Archive for the ‘School Advisory’ Category
Glenn’s Soil Analogy
January 21st, 2011
Glenn Liebeck joined our school in 2003. He taught biology.
I worried that he’d be a wild card. He was really strong with kids, no question. But he’d been at another charter school that went through some messy leadership turnover. I wondered if he’d built up any scar tissue. Might mess up our faculty mojo.
Nope. Glenn was great at building our teacher culture. He’d fire up the other teachers, particularly around being consistent with kids. Here’s an email from that fall:
I am really proud of our staff for cracking down on infractions and not only catching students, but holding them accountable. Each week I am keeping track of how many infractions each teacher records and celebrating them. It’s NOT a negative — but a positive step towards a culture of excellence!
He’d walk right up to the toughest kid, get in his grill, and give him the tough love pep talk. Kids loved him. You’d ask sophomores “What’s your favorite class?” and hear: Bio. Bio. Bio. Bio. This was a typical comment from a student evaluation about Glenn:
Mr. Liebeck is very strict and I respect him for that. He is very straightforward and consistent with the rules. I feel that he is an excellent teacher. He sets the highest standards for his students. He is that way because he cares.
Teachers respected him, too. Plus he made up funny nicknames for them. Little stuff like that. Part of his charm. Glenn was able to rally teachers in a way different from our principal, Charlie. He’d say to other 10th grade teachers stuff like:
Guys — what’s going on with the detentions? Cluster 9 is kicking our asses! We are supposed to be the hard core trend leaders! Let’s pick up our game and get on some detentions! Let’s be hard asses!
In a football locker room, there are certain things that a player can say to another player — along the lines of “let’s buckle down” — that are 5x more powerful than when it comes from a coach. Sports teams pay a premium for “locker room” presence.
Same thing in a school. When a teacher is able to push peers, wow. That’s unusually valuable. I’m not sure teacher evaluations — current or proposed — factor this in particularly well.
Glenn was able to start a “peer rounds” where teachers critiqued one another. Not b.s. Legit critique. Many teachers said it was the best P.D. they had. When he moved back to NYC, “peer rounds” died after a while. Also, so did our epic ping pong battles: Glenn had a nasty backhanded serve.
Well, anyway. Glenn’s involved in this start-up. He left an interesting comment the other day on this blog, so I thought I’d turn it into a post.
Glenn writes:
I was having one of those, “How do we save the world of education” conversations in someone’s garage the other night and I realized that the difference between suburban success and urban struggles isn’t a disparity in the quality of teaching, and we know that its not an intelligence issue. Its an issue of simple GARDENING.
Yup — gardening. By gardening, I’m specifically talking about the depth of the soil and the seeds that we plant in it. In my crazy analogy, soil isn’t basic academic skills. Nope. It’s the academic working expectation of the individual student. The normality of 8 hrs of intense school followed by 3-4 hrs of homework, and accompanied by reading for actual pleasure. It’s the capacity to work hard intellectually for long stretches of time EVERY DAY. It’s the expectation that this is what the life of a student is. That is deep soil.
So many of our kids, however, simply don’t have the deep soil beds. They go to school for those 8 hours, but miss a day 1-2x/month. They schedule appointments during school time. During those 8 hours, they make as many bathroom trips as they will be afforded and the concentrated work windows max out at 13-18 minutes followed by 70-80 min of off-task but unobtrusive “chill’n”. (This is mostly due to us allowing and planning for this).
In my crazy analogy, the seeds are educational “best-practice” pedagogy. It’s the teacher side of education — the masterful techniques that we interweave to make the learning experience “richer” for them. It’s the thoughtful and intentional group work, the graphic organizers, the data-driven instruction, the thoughtful guiding questions, the intentional sparked debate. As for those well-to-do successful suburban teachers: their seeds aren’t any stronger or fruitful than ours. Their pedagogical teaching skills aren’t any more powerful than ours. Our seeds grow just as many roots as theirs do.
So what’s the problem? What’s the difference?
The trouble is that the roots below ground of a plant growing in 2″ of soil simply aren’t strong enough to withstand the weight and flex that the plant above ground exerts on them. Who really cares how many roots a seed sprouts if a simple wind or casual foot traffic pulls them out of the ground?
Who really cares if a kid understands the factors of a 5-paragraph essay if they never suck it up and sit down for the 4-5 hrs that it takes to write a good one? Who cares if a kid remembers the formula for acceleration 15 minutes after they wrote it down on a piece of paper that will be lost in 20 minutes and they will never actually practice using because their neighbor just got a new Wii?
Aren’t we wasting our time looking for the best seeds when its actually the depth of the soil bed that’s simply too shallow? Why should we constantly be reinventing the wheel on how to get the kids to interact with the material differently, when those interactions are actually mere blips in time.
Shouldn’t we first build the soil beds and nourish that ground so that the seeds that we’ve been working so hard to plant (over and over again) actually have the opportunity to mature? Shouldn’t we concentrate on teaching kids HOW to learn before we concentrate on specialized methods of skill acquisition?
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Bitter Cold Music Monday
January 21st, 2011
Last night was bitter cold in the Capital Region, with temperates well below zero. This morning was harder than other Mondays to wake up due to the freezing temperature. Id trade my hectic week and weekend just to stay in bed for a few hours longer.
