In the Lou

Today, July 1, I officially don’t work as a school teacher or with my district anymore. As such, this will be my last post onto this blog. That is a really weird statement to write for those that know me personally, as I have a certain fondness for Read the rest of this entry »

In a district with a $20+ million budget shortfall, I find the below not only nonsensical in terms of moving students forward toward making significant gains but just odd:

Principals,
Please convey the following information regarding the new Academic Stimulus Plan to your staff no later than Friday noon. It will be addressed in the Board meeting this Thursday so if you could do it by then that would be even better as it is likely to hit the papers on Friday. Please share with them an overview but ensure that they are aware of the following:

• Individual Academic Plans - Each student will be placed on an Individual Academic Plan to ensure targeted instruction. At the elementary level his is merely an expansion for many of you as a result of having Summerbridge students and if you have done it with the Bubble students in your building. Middle Schools have been requested to do this so this will come as nothing new. Feel free to share a sample of what the Individual Academic Plan will look like for your grade levels.
• Winter Break Homework Packet – This will be going home after the letter is sent to parents. Teachers will be responsible for ensuring its’ return, grading them and then re-teaching items that data indicates students have not mastered.
• Monetary incentives – pending Board approval there will be a monetary incentive for teachers with the highest return rate of packets. Please speak only in generalities about this as the amount has not yet been established and all of it depends upon Board action.

Let’s handle these one by one:

• Individual Academic Plans - Of course, the way to fix instructional issues is by adding more paperwork that has to be filled out and requiring more time of the already busy literacy coach checking that we’ve completed important demographic information and test-score tracking that should have just been put into our student information system by the various downtown departments for our easy access
• Winter Break Homework Packet - I love the idea of this one. Standardized homework for all students in the district. I am anxious to see what gets delivered to our doorstep.
• Monetary incentives - Who cares if kids learn? We apparently just care if they fill out worksheets. Well geez, I should just give my kids a kickback of whatever I incentive is being offered to ensure I make the minimum cut, right?

Come on SLPS. This is NOT evidence of a new era.

Update: After further review about this issue with a colleague, I discovered the best part about this mandate. The emails to principals had the following subject line: Please review and give feedback asap.

The polls are not yet closed in the West Coast states, yet it is more than apparent that our next president will be a black person. The candidate, his party and his views aside, it is an interesting moment to be an American.

Though I was not alive at the time, I do have a particular connection to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Al. Read the rest of this entry »

We were playing the pyramid game, which is essentially like the $30,000 Pyramid tv show, to review vocabulary from the last lesson which was part of their homework. Unfortunately, my students were woefully unprepared for the task. This of course was extremely frustrating as we prepare for another crash-and-burn quiz experience later this week.

I do hand it to two girls today who were at least trying their hardest to get the words even though they had no idea of the definition. In trying to describe sublimation, the first girl says to the other, “You know those $5 footlongs? It’s the first half of the word where you get them from.” Similarly, when they switched and the other girl had no idea how to explain condensation, the other girl says to the first, “It’s like that soup. Like condensed soup. The first part of that word.” At this point, I just burst out laughing.

On one level this was certainly humorous, but on another, I’m laughing more in the frustrated sense that this is where my students are 12 weeks into school. Why is the material not getting through to them? I think they think that what we’re doing really is just fun and games. Maybe it’s time to pull back on the fun and crank up the old-style fill-and-drill methods.