Some of you may know that there is currently some legislation in Congress that proposes a number of budget cuts, including the elimination of funding for the Corporation for National and Community Service, the umbrella organization over Americorps, of which I am a member. With the hope that with more awareness will come more action against such legislation, I wanted to share a letter the CEO of the organization I work for will be sending to all of our supporters:
"Dear Friends,
We need your help to Save Service. The United States Congress is considering legislation to eliminate funding for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) from the budget, jeopardizing thousands of service initiatives around the country, including our own. Contact your Member of Congress today to get involved in the conversation and sign up for “Save Service District Day” at the link below.
With CNCS programs like AmeriCorps, Learn and Serve and Senior Corps at risk, our communities could potentially lose the support of organizations providing needed services like Teach For America, Admission Possible, Foster Grandparents, Habitat for Humanity, Public Allies, City Year, YouthBuild and many other local organizations, jeopardizing services in education, youth development, elderly services, healthcare and nutrition. At our organization in this year alone, 72 AmeriCorps and VISTA members provide college access and success services to 7,400 low-income students, and we hope to continue to grow in those communities and others nationwide.
These competitive CNCS grant programs are some of the strongest levers of public investment, each requiring private sector matching dollars and demanding results-based reporting. The federal investment made in faith based and community organizations through CNCS leverages nearly $800 million in matching funds from companies, foundations and other sources. At our organization, every dollar in AmeriCorps investment is matched by four private sector dollars. Additionally, these national service programs provide needed full-time and part-time career opportunities for Americans in today’s economy.
Congress is debating this bill now, and they'll be looking to their constituents to see how much -- or how little -- the American people support these cuts.
We need your help. Tell Congress that we cannot afford to lose the critical services these programs provide in our communities. Contact your Member of Congress today, and sign up today at www.saveservice.org
for your local "Save Service District Day.” Visit your representative’s local office on February 25th to make sure they hear your voice."
When I think of this legislation, I am almost silenced by how shocked I am that it exists. I consider myself a pretty reasonable and open minded person, and while I tend to fall on the liberal side of things politically, I pride myself in being able to understand the opinions of many conservatives (I owe that to my proud Republican father and, probably, my religion degree). However, I cannot, in any way, understand the reasoning behind cutting funding to CNCS.
Let's forget, for a moment, about the moral and social implications of such cuts- which would be unfathomable (can you imagine a society without these kinds of public service organizations?). Instead, let's think about money- because, after all, that's what this seems to boil down to. According to a less than perfectly trustworthy source (wikipedia), more than 85,000 people currently serve with Americorps (plus thousands more serving through other CNCS programs). We don't make a salary, we are awarded a living stipend of around $11,000 for a year of service. Based on the number of hours we end up working at my organization, that evens out to about $3 and hour- not even close to minimum wage. This means that there are more than 85,000 government slaves working for our country right now. Or, as a colleague of mine said in a slightly less abrasive way: "we're the cheapest labor out there!" I understand that the government is in need of money right now, but at this point, if nothing else, Americorps is keeping some 85,000 work eligible people at bay and paying them practically nothing to do some of the toughest jobs in our society! How is it in any way logical to cut funding for these programs, releasing these employees out into the world only to become unemployed because of the terrible job market?
So, if you're reading this and are thinking about pressuring your local politicians to oppose this legislation, I encourage you to do so! Do it for the students I'm trying to get into college, or the families moving into their first real home, or the students being helped with their reading so they can succeed in school, or simply because it makes the most financial sense- whatever your reason, I hope you'll support continuing funding to CNCS.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Photographic Reflections on the Past Few Weeks
My new years resolution of posting here has crashed and burned, but I guess that's what happens when you work 3 50+ hour weeks in a row. A lot has been going on, and while I am planning a more thought provoking post, here's a little update in picture form.
Last week was Valentine's day! Victoria and I obviously went all out:
Here is Victoria with the box of chocolates we wish we had received on Valentine's day.
And here I am the day of dressed in as much work appropriate pink and red as I could find.
We decorated our office for the special day as well:
Note the following decorative elements (outlined in hearts with arrows pointing to them):
1. Decorated foam hearts hanging from the ceiling.
2. Our awesome "Jux Stay in School" heart- sneakily making fun of our students who like to text/write the word 'jux' instead of 'just'
3. Valentine's mailboxes for me and Victoria. Unfortunately, neither of us got any notes in our boxes...
4. Calendar of Robert Pattinson, which is not actually reserved for valentine's day, Victoria just loves him.
This past week has also been the kick off for student recruitment- which means that we are attacking sophomores left and right trying to get them to join our program. The crazy excitement portion of recruitment is called "Hoopla" in our organization, and here are some ways we have been getting students excited:
We made a recruitment rocket! Please don't mind the awkward whited out areas, I'm trying to maintain some confidentiality for the organization I work for. Victoria wears this rocket with a tin foil hat and runs around scaring students. I'm honestly not actually sure this makes our organization appealing for students, but it's really entertaining for me.
We decorated the office! Doesn't it look welcoming?
We also had some of our students do a rap that we're playing during morning announcements. Here are the musical masterminds:
And here is one last image to leave you with for now: Victoria showing some attitude to a student who missed two make up ACTs after school- he looks pretty terrified to me!
Last week was Valentine's day! Victoria and I obviously went all out:
Here is Victoria with the box of chocolates we wish we had received on Valentine's day.
And here I am the day of dressed in as much work appropriate pink and red as I could find.
We decorated our office for the special day as well:
Note the following decorative elements (outlined in hearts with arrows pointing to them):
1. Decorated foam hearts hanging from the ceiling.
2. Our awesome "Jux Stay in School" heart- sneakily making fun of our students who like to text/write the word 'jux' instead of 'just'
3. Valentine's mailboxes for me and Victoria. Unfortunately, neither of us got any notes in our boxes...
4. Calendar of Robert Pattinson, which is not actually reserved for valentine's day, Victoria just loves him.
This past week has also been the kick off for student recruitment- which means that we are attacking sophomores left and right trying to get them to join our program. The crazy excitement portion of recruitment is called "Hoopla" in our organization, and here are some ways we have been getting students excited:
We made a recruitment rocket! Please don't mind the awkward whited out areas, I'm trying to maintain some confidentiality for the organization I work for. Victoria wears this rocket with a tin foil hat and runs around scaring students. I'm honestly not actually sure this makes our organization appealing for students, but it's really entertaining for me.
We decorated the office! Doesn't it look welcoming?
We also had some of our students do a rap that we're playing during morning announcements. Here are the musical masterminds:
And here is one last image to leave you with for now: Victoria showing some attitude to a student who missed two make up ACTs after school- he looks pretty terrified to me!
Sunday, February 6, 2011
A Classist ACT Prompt?
Last weekend my students took their third practice ACT. This is an exciting time because they have finally had a few good weeks of ACT strategy and they are eager to see if their scores have improved. This is also an important time for me to figure out which students are understanding the material and which students need some extra attention. While most of my students seemed confident that they had at least improved a little on each section, they left the test with defeated looks on their faces after finishing the last section, the essay. After reading the prompt, it's not hard to see why my students felt this way.
The prompt goes:
"Most people enjoy having a yard so that they can design both the exterior and the interior of their homes. Some people prefer landscaping that is polished and controlled, with lush green lawns, carefully trimmed shrubs or bushes, and flowers that are replaced each season so that they remain fresh and colorful. Proponents of this type of landscaping believe that the visual design of a yard is the most important factor and that neighborhoods should have standard guidelines so that the area looks uniform and consistent. Opponents of polished landscaping believe that yards require a variety of treatments, based on factors such as the climate conditions of the region, and advocate for choices that incorporate water conservation, native species, and edible plants. In your opinion, should people follow standard landscaping guidelines that focus on a yard's visual design, or should they vary their landscaping design out of consideration for other factors like climate or conservation?"
As I see it, there are two main problems with this prompt:
1. We told our students that every prompt they would get on the ACT would have something to do with their lives as students, something they could relate to. We gave examples of debates surrounding school uniforms, year round schools, single sex education, serving fast food in the cafeteria, weighted grades, the list goes on. This prompt has nothing to do with the lives of the majority of high schoolers in this country and I'm pretty sure that most high schoolers would have no opinion on the issue whatsoever (unless you're one of my good friends who worked summers with a landscaping company).
2. This prompt certainly has no relevance or context for most low income or urban students- who may be living in housing without yards or might not have the income to afford landscaping. This is the issue I will be focussing on for the remainder of this post.
