom quartile on assessments of reading, math, and general knowledge” than are children from middle or upper class households. As children progress to the higher grades, this education gap increases as middle and upper class students read and learn over the summer vacation while children from lower-income households often do not. As a result, low-income students will graduate at a much lower level than their peers if they do not receive a better-than-average and highly accelerated education.
Unfortunately, I believe that Cortese is correct in looking to the environments where our children spend 17 hours per day for 185 days each year, for answers to the education crisis in Baltimore City. In many cases, I have met with parents who make it clear that education is not a priority and since many of our student’s parents have not graduated high school, it is impossible to expect that it would be. As a result, our children are not getting the support they need at home in order to be successful at school. In fact, many of our children see a greater financial benefit to dropping out of school than continuing on to graduation. As educators it sometimes feels like our hands are tied. We can provide students with extra help and knowledge based curricula taught by highly qualified teachers in a positive and well organized classroom, but we can only keep students in that environment for seven hours a day, five days a week. We cannot help what a student does or does not do once he or she gets home.
As a result of my desire to untie my hands and close the education gap, I was excited to read Cortese’s article, hoping to find some new and innovative approaches to teaching students with a low socio-economic status. Unfortunately, what I found in Cortese’s article were more “band-aid” solutions such as improving teacher quality, creating a culture of respect among students and providing knowledge rich curricula. While I agree that these strategies are a step in the right direction, I cannot help but think that urban school districts, Baltimore included, are blatantly ignoring the larger community issues that may be contributing to this education gap.
In communities where drug deals, murders and high school drop outs can be found around nearly every corner it is hard to ignore the impact that Baltimore City has on our students. If Baltimore continues to ignore the relationship between our failing schools and the problems in our urban communities, we will continue to do a disservice to our children. Until BCPSS and the Baltimore City government recognize that improving city schools needs to be a joint, community based effort, than we will never be able to close the learning gap. Unfortunately, it seems that much like Antonia Cortese and her “new ideas for urban reform,” neither BCPSS nor Baltimore City itself are willing to put in the effort to improve the conditions of our urban neighborhoods therefore deciding to put a million band-aids on the problem rather than face the enormity and complexities of the truth behind our failing schools.
I do not pretend to know what the answer is for improving Baltimore City schools, but I do know that ignoring the issue and pretending it does not relate to the problems in our communities is doing a huge disservice to our children and expanding the educational gap.
AFT - Publications - American Educator - Spring 2007 - Get Real
Unfortunately, I believe that Cortese is correct in looking to the environments where our children spend 17 hours per day for 185 days each year, for answers to the education crisis in Baltimore City. In many cases, I have met with parents who make it clear that education is not a priority and since many of our student’s parents have not graduated high school, it is impossible to expect that it would be. As a result, our children are not getting the support they need at home in order to be successful at school. In fact, many of our children see a greater financial benefit to dropping out of school than continuing on to graduation. As educators it sometimes feels like our hands are tied. We can provide students with extra help and knowledge based curricula taught by highly qualified teachers in a positive and well organized classroom, but we can only keep students in that environment for seven hours a day, five days a week. We cannot help what a student does or does not do once he or she gets home.
As a result of my desire to untie my hands and close the education gap, I was excited to read Cortese’s article, hoping to find some new and innovative approaches to teaching students with a low socio-economic status. Unfortunately, what I found in Cortese’s article were more “band-aid” solutions such as improving teacher quality, creating a culture of respect among students and providing knowledge rich curricula. While I agree that these strategies are a step in the right direction, I cannot help but think that urban school districts, Baltimore included, are blatantly ignoring the larger community issues that may be contributing to this education gap.
In communities where drug deals, murders and high school drop outs can be found around nearly every corner it is hard to ignore the impact that Baltimore City has on our students. If Baltimore continues to ignore the relationship between our failing schools and the problems in our urban communities, we will continue to do a disservice to our children. Until BCPSS and the Baltimore City government recognize that improving city schools needs to be a joint, community based effort, than we will never be able to close the learning gap. Unfortunately, it seems that much like Antonia Cortese and her “new ideas for urban reform,” neither BCPSS nor Baltimore City itself are willing to put in the effort to improve the conditions of our urban neighborhoods therefore deciding to put a million band-aids on the problem rather than face the enormity and complexities of the truth behind our failing schools.
I do not pretend to know what the answer is for improving Baltimore City schools, but I do know that ignoring the issue and pretending it does not relate to the problems in our communities is doing a huge disservice to our children and expanding the educational gap.
AFT - Publications - American Educator - Spring 2007 - Get Real
Sunday, April 22, 2007
The Much Needed Re-Desegregation of Our Schools
If the desegregation of schools happened over a half a century ago in 1954, why is it that I have only seen three white faces in my
The article posits that there has been overwhelming evidence proving the benefits of racially integrated schools. Integration not only improves the “quality of learning outcomes for minority students,” (“The Supreme Court and School Desegregation”), but the students also perform better in college attendance and employment than students of non-integrated schools. While the academic benefits of desegregated schools have been proven through studies and are unlikely to be contended, what I find to be equally important, though rarely referenced in such cases, is the values of tolerance and cultural awareness. These are two often underestimated factors in their ability to foster open-mindedness and critical thinking abilities, not to mention basic social functioning. Biologically, animals are enticed to reject difference, and this is the basis of the psychological tenet of in-group bias. By students learning to combat this somewhat natural feeling, they are learning to master their baser instincts and think critically about how they respond to any type of stimulus, racial or not.
