Archive for the ‘School Advisory’ Category
College Students Put In A Whole: 14 hours per week of studying
September 7th, 2010
Our proposed small grad school, with its very intense workload, is evidently swimming against the trend. This op-ed, in 2009, created a mini-firestorm. Kara Miller teaches at Babson College. She wrote:
Teaching in college, especially one with a large international student population, has given me a stark – and unwelcome – illustration of how Americans’ work ethic often pales in comparison with their peers from overseas.
My “C,’’ “D,’’ and “F’’ students this semester are almost exclusively American, while my students from India, China, and Latin America have – despite language barriers – generally written solid papers, excelled on exams, and become valuable class participants.
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More recently, Keith O’Brien contributed this thoughtful essay to the Boston Globe ideas section.
According to time-use surveys analyzed by professors Philip Babcock, at the University of California Santa Barbara, and Mindy Marks, at the University of California Riverside, the average student at a four-year college in 1961 studied about 24 hours a week. Today’s average student hits the books for just 14 hours.
The decline, Babcock and Marks found, infects students of all demographics. No matter the student’s major, gender, or race, no matter the size of the school or the quality of the SAT scores of the people enrolled there, the results are the same: Students of all ability levels are studying less.
“It’s not just limited to bad schools,” Babcock said. “We’re seeing it at liberal arts colleges, doctoral research colleges, masters colleges. Every different type, every different size. It’s just across the spectrum. It’s very robust. This is just a huge change in every category.”
We like to say there’s only one thing harder than our year-long teacher residency.
That’s the rookie year of teaching we’re preparing you for…
Tags: College, College Students
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We heart Elm City Prep in New Haven: Blog 1 of 3
September 3rd, 2010
Kate and I spent a great Monday morning in New Haven. We saw Day 1 of kindergarten. Fantastic.
1. Amazing Execution
Because it’s only a day for the new kids, several teachers are in each classroom. A kid is teary; someone to hug him. A kid isn’t following directions; someone to step in and model the right way.
Parents welcomed with open arms. They can be in classrooms with kids, take some photos of Junior’s first day. They can mingle with other parents in another room with coffee and stuff.
A kid doesn’t show up; the principal, Morgan Barth, is on the phone to Mom.
After a few courtesies: “Frankly, I’m a little disappointed. You and I had discussed last week the details and how important the first day is. A teacher and our social worker will be at your home in 10 minutes. They will drive him here. We really need your son to be dressed and ready for school. This can’t happen again.”
2. Kid’s Schedule
During the first couple weeks, they work on procedures. How to walk quietly in line. How to eat breakfast without making a mess. Etc.
Once the regular schedule starts, this is a typical day:
7.25 to 7.55 breakfast and morning work
7.55 to 8.30 morning meeting8.35 to 9.50 reading instruction: lots of phonics
Snack/bathroom
10.10 to 11.25 guided reading
Lunch/recess
12.15 to 1.10 writing
Bathroom
1.20 to 1.35 vocab
So the first 3 hours and 40 minutes is reading and writing. Then:
1.35 to 2.25 math
2.30 to 3.10 art, music, gym
3.15 to 3.55 science
I mentioned that 3 years ago I visited Elm City Prep with a couple Boston educators. Principal and teacher. (I was hoping that seeing the amazing literacy levels of these inner-city kids would move them; the principal was impressed, the teacher hated it). That school is persistently low-performing, 3 years later.
This is a sample kindergarten schedule of that school, taken from their website:
9:15am-9:45am Breakfast and Choice Time
9:45am-10:00am Greeting and Introduction to daily OWL literacy centers
10:00am-11:00am OWL Choice Time (Dramatic play–pizza shop, making pizza dough, dishwashing in the water table, painting, white board letter practice, stationery making)
11:00am-11:15am Story Time (A Letter to Amy by Erza Jack Keats)
11:15am-11:35am OWL Small Groups
11:35am-12:05pm Recess
12:05pm-12:45pm Lunch & Independent/Lap reading
12:45pm-1:30pm Art
1:30pm-1:50pm Building Blocks math
1:50pm-2:45pm Rest
2:45pm-3:30pm Building Blocks work time
3. Schedule differences: two kindergartens, similar kids
Elm City has an 8 hour school day, versus 6 in the other school. So 33% more time.