Most of my students qualify for free or reduced lunch and if they don't, they definitely make well under the average income for the state. The neighborhoods surrounding the school where I work have small yards, but, as far as I can tell, no neighborhood association regulating landscaping or anything else. When I think of neighborhood associations, I think of wealthy neighborhoods where the residents can afford to pay dues to have a council that puts on BBQs and gives gifts to the mailmen. That is certainly not the kind of neighborhood my students come from. For those who don't live in single family homes, they live in apartments or town homes without yards. Thus, this prompt brings up a concept that almost none of my students have any experience with.
In fact, quite a few of my students did not know what landscaping was- and this was true among my coworkers as well. In their essays we had students argue for having landscapes instead of yards or having a back yard, or what to put in your yard (think swimming pool and playground). It was clear that besides not having any personal experience with landscaping in their own yards, they had never even encountered the term.
To me this begged the question: 'is this a classist prompt??' And honestly, I believe the answer is yes. The definition of 'classist' is "biased based on social or economic class." For a writing prompt to be classist it would have to give an unfair advantage to those of a certain social or economic class. I believe this prompt does just that. If I had this prompt when I was taking the ACT (or SAT in my case), I would have had absolutely no trouble answering the prompt. Why? Because most if not all of the neighborhoods I lived in growing up had guidelines for landscaping. More than that, I'm pretty sure that for at least the last 13 years my family has had a LANDSCAPER. I grew up seeing drawings for new gardens in our yard, hearing about the installation of underground sprinklers, and watching my parents ask permission from neighborhood councils to put fences in my yard (and wouldn't you know they even cared about what material the fences were made out of). I grew up surrounded by this information because my parents had the expendable income to pay for everything that comes with landscaping and because we belonged in a social class that expected it of us.
Most of my students do not have the same exposure to landscaping as I did, giving them an unfair disadvantage when approaching this prompt. In the words of one of my co-workers: "they might as well have asked if hired help should be full time or part time or if neighborhoods should be gated or not!"- this prompt was clearly aimed towards a set of students with a certain life style, one which, from my knowledge, most urban low income students do not share.
It's incredibly frustrating to think that a standardized test, one which is supposed to put students on an even level regardless of their high school, background, religion, race, etc. can so blatantly give an advantage to some students over others. What's worse is that it is really difficult to help our students overcome this type of disadvantage. We can teach our students how to write a well structured essay, but we cannot give them life experiences they've never had- and when a whole prompt is based on such an experience, having it can make or break one's score.
The prompt goes:
"Most people enjoy having a yard so that they can design both the exterior and the interior of their homes. Some people prefer landscaping that is polished and controlled, with lush green lawns, carefully trimmed shrubs or bushes, and flowers that are replaced each season so that they remain fresh and colorful. Proponents of this type of landscaping believe that the visual design of a yard is the most important factor and that neighborhoods should have standard guidelines so that the area looks uniform and consistent. Opponents of polished landscaping believe that yards require a variety of treatments, based on factors such as the climate conditions of the region, and advocate for choices that incorporate water conservation, native species, and edible plants. In your opinion, should people follow standard landscaping guidelines that focus on a yard's visual design, or should they vary their landscaping design out of consideration for other factors like climate or conservation?"
As I see it, there are two main problems with this prompt:
1. We told our students that every prompt they would get on the ACT would have something to do with their lives as students, something they could relate to. We gave examples of debates surrounding school uniforms, year round schools, single sex education, serving fast food in the cafeteria, weighted grades, the list goes on. This prompt has nothing to do with the lives of the majority of high schoolers in this country and I'm pretty sure that most high schoolers would have no opinion on the issue whatsoever (unless you're one of my good friends who worked summers with a landscaping company).
2. This prompt certainly has no relevance or context for most low income or urban students- who may be living in housing without yards or might not have the income to afford landscaping. This is the issue I will be focussing on for the remainder of this post.
Most of my students qualify for free or reduced lunch and if they don't, they definitely make well under the average income for the state. The neighborhoods surrounding the school where I work have small yards, but, as far as I can tell, no neighborhood association regulating landscaping or anything else. When I think of neighborhood associations, I think of wealthy neighborhoods where the residents can afford to pay dues to have a council that puts on BBQs and gives gifts to the mailmen. That is certainly not the kind of neighborhood my students come from. For those who don't live in single family homes, they live in apartments or town homes without yards. Thus, this prompt brings up a concept that almost none of my students have any experience with.
In fact, quite a few of my students did not know what landscaping was- and this was true among my coworkers as well. In their essays we had students argue for having landscapes instead of yards or having a back yard, or what to put in your yard (think swimming pool and playground). It was clear that besides not having any personal experience with landscaping in their own yards, they had never even encountered the term.
To me this begged the question: 'is this a classist prompt??' And honestly, I believe the answer is yes. The definition of 'classist' is "biased based on social or economic class." For a writing prompt to be classist it would have to give an unfair advantage to those of a certain social or economic class. I believe this prompt does just that. If I had this prompt when I was taking the ACT (or SAT in my case), I would have had absolutely no trouble answering the prompt. Why? Because most if not all of the neighborhoods I lived in growing up had guidelines for landscaping. More than that, I'm pretty sure that for at least the last 13 years my family has had a LANDSCAPER. I grew up seeing drawings for new gardens in our yard, hearing about the installation of underground sprinklers, and watching my parents ask permission from neighborhood councils to put fences in my yard (and wouldn't you know they even cared about what material the fences were made out of). I grew up surrounded by this information because my parents had the expendable income to pay for everything that comes with landscaping and because we belonged in a social class that expected it of us.
Most of my students do not have the same exposure to landscaping as I did, giving them an unfair disadvantage when approaching this prompt. In the words of one of my co-workers: "they might as well have asked if hired help should be full time or part time or if neighborhoods should be gated or not!"- this prompt was clearly aimed towards a set of students with a certain life style, one which, from my knowledge, most urban low income students do not share.
It's incredibly frustrating to think that a standardized test, one which is supposed to put students on an even level regardless of their high school, background, religion, race, etc. can so blatantly give an advantage to some students over others. What's worse is that it is really difficult to help our students overcome this type of disadvantage. We can teach our students how to write a well structured essay, but we cannot give them life experiences they've never had- and when a whole prompt is based on such an experience, having it can make or break one's score.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Holy Matrimony
Lest you begin to think that my life is all work and no play, here's what we did a few weeks ago:
We got engaged!
Like our rings?
<--- This one's mine.
And this is Victoria's ->
We'll keep you posted on our wedding plans!
OK, well, that was lies. Here's what actually happened:
A few weeks ago I entered to win a variety of online contests on cities97.com- something I do every week because, well, why not? I saw that one of the contests to enter was for the Wedding Fair in the Minneapolis Convention Center. I thought to myself, 'oh, I know someone who is getting married! I bet Mitch would LOVE to go to this,' so I entered the contest. Low and behold, I won the tickets! And, of course, Mitch and his fiance had plans for the day so it was up to us to come up with a creative way of using the tickets.
Solution! We decided to fake our own engagements to two of our coworkers and go to the fair pretending to be planning our weddings.
Here are the lovely couples:
D.J. and Victoria
How they met: D.J. and Victoria ended up working at the same Caribou Coffee. Victoria didn't like him at first, but eventually he grew on her and they fell in love!
How he proposed: Unknown. But it might have involved pickles.
Wedding Plans: Jungle themed wedding at the Minnesota Zoo on July 28th 2012. Yes, this is a Thursday and it will be followed by a two-day reception. The bride and groom will wear loincloths and there will be plenty of lanterns around which remind D.J. of Thailand.
Me and David
How we met: Although we went to different schools in different states, one of David's best friends went to school with me and we met when he visited her one weekend. The rest is history.
How he proposed: It was the last night of Chanukah and as I went to light the first candle, there was the ring around the candle!
Wedding Plans: Late summer/early fall 2011, with either a red/orange/fall foliage or purple color scheme. We will be married near a lake where we will have our guests light floating lanterns over the water. The ceremony will be inspired by Jewish and Unitarian Universalist customs.
We like to think we were pretty believable. I even got complemented on my $15.00 TJMaxx ring. We got to taste some different types of food and cakes. We also watched a couture wedding dress fashion show and decided which ones we liked and didn't.
All in all, a really fun way to spend a sunday and some free tickets. Unfortunately, it appears that we have not won any of the honeymoons or dinner cruises we entered contests for, maybe next time.
I'll leave you with this image: Victoria and D.J. poking some mossy center pieces.
We got engaged!
Like our rings?
<--- This one's mine.
And this is Victoria's ->
We'll keep you posted on our wedding plans!
OK, well, that was lies. Here's what actually happened:
A few weeks ago I entered to win a variety of online contests on cities97.com- something I do every week because, well, why not? I saw that one of the contests to enter was for the Wedding Fair in the Minneapolis Convention Center. I thought to myself, 'oh, I know someone who is getting married! I bet Mitch would LOVE to go to this,' so I entered the contest. Low and behold, I won the tickets! And, of course, Mitch and his fiance had plans for the day so it was up to us to come up with a creative way of using the tickets.
