Teacher's Lot

News Item

Ill. student gets detention for hugging

MASCOUTAH, Ill. --Two hugs equals two days of detention for 13-year-old Megan Coulter.

The eighth-grader was punished for violating a school policy banning public displays of affection when she hugged two friends Friday.

"I feel it is crazy," said Megan, who was to serve her second detention Tuesday after classes at Mascoutah Middle School.

"I was just giving them a hug goodbye for the weekend," she said.

Megan's mother, Melissa Coulter, said the embraces weren't even real hugs -- just an arm around the shoulder and slight squeeze.

"It's hilarious to the point of ridicule," Coulter said. "I'm still dumbfounded that she's having to do this."

• Football players and coaches patting each other on the ass after a good play.
• Cheerleaders hugging each other after a cheer.
• Teachers, administrators and other students from congratulating graduates with more than just words.
• Shaking hands.
  

// posted by bronxmike @ 10:22 AM 2 comments links to this post

Our government is so concerned about the quality of education that, in 2006, it spent $10 million for a new organization to help out. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s called the National Center on Performance Incentives (NCPI).

Caring so much as they do for students, the bureaucrats at the Department of Education decided that putting a chunk of money that large into such an effort was worthwhile. Hey, why put $10 million into classrooms when you can spend that much on a study of merit pay?

Check this out from the group’s Website (http://www.performanceincentives.org/index.asp):

The purpose of the Center is to address one of the most contested questions in public education: Do financial incentives for teachers, administrators, and schools affect the quality of teaching and learning? NCPI’s work involves a series of rigorous research initiatives, including randomized field trials and evaluations of existing pay-for-performance programs. We are engaged in these research and development activities to inform both education policy and practice, and to improve teaching and learning within our nation’s public schools.

Now, if that’s not bad enough, check this out:

NCPI assembles a nationally-recognized, multi-disciplinary team of experienced research and policy experts, including specialists in social and behavioral science, statistical analysis, economic theory, and policy analysis. We are all committed to fair and rigorous research in an effort to provide the field of education with reliable knowledge to guide effective policy and practice.

Anyone missing from this “nationally recognized” group? How about teachers and parents? A quick scan of those involved found no classroom teachers or parents listed as consultants or participants.

This deserves responses on numerous levels. First, merit pay is a bad idea. Teachers are with their students for a very limited time. In the upper grades, a teacher generally spends less than an hour a day with these teens for five days a week. The rest of their time is spent dealing with today’s incredible array of distractions, which include video games, ipods, television, Myspace, girlfriends and boyfriends, fighting with parents and on and on.

In lower grades, teachers may spend more time with youngsters, but the distractions are still there.

So, basically, the government, through merit pay, will hold teachers responsible for things out of their control. That’s just nuts. Add in the fact that many schools have students with language problems, are facing economic shortfalls and must now teach to the test and it becomes obvious that the government’s priorities are backwards.

Another potential problem is that if teachers are forced to compete for raises, why would they help other teachers by sharing lesson plans and advice? (I’m not totally convinced this would happen because most of the teachers I know are dedicated and care about their students.)

But the bottom line is the bottom line. The fact that the federal government would spend $10 million to study merit pay is outrageous. And if you know anything about government, you know that most of that money is going toward creating and maintaining a new bureaucracy.

While the NCPI promises fairness and objectivity, is there really any doubt about what its recommendation will be?

// posted by bronxmike @ 1:48 PM 1 comments links to this post

The Sacramento City Unified School District is being honored – and rightly so – for its efforts to train high school students for jobs instead of tests. An article in the Sacramento Bee, http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/450651.html, says the Ford Motor Company Fund will honor the district for being “one of four models in the country that make school relevant to teens by linking course work with the working world.”

Finally, districts are figuring out how to supplement No Child Left Behind with programs that actually will do some good. More excerpts from the article:

Some of the new approaches that earned the school district the award will be on display at a celebration today at Luther Burbank High School: a robotics team, a health occupations club, a construction company that worked with Burbank students to build display cases around the courtyard.

All of those projects stem from Sacramento City Unified's decision six years ago to reinvent secondary education. The goal was to reduce the dropout rate by doing a better job engaging teenagers in school. The district broke large high schools into smaller communities organized around career themes, opened six new small high schools and, since 2002, has more than tripled the number of classes focused on job skills.

The school district also hired five people from the business world to create internships and other learning opportunities for students. They come from the fields of arts, media and entertainment; business and information technology; engineering and industrial technology; health; and human and public services.

Granted, Sacramento City isn’t the only district doing these types of things, and many school districts can’t afford programs like these. But, it is heartening to know that somewhere out there, government officials realize the need for training that will take students beyond the test and into the real world.

// posted by bronxmike @ 9:30 AM 0 comments links to this post

News item

Plan requires high schoolers to apply to college to get diploma

AUGUSTA, Maine --A state law encouraging high school seniors to continue their education by completing at least one postsecondary school application took effect last month, but Maine's top education official is looking to take the approach a step further.

Education Commissioner Susan Gendron proposes a requirement that seniors apply to college before becoming eligible for a diploma. The change in state rules on graduation requirements would require approval by the Legislature.

Here’s another example of government going too far. As this excerpt from a boston.com article goes on to say, the motivation for this further incursion into students’ privacy is to increase the number of students going to college. Not an unworthy goal, this. But why force high schoolers to apply for college when they know darn well they do not plan to attend.

Applying for college is no easy task. It can require obtaining grades and records, asking for letters of reference, coming up with always-increasing application fees and, for some, the worst of all: writing an essay.