I havent done a Music Monday in about three weeks, so I came into the White House on the campus of the Times Union with a class full of discouraged people who needed a Music Monday. Have no fear, Im back and in the full swing of things.
This weekend, I totally jammed out to a LMFAO song, but I dont think its appropriate for a blog on the Times Union.
In celebration of the Steelers winning, I chose the song Black and Yellow by Wiz Khalifa. Not one because they won, but also because its a pretty good song.
Whats on your Music Monday for today?
Tags: Bitter Cold, Monday
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Going to college becomes an easy task with federal grants for single mothers
January 21st, 2011
With the rising recession, the labor market is being dominated by those with a college education. But then, there may be people who can not afford to pay for college. But thanks to the government, single mothers can now apply for grants to pursue their college education.
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Tags: College, College Becomes
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State Board of Education Asks Lawmakers to Postpone Formula Phase-In
January 21st, 2011
State Board of Education Says ‘Stop the Clock’ on Formula Phase-In
The State Board of Education sent a letter to lawmakers this week asking them to postpone the phase-in schedule of the school foundation formula. The board has identified issues that could arise with the state unable to fully fund the formula.
The school foundation formula determines how much funding each local school district receives based on daily attendance, student population demographics, local tax revenues and multiple other factors. The formula, adopted by lawmakers in 2005, was designed to gradually increase funding for public education over a period of seven years.
“At the time the new formula was adopted, no one envisioned the economic situation we would be facing,” said Dr. Ronald Lankford, deputy commissioner at the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. “It wasn’t designed for less than full funding.”
The law (Section 163.031 RSMo) calls for state aid for public education to increase by $120 million each year through fiscal year 2012-13. The gradual increase was intended to provide a smooth transition for both the state coffers and schools as they made adjustments from the old 1993 formula.
By law, the formula recalculates each year as it marches toward 2013, assuming full funding is available. The first three school years were funded as scheduled, Lankford said, but no new funds have been available since the 2009-10 school year.
By stopping the clock midway through the process, the State Board of Education seeks to halt the mechanics of the formula, which – without new funding – would divert resources to some school districts and away from others in a manner inconsistent with the original intent of the law.
Tags: Formula, State Board
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Washington County youth honor dream of Martin Luther King Jr. during annual celebration
January 20th, 2011
Jennifer Singleton dismisses Vose Elementary School choir members (from left) Felipe Reys, Emily Rivera Beleche and Andrea Arellano, after their performance Sunday at the Washington County Martin Luther King Day celebration in Beaverton’s Southminster Presbyterian Church. The event included speeches by area leaders and honored youth who contributed art, poetry and multimedia celebrating equality.
About 250 people of varying age, race and religion gathered Sunday at Southminster Presbyterian Church for Washington County’s 10th annual celebration honoring Martin Luther King Jr.
The event included speeches from elected officials and appearances by Washington County’s human rights leaders, but the highlights came from local youth who were honored for their contributions to King’s legacy.
“We’re the next generation,” said Naman Jain, a 17-year-old junior at Beaverton’s School of Science and Technology who was among several youth recognized for their work. “If we don’t put the change in what the world needs, then who will?”
Jain’s poem, “Hope for Tomorrow,” won the Beaverton Human Rights Advisory Commission’s Creative Expressions Contest. Equality-themed art and multimedia from other area youth also were recognized during the ceremony.
“It’s my duty to give justice,” Jain read from his poem. “To the ones who have died, to the ones who have lost, to the ones who have simply forgot.”
The event, one of several weekend gatherings around the state honoring the slain civil rights leader, celebrated diversity in one of Oregon’s most racially varied counties.
According statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 28 percent of Washington County’s 537,318 residents identify themselves as a racial or ethnic minority. That includes a Hispanic or Latino population of more than 15 percent, an Asian population of nearly 9 percent, and a black population just over 2 percent.
Since King uttered the words, “I have a dream,” more than 47 years ago, America’s interpretation of the dream has evolved beyond the 1960s civil rights movement. Today, the dream represents racial, ethnic, social, religious and economic justice, said Julie Rubenstein, chairwoman of the committee that put on Sunday’s celebration.
Rubenstein said future generations must interpret what King’s message means in a changing society. That’s why engaging youth has been a focus of the celebration for years.
“It’s important for them to be aware,” she said. “That’s part of our education piece.”
Jain’s winning poem was influenced by the genocide in Rwanda — a human rights issue that didn’t exist during King’s time.
Jain, who is of Indian heritage, spent several years at a boarding school in India with other students from across the globe. He often encountered local children who were homeless and hungry.
Jain said living among such diversity and inequality informed his view of King’s legacy.
“It gave me a new perspective on how I see the world,” he said.
Dennis Noack, 18, a senior at Beaverton’s Arts & Communication Magnet Academy, said he believes area youth are making progress toward a more just world, but “there’s a lot of injustice still out there that we need to face” in the United States and globally.
Noack produced a video montage shown at the celebration, featuring clips of King’s speeches and the aftermath of his assassination on April 4, 1968.
“Martin Luther King Day is a reminder to us how bad things were at one point,” Noack said. “It’s important, so that in order to keep history from repeating itself, we have to remember those who played a big role in helping us change for the better.”
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Tags: Martin, Washington County
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