Solution! We decided to fake our own engagements to two of our coworkers and go to the fair pretending to be planning our weddings.
Here are the lovely couples:
D.J. and VictoriaHow they met: D.J. and Victoria ended up working at the same Caribou Coffee. Victoria didn't like him at first, but eventually he grew on her and they fell in love!
How he proposed: Unknown. But it might have involved pickles.
Wedding Plans: Jungle themed wedding at the Minnesota Zoo on July 28th 2012. Yes, this is a Thursday and it will be followed by a two-day reception. The bride and groom will wear loincloths and there will be plenty of lanterns around which remind D.J. of Thailand.
Me and David
How we met: Although we went to different schools in different states, one of David's best friends went to school with me and we met when he visited her one weekend. The rest is history.
How he proposed: It was the last night of Chanukah and as I went to light the first candle, there was the ring around the candle!
Wedding Plans: Late summer/early fall 2011, with either a red/orange/fall foliage or purple color scheme. We will be married near a lake where we will have our guests light floating lanterns over the water. The ceremony will be inspired by Jewish and Unitarian Universalist customs.
We like to think we were pretty believable. I even got complemented on my $15.00 TJMaxx ring. We got to taste some different types of food and cakes. We also watched a couture wedding dress fashion show and decided which ones we liked and didn't.
All in all, a really fun way to spend a sunday and some free tickets. Unfortunately, it appears that we have not won any of the honeymoons or dinner cruises we entered contests for, maybe next time.
I'll leave you with this image: Victoria and D.J. poking some mossy center pieces.
Friday, January 21, 2011
A Zen Buddhist Story
Today we had a full corps meeting, as we do every friday and during some work time a co-worker of mine, D.J. brought up a story that I thought would be fun to share with you.
D.J. first told this story at a professional development session that he attended at his school which was addressing the concept of tracking in schools. Many schools now will assign their students to various tracks: a college prep track made up of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes and a regular or non-college bound track with regular or even remedial classes. In the meeting, someone asked: "Does academic tracking perpetuate segregation in education?" D.J. replied that it does not have to, but only if both tracks have similar expectations and a set of future plans. The college track gives students a set of defined goals and ways to achieve them. The 'regular' track, however, does not provide it's students with any rigid expectations, or plans for the future. D.J. believes that the best solution would be one where expectations are appropriately high and understandably clear for all tracks.
To illustrate his point, D.J. told this story:
There was a monastery in the mountains of Thailand that was once considered an attractive order to be a part of. It contributed a lot to the well being and spirituality of the community around it. Recently, however it had become a dying order. Monks and Nuns were leaving in droves and the spiritual vitality of the community was dwindling.
The head Abbot of the monastery decided to visit a Rabbi of a successful and vibrant community to seek some guidance. The Abbot told the Rabbi that he was worried about the future of his monastery. The Rabbi replied: 'That's just terrible, and too bad because I heard from an Abbot nearby that a member of your monastery is about to become the next to be enlightened, so it would be a shame for it to die out." Surprised, the Abbot thanked the Rabbi for his time and headed back to his monastery.
When the Abbot returned to the monastery he shared the Rabbi's news with the community. Everyone was surprised to hear that the next to become enlightened was among them, but mostly returned to their normal lives.
As time went on, the members of the monastery started treating one another a little differently- thinking that maybe the other was supposed to be the next to become enlightened. And then they thought, wait, maybe it's me! So each individual started working harder on his/her spiritual development and soon the order was rebuilt and back to it's full vitality.
The moral of the story is that it does not matter whether or not someone in the order was about to become enlightened, the expectation that someone would was enough motivation to rebuild the order. When the members of the monastery could envision a future for themselves, they were successful.
According to D.J., if all students were able to aspire to a future they could envision, they would all be successful, regardless of what track they were assigned and whether or not they end up in college in the future.
D.J. first told this story at a professional development session that he attended at his school which was addressing the concept of tracking in schools. Many schools now will assign their students to various tracks: a college prep track made up of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes and a regular or non-college bound track with regular or even remedial classes. In the meeting, someone asked: "Does academic tracking perpetuate segregation in education?" D.J. replied that it does not have to, but only if both tracks have similar expectations and a set of future plans. The college track gives students a set of defined goals and ways to achieve them. The 'regular' track, however, does not provide it's students with any rigid expectations, or plans for the future. D.J. believes that the best solution would be one where expectations are appropriately high and understandably clear for all tracks.
To illustrate his point, D.J. told this story:
There was a monastery in the mountains of Thailand that was once considered an attractive order to be a part of. It contributed a lot to the well being and spirituality of the community around it. Recently, however it had become a dying order. Monks and Nuns were leaving in droves and the spiritual vitality of the community was dwindling.
The head Abbot of the monastery decided to visit a Rabbi of a successful and vibrant community to seek some guidance. The Abbot told the Rabbi that he was worried about the future of his monastery. The Rabbi replied: 'That's just terrible, and too bad because I heard from an Abbot nearby that a member of your monastery is about to become the next to be enlightened, so it would be a shame for it to die out." Surprised, the Abbot thanked the Rabbi for his time and headed back to his monastery.
When the Abbot returned to the monastery he shared the Rabbi's news with the community. Everyone was surprised to hear that the next to become enlightened was among them, but mostly returned to their normal lives.
As time went on, the members of the monastery started treating one another a little differently- thinking that maybe the other was supposed to be the next to become enlightened. And then they thought, wait, maybe it's me! So each individual started working harder on his/her spiritual development and soon the order was rebuilt and back to it's full vitality.
The moral of the story is that it does not matter whether or not someone in the order was about to become enlightened, the expectation that someone would was enough motivation to rebuild the order. When the members of the monastery could envision a future for themselves, they were successful.
According to D.J., if all students were able to aspire to a future they could envision, they would all be successful, regardless of what track they were assigned and whether or not they end up in college in the future.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The Case of the Terrifying Mother
Last week we had an interesting and terrifying visitor. She is the mother of a senior in our program and she came to our office to demand that her son, a junior, be admitted to our cohorts. First, she asked why no one had recruited him for the program, to which we replied that we advertised all around the school last spring and it was up to the students to take the initiative to apply. At this point she replied that she was taking the initiative on behalf of her son now- that he is a Native American with two siblings who went through the program and that he must be accepted right away.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't always handle conflict well- emotional break downs? suicide attempts? love issues? I'm all over those- but being yelled at... not my cup of tea. My "fight or flight" instinct kicked in and I went with the "flight," immediately referring her to my supervisor and sending him a panicking e-mail (sorry, Ben!). This seemed to sedate the mother enough to leave us alone, but not without taking my business card first- now I'm screening all of my calls.
Colin was able to catch up with the student in question and found out that he had no interest in applying or joining the program. We also looked up his grades and found out that his gpa is a 1.4, well below our requirements for applicants (2.0 or higher).
When the mother finally left the office, we were so shaken that we cowered under our desks in the fetal position. See Victoria below:
While this was a kind of hilarious office story that hopefully amused you, dear reader, it points to a bigger issue of a parent's dreams for her child and her child's goals for himself. It was heartbreaking to hear how desperately this mother wanted her son in our program, wanted him to graduate high school and attend a four year college just like his sisters only to find out that the son seems to want none of that for himself. The story became even more heartbreaking when we learned that the oldest son of the family had been killed serving in the US military in Iraq and knowing that many of the hopes and expectations of this family ride on this son's shoulders now.
So often in my studies of Education in college I thought and wrote about parent involvement being key to student success. I even wrote one paper about how parent involvement/motivation/presence is one of the key issues facing our educational system today. This encounter, however, proved my entire theory wrong. Here, the parents were incredibly invested in their children's education and success, despite their low income and minority status- but it was, most likely, the son's lack of motivation which will lead to his lack of educational attainment.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't always handle conflict well- emotional break downs? suicide attempts? love issues? I'm all over those- but being yelled at... not my cup of tea. My "fight or flight" instinct kicked in and I went with the "flight," immediately referring her to my supervisor and sending him a panicking e-mail (sorry, Ben!). This seemed to sedate the mother enough to leave us alone, but not without taking my business card first- now I'm screening all of my calls.
Colin was able to catch up with the student in question and found out that he had no interest in applying or joining the program. We also looked up his grades and found out that his gpa is a 1.4, well below our requirements for applicants (2.0 or higher).
When the mother finally left the office, we were so shaken that we cowered under our desks in the fetal position. See Victoria below:
While this was a kind of hilarious office story that hopefully amused you, dear reader, it points to a bigger issue of a parent's dreams for her child and her child's goals for himself. It was heartbreaking to hear how desperately this mother wanted her son in our program, wanted him to graduate high school and attend a four year college just like his sisters only to find out that the son seems to want none of that for himself. The story became even more heartbreaking when we learned that the oldest son of the family had been killed serving in the US military in Iraq and knowing that many of the hopes and expectations of this family ride on this son's shoulders now.