Even with the most generous possible accounting, the Boston school has 2 hours of time for reading and writing, and Elm City has 3 hours 40 minutes. Hmm. That’s 83% more time for the Elm City kids.
Even that 83% probably understates the Elm City “dosage” advantage.
From the Boston school’s description of OWL learning time, it seems like some stuff labeled as “literacy” is kids playing, maybe acting out stories. Not actually, you know, reading. Here’s how the Boston school describes its approach for kids aged 3, 4, and 5:
We adopted OWL (Opening the World of Learning) Pre-Kindergarten curriculum in all of its Pre-K classrooms. OWL is an integrated curriculum designed to develop language and early literacy skills through exploring rich content areas including math, science and social sciences. The OWL curriculum consists of six units, each with a theme, explored through intensive readings of carefully chosen read-alouds. Combining academic work and play, these books inspire student-initiated academic choices.
We pair the OWL curriculum with the Building Blocks math curriculum, which includes similar student-initiated centers, empowering students to make choices and take ownership for their own learning as early as age three.
4. The Amazing Thing
A big study* of Boston charter schools “found”, indeed, that it was extended learning time that explained the charter advantage.
But what do you think better explains the difference? Amazing execution? Or more raw time?
If you could get 6 hours of Elm City, or 8 hours of the Boston school, which would you pick for your kid?
I’d pick Elm City, because they obsess over the question: how do we put our teachers in the best possible position to succeed? And they have a concrete approach. Which I’ll blog about next.
*I think the study gets it wrong. They argue that leader autonomy is the key ingredient. But both of these schools have full autonomy. Te Boston school I’m describing is a pilot (in-district charter school).
Then they study authors argue effective charter leaders use that autonomy to extend the day. True, but less important. Those same leaders would emphasize they use the autonomy to build a group of teachers who row in the same direction, all obsessively committed to a positive, disciplined culture. A bad culture spread across 8 hours isn’t much better than the same thing stretched over 6 hours.
Tags: Haven, New Haven
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Seminole County exempts cheerleaders from short-skirt ban
September 2nd, 2010
Dave Weber
SANFORD — Seminole County schools’ tough new student dress code designed to make students look more “professional” already has its first exception: Cheerleaders will be allowed to wear short uniform skirts to class on game days, as has been tradition.
While some complain it is unfair, district officials have decided that the ban on short skirts on girls does not apply to cheerleaders.
The decision came after high school principals huddled at the start of football season and agreed to give cheerleaders an exemption to the new rules, which say “dresses, skirts and shorts must be at least mid-thigh or below in length” and nixes clothing that is “sexually suggestive.”
The rules also ban “garments that are distracting” – and spirit-building distraction is the intent of having the cheer squad wear outfits to school on game days.
“It is tradition that they wear their uniforms on game day, like the football players wear their uniform shirts,” said district spokeswoman Regina Klaers, a former cheerleader at Seminole High.
Klaers said the mother of a Lake Brantley High girl who was sent home for wearing a short skirt complained that cheerleaders were getting privileged treatment. But Klaers said the new dress code provides that principals make final decisions on what apparel meets the rules.
The School Board wrestled for a year over tougher dress standards for students, saying sharper dress would set an atmosphere for higher student achievement. School Board Chairman Sandy Robinson said she was striving for a “professional look,” but the final code fell short in many aspects, including allowing students to wear flip-flops on their feet.
Klaers said she was uncertain whether other exemptions to the code would be made, but anticipated some. For example, she said, schools sometimes have a “pajama day” to build school spirit. Pajamas are specifically banned as every day wear.
Other items such as chains linking pierced noses to pierced ears also are banned, as are dog collars worn as jewelry and T-shirts that promote sex, drugs, alcohol, tobacco or violence.
Tags: County, Seminole County
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Suncoast High School traffic snarls still irk neighbors, but relief promised by mid-October
August 30th, 2010
RIVIERA BEACH — Drivers still wait in lines of traffic and obey police to reach the new Suncoast High School in the mornings.