Many teachers in
I was curious about the statistics of segregation in Baltimore City Public Schools, and I came across an article that references
The achievement gap is undoubtedly the underlying cause of whites tending to group together, based on lower-performing African-American districts. This puts us at a catch-22. If controlled choice is struck down, we deepen the rift between opportunity for a decent education. This is why maintaining controlled choice seems to the only effective way to fight this uphill battle.
Please visit the following links to read the articles referenced above:
“Lost Learning, Forgotten Promises”:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/11/lostlearning.html
“The Supreme Court and School Desegregation”:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/11/desegregation.html
“Race in American Public Schools: Rapidly Resegregating
False Claims: Advocating for Reform
In the Education Week article, “Bush Claims About NCLB Questioned,” another look is taken at judging the effectiveness of the law. In New Albany, President Bush spoke to his audience about the successes of his self-boasted greatest policy imitative to date, No Child Left Behind. However, as we see each day in our classroom and at an even larger level in Baltimore City, data can be obstructed to make any child or school system look like they are making gains.
Bush and his supporters claim that student achievement is increasing due to the law. With no substantial evidence supported by any accredited research or institution, it is hard to believe that this boast is still being made. As the date approaches for the renewal of NCLB, one has to question why our lawmakers are not asking for more supporting or damning evidence. When the leading educational institutions, such as Harvard’s Department of Education, speak out on the lack of evidence to support NCLB, is there any hope that our schools will not be under the supervision of NCLB in the near future? Probably not.
With any full-scale reform effort, we have learned that we are still in the trial period and have not fully seen this reform through. However, we also know that it is impossible to have a successful reform without full participation. So, if several teachers are not being certified to become “highly qualified” across the country since they or the administrations are not invested in NCLB, then how will this reform ever get to the next stage. Answer: teach to the test. A teacher needs limited content knowledge to teach test taking skills.
Safety in our Schools
In response to the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech, there has been extensive discussion about the issue of school safety. Of course this is not a new discussion in Baltimore City, but this event is a painful reminder that school safety must be a top priority when it comes to school reform. The question of how to improve school safety, however, is not an easy one to answer. Most school violence originates outside of school buildings, but increasingly it is making its way into our corridors and classrooms. Nobody wants to feel like they are entering a high security prison when they arrive at school, but it seems as though this is the direction we are headed.
As Sara Neufold describes in her article, “10 More City Schools to get Surveillance,” it seems that blanketing our schools with digital video cameras is the most recent strategy to combat school violence. Within the last year, over two million dollars have been spent installing video cameras at Baltimore City public schools. How affective have these cameras been as a deterrent? I was shocked to find out that with 99 video cameras, my school now has more cameras than any other school in the city. In theory, no part of the building should be unmonitored. Unfortunately, however, this year has been far more violent than last, and rarely do the cameras help school police apprehend offenders. One reason for this is that many of the cameras no longer work properly.
School officials and police can monitor school grounds by watching a wall of screens in our school police office. However, as one BCPSS principal replied when asked who watches the monitors, "I wish we had someone to do that. We are instructional leaders. We are in the classroom." In other words, even if the technology worked correctly, no one is hired to watch the monitors so no one is there to notice when crimes are unfolding. Occasionally police can use the video footage as evidence in after-the-fact, but by then the damage has already been done.
In the words of Kenneth Trump, president of a Cleveland-based safety consulting firm, “security equipment is only as good as the human effort behind it.” This is also true of metal detectors, which is another strategy that has received much attention of late. Clearly, technology alone cannot solve the problem. We must also invest human capital to improve school safety. Most importantly, we must address the root of the problem and help our students find more productive, and less violent ways of dealing with their conflicts and emotions. Without this effort, all of the security equipment in the world won’t save us.
Please visit the following link to read the article referenced above:
http://www.populistamerica.com/10_more_city_schools_to_get_surveillance
As Sara Neufold describes in her article, “10 More City Schools to get Surveillance,” it seems that blanketing our schools with digital video cameras is the most recent strategy to combat school violence. Within the last year, over two million dollars have been spent installing video cameras at Baltimore City public schools. How affective have these cameras been as a deterrent? I was shocked to find out that with 99 video cameras, my school now has more cameras than any other school in the city. In theory, no part of the building should be unmonitored. Unfortunately, however, this year has been far more violent than last, and rarely do the cameras help school police apprehend offenders. One reason for this is that many of the cameras no longer work properly.