So often in my studies of Education in college I thought and wrote about parent involvement being key to student success. I even wrote one paper about how parent involvement/motivation/presence is one of the key issues facing our educational system today. This encounter, however, proved my entire theory wrong. Here, the parents were incredibly invested in their children's education and success, despite their low income and minority status- but it was, most likely, the son's lack of motivation which will lead to his lack of educational attainment.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Wanna Know My New Boyfriend's Name? Kaplan!
With the new year has come a new focus to our curriculum: Kaplan ACT Preparation.
In the beginning of the week we handed out 3 prep books to each student and walked them through what were essentially wedding vows betrothing them to their prep books. The goal was to emphasize how important our students should be taking their books and this prep season in general and to make things a little fun because, let's face it, the next 3 months will not be all that fun.
Teaching the Kaplan curriculum is scary and frustrating. Scary because what and how we're teaching our students really matters now. Before, we were having conversations with them: what kind of school do you want to go to? what is the best way to save money? what should you include in your resume? Now, we are entrusted with helping our students improve their ACT scores and properly teaching them the techniques to do so.
Teaching Kaplan is also frustrating because it doesn't all relate to our students. Some examples:
- Kaplan does all of these cheesy things with the word "Kap" in it. For example "Kap Wrap" is the end of the section question that is supposed to make them think. "Thinking Kap" is the question at the beginning of each unit that is supposed to use the same methods that we will be teaching later in the section. I'm assuming this was amusing for the authors of the kaplan curriculum, but my students are not amused.
- Kaplan uses language that is too technical or confusing. Here's a perfect example in a section that I have to practice teach tomorrow:
In the English sections students read an excerpt and encounter various grammatical and structural errors which they are then prompted to correct.
" I rose slowly through the wooded sections, but upon reaching the flat, open areas, I rode MORE FASTLY. (this is not really in caps, it's actually underlined"
The first step of the method is to figure out what the problem is. In my mind I say: "oh, ok, the problem is that 'fastly' is NOT A WORD" but no.... according to the Kaplan book, the issue is that 'more is incorrect with slow'- what does that even mean?? If I told my students that, they would just look at me with death stares.
In a broader sense, my issue, perhaps not just with Kaplan but with the ACT in general, is that so many of the English questions are wrong or right because they "sound right." That's great for the majority of American high school students, but not for those who have learned English as a second (or third or fourth) language. To them, things don't just "sound right" in English- partially, I would argue, because English doesn't make all that much sense in the first place, but also because they don't naturally think in English. The second language that I'm closest to fluent in is Hebrew (and, mind you, there's no way I would survive a day in an Israeli high school where I was expected to speak Hebrew)- but there are very few occasions where I could read something in Hebrew and tell you that it "sounds wrong" or "sounds right"- it's Hebrew and if I'm reading it I'm going to assume it's grammatically correct- or at least it's more grammatically correct than I could ever write it. For my ELL students who struggle so hard to write correctly in English, how can I expect them to notice someone else's mistakes?
In the beginning of the week we handed out 3 prep books to each student and walked them through what were essentially wedding vows betrothing them to their prep books. The goal was to emphasize how important our students should be taking their books and this prep season in general and to make things a little fun because, let's face it, the next 3 months will not be all that fun.
Teaching the Kaplan curriculum is scary and frustrating. Scary because what and how we're teaching our students really matters now. Before, we were having conversations with them: what kind of school do you want to go to? what is the best way to save money? what should you include in your resume? Now, we are entrusted with helping our students improve their ACT scores and properly teaching them the techniques to do so.
Teaching Kaplan is also frustrating because it doesn't all relate to our students. Some examples:
- Kaplan does all of these cheesy things with the word "Kap" in it. For example "Kap Wrap" is the end of the section question that is supposed to make them think. "Thinking Kap" is the question at the beginning of each unit that is supposed to use the same methods that we will be teaching later in the section. I'm assuming this was amusing for the authors of the kaplan curriculum, but my students are not amused.
- Kaplan uses language that is too technical or confusing. Here's a perfect example in a section that I have to practice teach tomorrow:
In the English sections students read an excerpt and encounter various grammatical and structural errors which they are then prompted to correct.
" I rose slowly through the wooded sections, but upon reaching the flat, open areas, I rode MORE FASTLY. (this is not really in caps, it's actually underlined"
The first step of the method is to figure out what the problem is. In my mind I say: "oh, ok, the problem is that 'fastly' is NOT A WORD" but no.... according to the Kaplan book, the issue is that 'more is incorrect with slow'- what does that even mean?? If I told my students that, they would just look at me with death stares.
In a broader sense, my issue, perhaps not just with Kaplan but with the ACT in general, is that so many of the English questions are wrong or right because they "sound right." That's great for the majority of American high school students, but not for those who have learned English as a second (or third or fourth) language. To them, things don't just "sound right" in English- partially, I would argue, because English doesn't make all that much sense in the first place, but also because they don't naturally think in English. The second language that I'm closest to fluent in is Hebrew (and, mind you, there's no way I would survive a day in an Israeli high school where I was expected to speak Hebrew)- but there are very few occasions where I could read something in Hebrew and tell you that it "sounds wrong" or "sounds right"- it's Hebrew and if I'm reading it I'm going to assume it's grammatically correct- or at least it's more grammatically correct than I could ever write it. For my ELL students who struggle so hard to write correctly in English, how can I expect them to notice someone else's mistakes?
Thursday, December 30, 2010
BTCS's New Years Resolutions:
I've had over 1,000 page views on this blog since I started it at the end of October, very exciting! I'd like 2011 to bring in an even more exciting year of blogging for me.
Here are my blog resolutions:
- Post at least once a week
- Tell more stories about my students
- Bring in guest writers!
If you have any suggestions for more goals for the year, you should let me know!
Here are my blog resolutions:
- Post at least once a week
- Tell more stories about my students
- Bring in guest writers!
If you have any suggestions for more goals for the year, you should let me know!
Friday, December 24, 2010
Reflections on a Recent NYT article
Last week, my friend Judy e-mailed me an interesting article from the New York Times, and I now finally have some time to write about it.
Find the article here... hopefully
For anyone who doesn't feel like reading the whole thing, here's the gist. It's a December 17th article entitled "Is Going to an Elite College Worth the Cost?"
The article begins by discussing well cited studies that have claimed that:
And:
The author then brings up that it has been over a decade since the research yielding these results was completed and that the incredibly high cost of elite colleges in the present day should have an effect on these results. He goes on to discuss the different factors in this discussion from cost of college, strength of alumni ties, the current job market, job satisfaction, and strength of different academic department, to ultimately conclude that the best choice for each student will be different and dependent on many different factors.
While I find this whole article interesting, especially as it is relevant to my status as the graduate of an elite college, there were some statements made about low-income students that I found particularly worthy of discussion.
First, the author discusses a study that compared the earnings of students of the same academic caliber (based on SAT scores and class rank) who went to highly selective and less selective schools. The study found that:
I found this little side note about 'disadvantaged' students incredibly interesting and found myself wondering why the authors of the study refused to speculate as to why disadvantaged students benefit so much from an elite college education. To me, the answer is perfectly clear: Social and Cultural Capital. In the sociology classes that I've taken, I learned that groups that are widely considered disadvantaged are not only lacking in income or savings financially, they are lacking the social and cultural resources to allow them to be mobile in society. Social and Cultural Capital refer to the resources, physical or imaginary, that aid in social mobility. Social capital refers to who you know: the types of people and communities that you are connected to. Cultural capital refers to different experiences or knowledge that you can acquire. Members of higher social classes tend to have a lot of both types of capital- they gain social capital by knowing powerful heads of companies, community leaders, politicians, etc. and they gain cultural capital by going to 'good' schools, being exposed to music and the arts, or travelling. These people, in general, have more and stronger connections beyond their immediate communities or families than members of less privileged social groups. As far as this particular example of elite colleges go, the study results do not surprise me. For wealthy students, the level of selectivity of their college has little relation to their future success because with or without the resources such an institution has to offer, they have family and cultural connections that will help them succeed in society. For disadvantaged students, however, the resources and types of capital they can gain from an elite college are most likely very unlike those they were exposed to growing up, and without attending those schools they might have never been exposed to them. Thus, they gain much more from their experience in an elite school then their wealthier peers. Of course, this then brings up issues of the dominant society and expectations of mobility, but I think that's more than I would like to go into tonight.