But some residents say the Suncoast traffic is flowing better than it was during the first few hectic days of the school year. And the school district says the traffic jam between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. will be eased in mid-October, when a wider section of West 13th Street is scheduled to open.
Still, some residents remain frustrated by the congested mass of cars winding through their residential streets.
“It’s crazy,” said Erica Gonder, a parent who lives on 13th Street near the Suncoast entrance. “It’s not that we don’t want the school there. They should take a better route.”
Terrence Houvouras, a father of three who lives on 13th Street, worries about cars speeding by his house while his sons play basketball in the driveway.
Houvouras and other residents want speed bumps to be restored when the wider stretch of 13th Street near the school entrance is completed. The school district is not planning speed bumps, nothing that they pose problems for school buses.
“Their only concern is making everyone at Suncoast comfortable,” said Annette Simpson, a 13th Street resident who attended an Aug. 24 meeting with district officials to discuss traffic around the new school. Simpson says speed bumps are needed – especially now that the road in front of her house will be wider and filled with young drivers headed for Suncoast.
Riviera Beach officials are irked, too.
The city withheld water and sewer permits for the new high school last year because the district had failed to make road improvements to handle Suncoast traffic. The utility permits were granted in January after the city and district approved an agreement that called for several improvements: two stoplights, turn lanes on Congress Avenue and a widening of the stretch of 13th Street between Congress Avenue and Jake Lane.
The road work was supposed to have been completed Aug. 1. The city and the school district are working to extend the deadline to Jan. 7.
City officials also are negotiating with the district to pay for the hours that six Riviera Beach police officers spend directing traffic to and from Suncoast.
The acclaimed high school sits on a 70-acre campus that includes John F. Kennedy Middle School and Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary. The high school serves 1,394 students.
To reduce the number of students walking through construction and traffic to reach the three schools, the district recently added bus routes to pick up students at the Spinnaker Landing and Marsh Harbour developments west of Congress Avenue.
But on a recent morning, a student dressed in khaki trousers and a white shirt walked, apparently late for school, around backhoes and bulldozers working on 13th Street near the Suncoast entrance.
Tags: High School, Still, Suncoast High, Suncoast High School
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Atul Gawande
August 25th, 2010
There are 3 core requirements for success in “any endeavor that involves risk and responsibility,” writes Atul Gawande in his book Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance.
1. Diligence (“giving sufficient attention to detail to avoid error and prevail against obstacles”)
2. Doing right (dealing with “human failings, failings like avarice, arrogance, insecurity, misunderstanding”)
3. Ingenuity (“thinking anew…a willingness to recognize failure, to not paper over the cracks, and to change…obsessive reflection on failure and a constant searching for new solutions”).
Since we’re obsessed with performance – exactly how good are the teachers who come out of our program – we look for ideas outside of the normal K-12 world, like Gawande’s.
I asked my colleague Laura how she thought our teacher preparation follows Gawande’s precepts, and she replied:
1. Diligence
We are hyper-attentive to detail in every way. We show our trainees the “right” way to do everything: from shaking a kid’s hand at the door, to circulating, to having a difficult conversation, to giving feedback on tests and assignments, to writing a blackboard configuration. We leave very little to chance in their teaching because we believe details can make or break a class period or a year.
2. Doing right
We assume good intentions amongst our trainees. But when we see our people doing something that doesn’t seem right, we call them on it right away and try to identify the error or misunderstanding.
I would add: very few future teachers are guilty of “avarice.” But insecurity (theirs) and arrogance (ours; inherent in any prescriptive training program is the obvious belief that our way is effective) are possible pitfalls.
3. Ingenuity
We use outside evaluators to blindly observe our program graduates to see how they do compared to other rookie teachers.
We compile survey data on every hour of training (i.e., data on several hundred hours of training over the course of the year); every Tuesday, we pore over it, and make changes for the coming week.
When someone has figured it out better than us – like Lee Canter and “real-time coaching” – we adopt their methods quickly.
In addition to these 3 precepts from Better, Gawande advances another “Big Picture” idea in a different book that we’ll examine soon: The Checklist Manifesto.
Tags: Atul Gawande, Gawande
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