School officials and police can monitor school grounds by watching a wall of screens in our school police office. However, as one BCPSS principal replied when asked who watches the monitors, "I wish we had someone to do that. We are instructional leaders. We are in the classroom." In other words, even if the technology worked correctly, no one is hired to watch the monitors so no one is there to notice when crimes are unfolding. Occasionally police can use the video footage as evidence in after-the-fact, but by then the damage has already been done.
In the words of Kenneth Trump, president of a Cleveland-based safety consulting firm, “security equipment is only as good as the human effort behind it.” This is also true of metal detectors, which is another strategy that has received much attention of late. Clearly, technology alone cannot solve the problem. We must also invest human capital to improve school safety. Most importantly, we must address the root of the problem and help our students find more productive, and less violent ways of dealing with their conflicts and emotions. Without this effort, all of the security equipment in the world won’t save us.
Please visit the following link to read the article referenced above:
http://www.populistamerica.com/10_more_city_schools_to_get_surveillance
Where Are My Students?
In a Baltimore Sun article this week, some “errors” were found in the city’s school budget which was approved by board members last month. The budget showed the current student enrollment to be 1,000 more students than are actually enrolled. The error was corrected this week, but the implications of a mistake that large are frightening. According to the Sun, at least 10 million dollars would be at stake with that kind of miscalculation of enrollment.
Now we all know this isn’t the first time Baltimore City Public Schools has made a mistake, but this particular mistake made me think of a related issue that has been of concern to me lately. That issue is student attendance. I have a question (don’t worry it’s hypothetical). Where are my students? My daily attendance in class is about half of what I have on my roll. When I start my first period, there are usually only 5 or 6 students seated before me. I am a huge supporter of small class sizes, but this is ridiculous. There are at least 10 other students on my roll who are not present on a daily basis. I know first period starting at 9:00 am can be hard to get to, but this isn’t a symptom of only my first class. There are at least 8-10 students missing daily in my other classes as well. This has posed a problem for me all year. I can’t get students to master objectives when they aren’t at school on a regular basis. And I certainly can’t see passing them on to English II when they’ve only attended English I 45 days of the year.
I had a conversation with a co-worker about this problem with attendance recently. She told me that the students who missed her class a lot were actually quite smart. They showed up on an HSA practice day and passed the exam that so many of our regularly-attending students cannot pass. What does this say? Have the smart kids figured something out about the quality of education in Baltimore? Or are they simply not being challenged in the courses they have, so they see no point in coming to school? I’m not sure.
Even if the quality of courses isn’t the best in Baltimore, I believe students need to be in school on a daily basis. Currently, at my school, the approach to improving attendance consists of threats about being dropped of the roll for poor attendance over the intercom. The problem is that the only students who hear these threats are the ones who are at school every day. In addition, teachers are asked to call the homes of students who are absent, but (this is nothing new) getting a working number for a student who has missed 20 days in a quarter is difficult to do. It scares me when I look at my attendance book and see so many absences. I worry about where those missing students actually are, what they are doing and what their future holds for them without an education. Dropping students off the roll takes care of one thing: making attendance numbers look better. What worries me is how those names that just disappear from our attendance list will affect this city’s future and the future of its education system. If these students see school as a waste of their time, something needs to be done to make them see the importance and value of education again.
Now we all know this isn’t the first time Baltimore City Public Schools has made a mistake, but this particular mistake made me think of a related issue that has been of concern to me lately. That issue is student attendance. I have a question (don’t worry it’s hypothetical). Where are my students? My daily attendance in class is about half of what I have on my roll. When I start my first period, there are usually only 5 or 6 students seated before me. I am a huge supporter of small class sizes, but this is ridiculous. There are at least 10 other students on my roll who are not present on a daily basis. I know first period starting at 9:00 am can be hard to get to, but this isn’t a symptom of only my first class. There are at least 8-10 students missing daily in my other classes as well. This has posed a problem for me all year. I can’t get students to master objectives when they aren’t at school on a regular basis. And I certainly can’t see passing them on to English II when they’ve only attended English I 45 days of the year.
I had a conversation with a co-worker about this problem with attendance recently. She told me that the students who missed her class a lot were actually quite smart. They showed up on an HSA practice day and passed the exam that so many of our regularly-attending students cannot pass. What does this say? Have the smart kids figured something out about the quality of education in Baltimore? Or are they simply not being challenged in the courses they have, so they see no point in coming to school? I’m not sure.
Even if the quality of courses isn’t the best in Baltimore, I believe students need to be in school on a daily basis. Currently, at my school, the approach to improving attendance consists of threats about being dropped of the roll for poor attendance over the intercom. The problem is that the only students who hear these threats are the ones who are at school every day. In addition, teachers are asked to call the homes of students who are absent, but (this is nothing new) getting a working number for a student who has missed 20 days in a quarter is difficult to do. It scares me when I look at my attendance book and see so many absences. I worry about where those missing students actually are, what they are doing and what their future holds for them without an education. Dropping students off the roll takes care of one thing: making attendance numbers look better. What worries me is how those names that just disappear from our attendance list will affect this city’s future and the future of its education system. If these students see school as a waste of their time, something needs to be done to make them see the importance and value of education again.
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