Later on in the article, the author discusses the worth of an elite college education for those interested in being trained in college to go directly into the work force:
This excerpt struck a chord with me for a number of reasons. First, many of the students I work with fall in the category of wanting or needing to study what this article refers to as "practical" subjects that will lead more logically to specific careers and jobs. And, while I agree that bigger public state schools often have those more specialized programs of study, I resent the implication that broader (perhaps liberal arts) degrees prepare students less well for those specific occupations (can you see my liberal arts education shining through yet??). Furthermore, I fear that statements like this only perpetuate the idea of a worthless liberal arts degree and allow employers to resist students with them regardless of how qualified or able they are. My second issue with this excerpt comes with the discussion of students "finding themselves" in college. To me, this quote seemed to imply that college as a time for personal exploration and development is a privilege reserved for the wealthy, or those students who don't actually have to worry about finding jobs after graduation. I have a number of reactions to this- first, I kind of understand it because I do remember feeling during much of my 4 years of liberal arts education that there was no direct applicable point to what we were doing. We spent a lot of time talking, arguing, and surrounding ourselves with smart, like minded people. I often found myself frustrated with the feeling that we weren't actually doing anything and that often felt like a privilege associated with attending an elite college. However, I also think this points out a very unsettling quality of the social class system of this country: not only do we find ourselves separated by the amount of money we have, the people we know, and the resources available to us- we are also permitted different ways of spending our time, learning, and even thinking. This seems to imply that privileged students are allowed, if not expected, to lounge their way through college- searching for themselves and thinking lofty thoughts, while their 'disadvantaged' peers have no time for such things and must instead focus on gaining specific marketable skills so that they can enter the job market quickly and efficiently.
All in all, I find some of the implications of this article unsettling, even if I feel that the general questions raised in it are good ones. However, I worry about what all of this means for the students I serve and the organization that I represent
Find the article here... hopefully
For anyone who doesn't feel like reading the whole thing, here's the gist. It's a December 17th article entitled "Is Going to an Elite College Worth the Cost?"
The article begins by discussing well cited studies that have claimed that:
Strong evidence emerges of a significant economic return to attending an elite private institution, and some evidence suggests this premium has increased over time.
And:
Alumni of the most selective colleges earned, on average, 40 percent more a year than those who graduated from the least selective public universities, as calculated 10 years after they graduated from high school
The author then brings up that it has been over a decade since the research yielding these results was completed and that the incredibly high cost of elite colleges in the present day should have an effect on these results. He goes on to discuss the different factors in this discussion from cost of college, strength of alumni ties, the current job market, job satisfaction, and strength of different academic department, to ultimately conclude that the best choice for each student will be different and dependent on many different factors.
While I find this whole article interesting, especially as it is relevant to my status as the graduate of an elite college, there were some statements made about low-income students that I found particularly worthy of discussion.
First, the author discusses a study that compared the earnings of students of the same academic caliber (based on SAT scores and class rank) who went to highly selective and less selective schools. The study found that:
The earnings of graduates in the two groups were about the same — perhaps shifting the ledger in favor of the less expensive, less prestigious route. (The one exception was that children from “disadvantaged family backgrounds” appeared to earn more over time if they attended more selective colleges. The authors, Stacy Berg Dale and Alan B. Krueger, do not speculate why, but conclude, “These students appear to benefit most from attending a more elite college.”)
I found this little side note about 'disadvantaged' students incredibly interesting and found myself wondering why the authors of the study refused to speculate as to why disadvantaged students benefit so much from an elite college education. To me, the answer is perfectly clear: Social and Cultural Capital. In the sociology classes that I've taken, I learned that groups that are widely considered disadvantaged are not only lacking in income or savings financially, they are lacking the social and cultural resources to allow them to be mobile in society. Social and Cultural Capital refer to the resources, physical or imaginary, that aid in social mobility. Social capital refers to who you know: the types of people and communities that you are connected to. Cultural capital refers to different experiences or knowledge that you can acquire. Members of higher social classes tend to have a lot of both types of capital- they gain social capital by knowing powerful heads of companies, community leaders, politicians, etc. and they gain cultural capital by going to 'good' schools, being exposed to music and the arts, or travelling. These people, in general, have more and stronger connections beyond their immediate communities or families than members of less privileged social groups. As far as this particular example of elite colleges go, the study results do not surprise me. For wealthy students, the level of selectivity of their college has little relation to their future success because with or without the resources such an institution has to offer, they have family and cultural connections that will help them succeed in society. For disadvantaged students, however, the resources and types of capital they can gain from an elite college are most likely very unlike those they were exposed to growing up, and without attending those schools they might have never been exposed to them. Thus, they gain much more from their experience in an elite school then their wealthier peers. Of course, this then brings up issues of the dominant society and expectations of mobility, but I think that's more than I would like to go into tonight.
Later on in the article, the author discusses the worth of an elite college education for those interested in being trained in college to go directly into the work force:
Someone who knew he needed to earn a reliable salary immediately after graduation, and as a result chose to study something practical like business or engineering, might find the cost-benefit analysis tilted in favor of a state school, he said [referring to a sociologist mentioned earlier in the article].
“Students from less affluent backgrounds are going to find themselves in situations where college is less about ‘finding themselves,’ and more about skills acquisition and making contacts that will lead straight into the labor market,” Mr. Thomas said. For such a student, he said, a state university, particularly a big one, may also have a large, passionate alumni body. It, in turn, may play a disproportionate role in deciding who gets which jobs in a state in a variety of fields — an old-boy (and increasingly old-girl) network that may be less impressed with a job applicant’s Ivy league pedigree.
This excerpt struck a chord with me for a number of reasons. First, many of the students I work with fall in the category of wanting or needing to study what this article refers to as "practical" subjects that will lead more logically to specific careers and jobs. And, while I agree that bigger public state schools often have those more specialized programs of study, I resent the implication that broader (perhaps liberal arts) degrees prepare students less well for those specific occupations (can you see my liberal arts education shining through yet??). Furthermore, I fear that statements like this only perpetuate the idea of a worthless liberal arts degree and allow employers to resist students with them regardless of how qualified or able they are. My second issue with this excerpt comes with the discussion of students "finding themselves" in college. To me, this quote seemed to imply that college as a time for personal exploration and development is a privilege reserved for the wealthy, or those students who don't actually have to worry about finding jobs after graduation. I have a number of reactions to this- first, I kind of understand it because I do remember feeling during much of my 4 years of liberal arts education that there was no direct applicable point to what we were doing. We spent a lot of time talking, arguing, and surrounding ourselves with smart, like minded people. I often found myself frustrated with the feeling that we weren't actually doing anything and that often felt like a privilege associated with attending an elite college. However, I also think this points out a very unsettling quality of the social class system of this country: not only do we find ourselves separated by the amount of money we have, the people we know, and the resources available to us- we are also permitted different ways of spending our time, learning, and even thinking. This seems to imply that privileged students are allowed, if not expected, to lounge their way through college- searching for themselves and thinking lofty thoughts, while their 'disadvantaged' peers have no time for such things and must instead focus on gaining specific marketable skills so that they can enter the job market quickly and efficiently.
All in all, I find some of the implications of this article unsettling, even if I feel that the general questions raised in it are good ones. However, I worry about what all of this means for the students I serve and the organization that I represent
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Numbers and Their Meaning
The organization I work for uses a lot of numbers and statistics. After all, it is due to some sobering and unfair statistics that the organization exists at all, for example: low income students are almost 30% less likely to enroll in college as their wealthier peers, every year there are 200,000 low income student who graduate from high school and are capable of going to college but do not go, and, in a 2005 article I just found, only 6% of low income students can expect to earn a bachelor's degree by age 24, compared to 51% average nationally.
It is only logical, then, that since we base our existence on statistics, we must be able to show statistics that prove our effectiveness. The amount of numbers floating around my head and our organization-wide friday meetings is overwhelming: number of students, rate of reliability for rsvps for a college visit, number of schools applied to, amount of scholarship money received, average baseline score, percentage increased, number of students enrolled, number of students dropped... the list goes on and on.
Yesterday, a new set of numbers came out: ACT 2 scores and percentage increase from baseline scores. With 82% of my 41 students tested, they've had a 7.7% score increase. Victoria, of course, blew me out of the water with 97% (functionally 100%) of her students achieving a 13% score increase. In a desperate attempt not to feel like such a loser, I began breaking my numbers down into more numbers. 22 of my students increased their scores with an average of an 18% increase. Six of my student got the same scores. 5 of my student's scores decreased an average of 11%, and I have one outlier, we'll deal with him later. Before I knew it I had a major excel document with every students baseline and ACT2 score and their score increase/decrease percentage color coded by percent attendance. It was getting a little scary.