High school seniors have enough on their minds, what with all the testing and getting a date for the prom and figuring out what to do with the rest of their lives…not to mention passing all those classes to ensure graduation happens.

So Maine and any other state that’s listening, let’s fix our educational system from the inside. If we do that, we won’t have to worry about whether our kids go to college. They will.

// posted by bronxmike @ 6:18 PM 0 comments links to this post

A harsh reality is facing our educational system, and it’s time we faced up to it: Schools cannot compete with Hollywood, Steve Jobs and Nintendo. How can we expect kids to sit and read Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and other classic writers when the distraction level has reached an all-time high?

In about 450 days, we will have a new president. No matter what party this person is from, the new president must do something about No Child Left Behind. The best bet would be to scrap it and start all over again. The United States educational system must emerge from the dark ages and consider the times in which we live. Kids – and their culture – are different than they were “back in the day.”

The Internet, the ipod and video games yank youngsters’ attention away from their studies at alarming rates. Study after study shows that playing with electronic gadgetry is more popular than reading, writing and ’rithemtic. So why fight the trend? Why force students to do things they find monotonous, boring and just plain not fun? Why don’t we learn from those who have won the hearts and minds of our young people? Instead of sticking with standards-based education and back-to-basics programs, let’s loosen up and teach our children the way they have proven they can learn.

For example, doesn’t it seem strange that young people today can figure out complex computer games while many of us still can’t program the VCR? They have the smarts. We just have to learn to reach the kids on the same level that video game makers have. We need to get them as interested in literature, math and science as they are in World of Warcraft, the PS2 and the Wii.

The new president should be an educational radical and try something totally different. Here’s an idea: Put game developers, Hollywood producers, educators and kids in a room and don’t let them out until a new system is developed, one that will utilize the incredible technology of today to help kids learn about the classics, math concepts and science.

Education, finally, must enter the new millennium and throw out the tired system of boring lectures, boring homework and boring tests. Let’s get kids excited about learning by seeking out what jazzes them and using that information to make them look forward to going to school.

If we don’t do something, we truly will be lost.

// posted by bronxmike @ 12:56 PM 3 comments links to this post

A student of handshakes I'm not

I am handshake challenged. This is nothing new for me. I’ve had this problem since the ‘60s, when I would approach someone with outstretched hand only to be confused about what to do next. I was taught to shake hands with someone in the traditional way: We each grasp each other’s hand firmly, give a couple of pumps, and that’s that. The problem arose when I expected a traditional shake, but instead saw a hand approaching me with its thumb up. This meant we were supposed to lock thumbs then wrap our hands around each other.

For some reason, I remember this being called the “hippie” handshake. Today, my problem has been exacerbated by the large number of different methods of shaking hands. Some of the kids at school have tried to teach me these new moves, but, as I said, I am handshake-challenged. Not only did it take numerous attempts for me to learn these new forearm follies, I just could not remember how to do them.

Here is a section from wikipedia.com’s definition of handshakes:

In American culture, there is a "Soul Brother Handshake," also called a "Power" or "Unity" shake, dating to the 1960s, begun among African-American men, and still widely practiced between men of various races and paticularly among teenage boys as a gesture of close friendship. This is usually a three move procedure, beginning with a traditional, palm-to-palm clasp, followed in quick succession by a clasping at the hilt of the thumbs, and finally, by a hooked clasp of only the fingers, in the manner of railroad couplers. Variations include the above, followed by an exchange of facing palm slaps, as in "Gimme Five," or fist bumping, tops-to-bottoms, "the face slap", or knuckles-to-knuckles.

Railroad couplers? I still don’t get it.

I really embarrassed myself the other day. I thought I be very cool with the next student who offered to shake my hand, so when it happened, I was ready. Sure enough, I walk by a student sitting at a desk and he says, I’m Carlos, and sticks out his hand. Alright. Here’s my chance. I shake his hand in the traditional way, and after a few pumps, I pull my hand back, and, because I’m so cool, I know that this ritual is not yet over. So I make a fist in preparation for the traditional knuckle-to-knuckle hit, rear back and… well, turns out he was cooler than I was because there was no fist meeting mine. I was more than a little flumoxed and red-faced when I almost hit the kid squarely in the chest.

// posted by bronxmike @ 11:20 AM 1 comments links to this post

Don’t put the pressure of grades on 6-year-olds

I just heard the most ridiculous thing. A friend of my wife’s was complaining that her daughter got a C in reading. While C is average and nothing to be ashamed of, the silly part of this is that the child is in the first grade. A first-grader is only 6 years old, and already we are making some of them feel as if they're not as good as some of their classmates. Why are we doing this to our young children?

A 6-year-old should have fun while learning about life, making new friends and learning to be a good person. We should not put on these young children the kind of pressure we put on older students to get good grades so they can go to a good college (if that’s what they choose to do) and succeed. It’s bad enough that certain parents push their kids’ envelopes when it comes to sports and other competitive pursuits, but to bring that kind of fervor to a first-grade classroom is just plain wrong.

I just know that some parents will chastise their 6-year-olds for not doing as well as Chrissie or Johnny, or will force them to stay inside and study when they should be out learning to play without competition and figuring out how to get along with others.

In these times of quantifying everything in education, thanks to the No Child Left Behind act, we are taking the joy out of childhood. Let kids be kids. Let them have their innocence without messing it all up by forcing them to think about grades.

// posted by bronxmike @ 10:35 AM 1 comments links to this post