With all of these numbers floating around in my head, I went to session and began having brief check-in meetings with each of my students, and it was then, cheesily, that I realized that my statistics, no matter how specific, broken down, high, or low, could never do justice to the experiences of my students. No percent could make me more happy than the smile on my student's face who improved from an 11 to a 17, or more determined to solve the mystery of my incredibly attentive student who dropped from a 16 to a 12, or more proud of my ridiculously high achiever who started with a 28 and has made it a goal to improve by 2 points every practice test and might actually do it, or more frustrated with the student who overslept and went from a 6 to a 10 on his reading section but got 1's on English and Math because he completely missed those sections.
So while I might sit here wishing that 7.7% score increase could be just a few percentage points higher, I must constantly strive to remember that the 7.7% is actually 41 different stories of happiness, triumph, frustration, determination, confusion, sadness, hope, and faith, each one as statistically significant as the next.
It is only logical, then, that since we base our existence on statistics, we must be able to show statistics that prove our effectiveness. The amount of numbers floating around my head and our organization-wide friday meetings is overwhelming: number of students, rate of reliability for rsvps for a college visit, number of schools applied to, amount of scholarship money received, average baseline score, percentage increased, number of students enrolled, number of students dropped... the list goes on and on.
Yesterday, a new set of numbers came out: ACT 2 scores and percentage increase from baseline scores. With 82% of my 41 students tested, they've had a 7.7% score increase. Victoria, of course, blew me out of the water with 97% (functionally 100%) of her students achieving a 13% score increase. In a desperate attempt not to feel like such a loser, I began breaking my numbers down into more numbers. 22 of my students increased their scores with an average of an 18% increase. Six of my student got the same scores. 5 of my student's scores decreased an average of 11%, and I have one outlier, we'll deal with him later. Before I knew it I had a major excel document with every students baseline and ACT2 score and their score increase/decrease percentage color coded by percent attendance. It was getting a little scary.
With all of these numbers floating around in my head, I went to session and began having brief check-in meetings with each of my students, and it was then, cheesily, that I realized that my statistics, no matter how specific, broken down, high, or low, could never do justice to the experiences of my students. No percent could make me more happy than the smile on my student's face who improved from an 11 to a 17, or more determined to solve the mystery of my incredibly attentive student who dropped from a 16 to a 12, or more proud of my ridiculously high achiever who started with a 28 and has made it a goal to improve by 2 points every practice test and might actually do it, or more frustrated with the student who overslept and went from a 6 to a 10 on his reading section but got 1's on English and Math because he completely missed those sections.
So while I might sit here wishing that 7.7% score increase could be just a few percentage points higher, I must constantly strive to remember that the 7.7% is actually 41 different stories of happiness, triumph, frustration, determination, confusion, sadness, hope, and faith, each one as statistically significant as the next.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Watch this and you will be happy...
Holiday Cheer!
This is courtesy of Victoria. Also special thanks to Chuck for helping me figure out how to put a link in the blog!
This is courtesy of Victoria. Also special thanks to Chuck for helping me figure out how to put a link in the blog!
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Letting our Inner Artists Shine Through
Today was a review day for our students, we printed out a million review sheets an set them free. This led to some fun free time for me and Victoria during late session so we decided to draw pictures of ourselves on the white board.
We started off with Mitch:
Important characteristics to note: The blond hair/pale skin, the vest which he only wore once but it made our day, the hand rash (it's an issue), the college application in one hand and special official transcript stamper in the other. We think this is our best/most accurate drawing of the four.
Here's Colin! Essential traits: V-neck cardigan, buttoned, work shirt over blue apple store shirt (an ex-employer), skinny-ish pants, brown "dress" shoes, guitar, and he's singing his famous recruitment song, "Hey Sophomores"
Moving on to Victoria- it's important to note that Victoria pretty much always wears the same thing to work. Jeans, above ankle height boots, a work shirt, and a cardigan of the black or grey variety. She is shown here carrying an LSAT book, which if she's not actually carrying, she's thinking about in some way.
This is me. I'm told that I made the hair a little too much, but other than that I think it's a good representation. I always try to stretch the limits of my green work shirt by pairing it with various colorful cardigans that may or may not actually match. In the fall I also favored the skirt instead of pants, but this is changing. In my hands I hold a copy of Twilight which, by the way, I am not READING... I'm listening to it on cd during my commute (does that excuse it at all?)
So, here we are! For any of you readers who haven't seen us all in person, maybe this can paint you a picture.
We started off with Mitch:
Important characteristics to note: The blond hair/pale skin, the vest which he only wore once but it made our day, the hand rash (it's an issue), the college application in one hand and special official transcript stamper in the other. We think this is our best/most accurate drawing of the four.
Here's Colin! Essential traits: V-neck cardigan, buttoned, work shirt over blue apple store shirt (an ex-employer), skinny-ish pants, brown "dress" shoes, guitar, and he's singing his famous recruitment song, "Hey Sophomores"
Moving on to Victoria- it's important to note that Victoria pretty much always wears the same thing to work. Jeans, above ankle height boots, a work shirt, and a cardigan of the black or grey variety. She is shown here carrying an LSAT book, which if she's not actually carrying, she's thinking about in some way.
This is me. I'm told that I made the hair a little too much, but other than that I think it's a good representation. I always try to stretch the limits of my green work shirt by pairing it with various colorful cardigans that may or may not actually match. In the fall I also favored the skirt instead of pants, but this is changing. In my hands I hold a copy of Twilight which, by the way, I am not READING... I'm listening to it on cd during my commute (does that excuse it at all?)
So, here we are! For any of you readers who haven't seen us all in person, maybe this can paint you a picture.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Creating Overly Dependent Students
This past weekend was our first practice ACT for our students. Because we really wanted them to be there and we knew that without reminders they would probably not get themselves up on a Saturday morning at 7am to get to school, we tried to contact every one of our students the night before. We even called students repeatedly the morning of until they woke up and made their way to school.
On Monday, one of my very favorite school traditions occurred: administrator hall sweeps! Here's how it goes: the bell rings, students begin to walk to class, an announcement sounds informing students that hall sweeps are occurring, then staff members appear out of nowhere and begin herding students to their classrooms. I've mentioned sweepers before, but this time I came up with a new comparison: they remind me of snatchers in Harry potter! Here's a picture to jog your memory:
So, I started wondering if we're doing a little more coddling of our students than necessary. Is our over-attentiveness actually poorly preparing them for college? In college no professor is going to call his/her students the night before an exam and remind them to be there, eat a healthy breakfast, and bring a calculator. Furthermore, no one roams college campuses herding students to class. If students aren't going to class or other important academic events now, what will ensure that they attend in college? Some might argue that being on top of students in this way now will encourage them to subconsciously value such activities in the future. However, I worry that it actually inspires rebellious activities- if someone doesn't think I'll want to go to class on my own, why don't I just prove them right? And, doesn't the amount of people forcing students to do various activity merely validate these activities as not fun or worthwhile? For example, if I had to be nearly physically forced into my physics class, I'd consider it an admission that physics class is really as awful as I think. Don't we want to foster an environment where students are self motivated, not where they need our constant gentle (or not so gentle) nudging?
On Monday, one of my very favorite school traditions occurred: administrator hall sweeps! Here's how it goes: the bell rings, students begin to walk to class, an announcement sounds informing students that hall sweeps are occurring, then staff members appear out of nowhere and begin herding students to their classrooms. I've mentioned sweepers before, but this time I came up with a new comparison: they remind me of snatchers in Harry potter! Here's a picture to jog your memory:
So, I started wondering if we're doing a little more coddling of our students than necessary. Is our over-attentiveness actually poorly preparing them for college? In college no professor is going to call his/her students the night before an exam and remind them to be there, eat a healthy breakfast, and bring a calculator. Furthermore, no one roams college campuses herding students to class. If students aren't going to class or other important academic events now, what will ensure that they attend in college? Some might argue that being on top of students in this way now will encourage them to subconsciously value such activities in the future. However, I worry that it actually inspires rebellious activities- if someone doesn't think I'll want to go to class on my own, why don't I just prove them right? And, doesn't the amount of people forcing students to do various activity merely validate these activities as not fun or worthwhile? For example, if I had to be nearly physically forced into my physics class, I'd consider it an admission that physics class is really as awful as I think. Don't we want to foster an environment where students are self motivated, not where they need our constant gentle (or not so gentle) nudging?
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
freedom OF or FROM religion
Victoria loves Christmas, and even more than that, she loves decorating for Christmas. I've never been one for the Christmas decorating per se, but I do love decorating for other holidays (Valentine's Day is a personal favorite). So, as often happens when the two of us get excited about something, we went crazy buying and collecting various forms of holiday decorations for our office. We ended up with tinsel and ornaments, personalized stockings and holidays cards, a mini christmas tree (with ornaments!), a light up Menorah, dreidels, gelt, and a holiday themed table cloth to tie it all together. We were set.
As we showed off our decorations, Mitch (aka the Grinch, for this story at least) mentioned that it might not really be allowed for us to display religious icons such as the Menorah in our office in a public school. Concerned about what was permitted of us, we held off on the set up and sent an e-mail to our supervisor to get the go ahead.
We weren't quite patient enough and did some decorating without hearing the final verdict. The outcome is pictured below, a perfect scene of coexistence, if you ask me:
Ultimately, however, we were informed by our supervisor that according to the higher ups in our organization it was alright for us to display ornaments, tinsel, and winter themed decorations like snow flakes and snowmen, but anything that could be interpreted as a religious symbol was out. This meant no more Menorah and no more Christmas tree for us, sad day. (Don't be too sad for us, though, the office is still quite festive, pictures to come tomorrow)
Being the Religion major that I am, I couldn't help but start to think of the greater implications of this "ruling." To me it seems to boil down to the difference between freedom of religion and freedom from religion. As employees of a government funded organization based out of a public school do those we serve (and we in turn) have the right to the freedom of religion- that is, the ability to practice whatever religion we want however we want- or freedom from religion, the right to have no semblance of religion in one's vicinity.
These are two very different things. If I have the freedom of religion then it should be no problem for me to display my Menorah in my work space just like my student can take time during session to pray or another teacher in the school can wear a cross necklace- so long as none of us are imposing our beliefs on others or trying to convert anyone. But, if it is freedom from religion that we are truly granting then pretty much none of that should be allowed.
I understand why my organization made this ruling- it's safer and keeps anyone from potentially getting in trouble or misinterpreted. But, I wonder when being 'safe' in this way is going too far. When does prohibiting religious displays in an office turn into prohibiting displays of religion on one's body (I can't help but think of France and the headscarf fiasco)? And, how far of a leap is it from 'freedom from religion' to 'freedom from culture'- discouraging people from displaying anything related to their heritage or cultural upbringing? Most importantly, in my opinion, how many teaching and learning opportunities are lost when we silence or hide religion instead of allowing students to see and question it?
The Kinds of People We Were in High School
Today, one of my students, let's call him Lil Insane, came by to do a make up session. He's a hilarious kid who's smart, but you wouldn't know it by his ACT scores. As we were talking about essay writing, he mentioned how people never guess he's a good student who is on the honor roll based on his physical appearance (he's a tall African American kid who wears slouchy pants and always listens to his ipod).
Somehow we moved onto a discussion about how he would judge us based on our appearances. The conversation went as follows:
"Well, Victoria would be that party girl who's the life of the party and Abigail would be her friend who's always like 'No! Don't go with him'. "
So then we asked about Mitch and Colin:
"Colin's that cool guy, everyone thinks he's cool. Mitch was probably in Math club or something. Colin probably went to all of the parties but Mitch had lots of girlfriends."
This definitely made my day.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
It has been too long
Greetings from Atlanta, Georgia! I am here for the holiday weekend and will hopefully post a few times this weekend from here if time allows.
I haven't posted in about a week and a half, which I worry starts to become a dangerous length of time for a new blogger, so it's time to play catch up.
Things that we've been up to while not blogging:
- New Students: Victoria and I accepted 2 new students each into our cohorts from the incredibly long wait list. This brings my group to 41 students (now surpassing the number in my graduating high school class) and Victoria's to 40. This has required not only tracking them down in class but also administering baseline ACT exams to them after school. All of our new students are boys and one of mine happens to be one of my student's boyfriend- whoops, hope that turns out ok- for right now it's great, she makes sure he shows up everywhere and does everything that he has to. Let's just hope they don't break up for another year and a half at the earliest.
- The Study: I don't think that I've mentioned the study yet on this blog but it has in some ways been the bane of our existence. While the organization that I work with has had many success stories and incredible statistics for the students we serve, we have no actual data on how our students do compared to their counterparts who do not participate in our program. Thus, this year, the organization has commissioned a researcher from Harvard to complete a study about the effectiveness of our program. If the results are what we expect that they will be, it will mean really great things for the organization and open a lot of doors for funding and expansion. This all sounds fine and dandy, right? Right! But, the problem comes with the administration of said study. For the study to be effective it needs a control group- a group of students we can compare our students to. For the most useful results, these students must be pretty equivalent to our students, the only difference being that they are not in our program. So, a randomly selected group of our wait list students were chosen for the task and we, the junior and senior coaches at each school participating, were given the task of tracking down and asking the students to participate in the study. Don't get me wrong, I definitely see the benefit in this study, but it has been incredibly uncomfortable to approach students on our wait list not with the news that they were accepted into the program but instead that they were selected as participants in a study that will hopefully show how much better their lives would have turned out if they had been in the program... It feels kind if wrong. More on that in another post, perhaps. Back to the point, we spent parts of last week in a final attempt to track down students who have so far been unresponsive about their willingness to participate in the study.
- Kaplan Training: Most of mine and Victoria's roles this year is to help our students prepare for the ACT. In order to be qualified and prepared to do this we are being trained by Kaplan, the test prep organization. Every friday for the next few weeks we will be spending 4 hours at Kaplan practice teaching and going through their ACT prep curriculum page by page. Coming up in a future post: opinions/responses to Kaplan training and particularly the Kaplan Method for our students.
- College! This point really has nothing to do with how I've been too busy to blog, but it's still an awesome point to end this post on: the first of Mitch's students got accepted into college! We're all really excited for him and it's really awesome to see all of the organization's hard work paying off.
Happy early hours of Thanksgiving all!
I haven't posted in about a week and a half, which I worry starts to become a dangerous length of time for a new blogger, so it's time to play catch up.
Things that we've been up to while not blogging:
- New Students: Victoria and I accepted 2 new students each into our cohorts from the incredibly long wait list. This brings my group to 41 students (now surpassing the number in my graduating high school class) and Victoria's to 40. This has required not only tracking them down in class but also administering baseline ACT exams to them after school. All of our new students are boys and one of mine happens to be one of my student's boyfriend- whoops, hope that turns out ok- for right now it's great, she makes sure he shows up everywhere and does everything that he has to. Let's just hope they don't break up for another year and a half at the earliest.
- The Study: I don't think that I've mentioned the study yet on this blog but it has in some ways been the bane of our existence. While the organization that I work with has had many success stories and incredible statistics for the students we serve, we have no actual data on how our students do compared to their counterparts who do not participate in our program. Thus, this year, the organization has commissioned a researcher from Harvard to complete a study about the effectiveness of our program. If the results are what we expect that they will be, it will mean really great things for the organization and open a lot of doors for funding and expansion. This all sounds fine and dandy, right? Right! But, the problem comes with the administration of said study. For the study to be effective it needs a control group- a group of students we can compare our students to. For the most useful results, these students must be pretty equivalent to our students, the only difference being that they are not in our program. So, a randomly selected group of our wait list students were chosen for the task and we, the junior and senior coaches at each school participating, were given the task of tracking down and asking the students to participate in the study. Don't get me wrong, I definitely see the benefit in this study, but it has been incredibly uncomfortable to approach students on our wait list not with the news that they were accepted into the program but instead that they were selected as participants in a study that will hopefully show how much better their lives would have turned out if they had been in the program... It feels kind if wrong. More on that in another post, perhaps. Back to the point, we spent parts of last week in a final attempt to track down students who have so far been unresponsive about their willingness to participate in the study.
- Kaplan Training: Most of mine and Victoria's roles this year is to help our students prepare for the ACT. In order to be qualified and prepared to do this we are being trained by Kaplan, the test prep organization. Every friday for the next few weeks we will be spending 4 hours at Kaplan practice teaching and going through their ACT prep curriculum page by page. Coming up in a future post: opinions/responses to Kaplan training and particularly the Kaplan Method for our students.
- College! This point really has nothing to do with how I've been too busy to blog, but it's still an awesome point to end this post on: the first of Mitch's students got accepted into college! We're all really excited for him and it's really awesome to see all of the organization's hard work paying off.
Happy early hours of Thanksgiving all!
Monday, November 15, 2010
Birthday!
Turning 22 in the office looks like:
Victoria is wonderful and decorated my desk area and made me cupcakes! Also- now you can see my incredibly neat (lies) desk area.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Public School Compared to my Expectations
As Colin so artfully pointed out during a team outing to Sonic for lunch (I know you're jealous)- I had never spent a full day in a public high school before starting this job. It's true, I spent most of my childhood enrolled in Jewish Day Schools and high school at a private all-girls school where I wore a kilt every day, true story. Times spent in public high schools included taking the SAT back when I was in high school... and that's about it.
So I began to think about how this 'urban' public school compares to my idea of a public school and how working in an urban public school compares to my expectations. I'll reveal some of my thoughts in list form:
-. First, this school does not feel incredibly urban to me, despite being described as such. Perhaps this is because in the Midwest, at least, the term "urban" is a little more lenient. When I think urban, I think inner city Baltimore where the schools take up city blocks and are surrounded by row houses and other urban buildings. This school is a sprawling one story building surrounded by sports fields nestled in an ordered yet relatively spacious neighborhood of modest single family homes. I feel more like I am in a suburb than a city when I drive to work every day.
- Safety: I don't feel unsafe when I'm at school. I'm aware that this is a gross generalization about 'urban schools' that really unfortunately stereotypes the student population that we work with- but I won't pretend that I wasn't worried about it at first. In fact, my mom strongly discouraged me from working at a job that would place me in an urban school because she didn't think that I could handle it. Can you blame her, though, with headlines in Baltimore like "Teacher ‘petrified’ after being attacked by student: Baltimore educator says she cannot bring herself to return to work now" (for the rest of the story see here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/24047456/)? Fortunately, I am not at all worried that any of my students would attack me and think, instead, that they would probably come to my defense if necessary. There are also no metal detectors or anything of the sort here, like I might have expected. And, unlike other schools that our organization works with, I've witnessed no fights, though I've heard that they do happen.
- PDA: There are a lot of teenagers making out around school. I think that's actually less of an urban thing or even a public school thing and more of a co-ed school thing. Still, it's awkward. That would not have been/ was not tolerated at my high school, and believe me, there were relationships going on. Our motto is usually 'look away and walk away quickly'... I don't need to see any of my students doing that.
- Sweepers, and I don't mean the kinds with brooms: There are people at this school who are HIRED and PAID to sit in the hallways and force the students to go to class. They watch down the hallways suspiciously and demand passes from students. Seriously? I can think of many many more effective ways to spend a school's budget. Perhaps a better college prep program? Maybe ensuring that we don't fail to meet AYP AGAIN this year...? Funny fact: On more than one occasion, Victoria and I have been 'swept' and I saw a sweeper eyeing us today... pathetic.
So I began to think about how this 'urban' public school compares to my idea of a public school and how working in an urban public school compares to my expectations. I'll reveal some of my thoughts in list form:
-. First, this school does not feel incredibly urban to me, despite being described as such. Perhaps this is because in the Midwest, at least, the term "urban" is a little more lenient. When I think urban, I think inner city Baltimore where the schools take up city blocks and are surrounded by row houses and other urban buildings. This school is a sprawling one story building surrounded by sports fields nestled in an ordered yet relatively spacious neighborhood of modest single family homes. I feel more like I am in a suburb than a city when I drive to work every day.
- Safety: I don't feel unsafe when I'm at school. I'm aware that this is a gross generalization about 'urban schools' that really unfortunately stereotypes the student population that we work with- but I won't pretend that I wasn't worried about it at first. In fact, my mom strongly discouraged me from working at a job that would place me in an urban school because she didn't think that I could handle it. Can you blame her, though, with headlines in Baltimore like "Teacher ‘petrified’ after being attacked by student: Baltimore educator says she cannot bring herself to return to work now" (for the rest of the story see here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/24047456/)? Fortunately, I am not at all worried that any of my students would attack me and think, instead, that they would probably come to my defense if necessary. There are also no metal detectors or anything of the sort here, like I might have expected. And, unlike other schools that our organization works with, I've witnessed no fights, though I've heard that they do happen.
- PDA: There are a lot of teenagers making out around school. I think that's actually less of an urban thing or even a public school thing and more of a co-ed school thing. Still, it's awkward. That would not have been/ was not tolerated at my high school, and believe me, there were relationships going on. Our motto is usually 'look away and walk away quickly'... I don't need to see any of my students doing that.
- Sweepers, and I don't mean the kinds with brooms: There are people at this school who are HIRED and PAID to sit in the hallways and force the students to go to class. They watch down the hallways suspiciously and demand passes from students. Seriously? I can think of many many more effective ways to spend a school's budget. Perhaps a better college prep program? Maybe ensuring that we don't fail to meet AYP AGAIN this year...? Funny fact: On more than one occasion, Victoria and I have been 'swept' and I saw a sweeper eyeing us today... pathetic.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Is a 4-year degree program right for every student?
One of the primary goals of the organization that I work for is to get all of our students accepted to and enrolled in 4-year degree programs. The idea behind this is that graduates of 4-year program make more money over their lifetimes than graduates of 2-year programs or those who do not go to college. Additionally, students who go to a 4-year school are more likely to stay in school than those in other programs. Lastly, more often than not 4-year programs have a greater emphasis on the Liberal Arts than two year programs which usually focus on specific occupations, thus 4-year programs are considered simply better or more intellectual.
So, sitting here with my Liberal Arts school degree in Religion, in a job I adore but which is in no way financially supportive, with the knowledge that if I decide to finally get a "real job" I'm going to have to go back to school to get a degree in something actually useful- I find myself wondering if a 4-year degree really is the right thing for every student.
Is getting a liberal arts degree specifically and a 4-year degree generally more of a privilege than a necessity? Is forcing our students into 4-year programs only setting them up for failure?
When talking about this with Mitch yesterday after session he mentioned the cases of a few of his students who he is not sure should be going to 4-year schools. Some, he worries, are simply not ready for college- they rarely show up for session, they have poor writing skills, or they have a very difficult time verbally communicating in English. He worries that these students, even if they get into 4-year schools, will end up dropping out because they will be too discouraged and not receive the support they need. Or, there's the student who has a child and very little motivation. Could a 2-year program be a quicker path to a career for this student so that he could start truly providing for his family? Then there's the student who is dead set on being an auto mechanic- there are a few 4-year programs that do exist in that area, but the majority are definitely two year programs. Should that student be forced into a 4-year program simply because that's what the organization has decided is the best place for him regardless of the incredible additional expense and potential time wasted by choosing that program over a 2-year program in the same area?
Then I think of some of my students who are in similar situations. One of them, who wants to be called AMP in this blog (she'll be mentioned again, so I guess it's good for her to have a fake name) really wants to be an orthotist or a prosthetist- aka someone who designs and makes orthotics and prosthetics. When she approached colleges at the mini college fair held at our school all of the representatives told her about pre-med programs and how she would need to go to medical school for that degree. In reality, its a 2-year program at most. Or, there's my student who wants to be a pastry chef and would love to go to the Culinary Institute of America or Le Cordon Bleu. However, both of these schools are considered for-profit institutions that we are supposed to steer our students away from because of their less than stellar retention and graduation rates. I understand the concern, especially with for profit schools that are not specialized, but I also have no interest in sending my students to schools where they cannot study what they want.
So I wonder, then, if our emphasis on 4-year degree program is really motivated by theories of social mobility. Education is widely considered one of the primary sources of social mobility. All of our students are low income and I'm sure that parts of the unspoken goals of the organization is to help them move up in the socioeconomic class ladder. Is it then classist of me to believe that some of our students would be in some ways better off to do shorter programs that would land them in jobs faster rather than enrolling in longer term, less career specific, more expensive programs? Or, is that a good suggestion that would help our students more gradually change their social class standings: instead of jumping from low income, potentially non-educated groups to over educated liberal arts minded groups- taking a brief stop at the educated, hard working class that would actually allow them to support their families and communities?
So, sitting here with my Liberal Arts school degree in Religion, in a job I adore but which is in no way financially supportive, with the knowledge that if I decide to finally get a "real job" I'm going to have to go back to school to get a degree in something actually useful- I find myself wondering if a 4-year degree really is the right thing for every student.
Is getting a liberal arts degree specifically and a 4-year degree generally more of a privilege than a necessity? Is forcing our students into 4-year programs only setting them up for failure?
When talking about this with Mitch yesterday after session he mentioned the cases of a few of his students who he is not sure should be going to 4-year schools. Some, he worries, are simply not ready for college- they rarely show up for session, they have poor writing skills, or they have a very difficult time verbally communicating in English. He worries that these students, even if they get into 4-year schools, will end up dropping out because they will be too discouraged and not receive the support they need. Or, there's the student who has a child and very little motivation. Could a 2-year program be a quicker path to a career for this student so that he could start truly providing for his family? Then there's the student who is dead set on being an auto mechanic- there are a few 4-year programs that do exist in that area, but the majority are definitely two year programs. Should that student be forced into a 4-year program simply because that's what the organization has decided is the best place for him regardless of the incredible additional expense and potential time wasted by choosing that program over a 2-year program in the same area?
Then I think of some of my students who are in similar situations. One of them, who wants to be called AMP in this blog (she'll be mentioned again, so I guess it's good for her to have a fake name) really wants to be an orthotist or a prosthetist- aka someone who designs and makes orthotics and prosthetics. When she approached colleges at the mini college fair held at our school all of the representatives told her about pre-med programs and how she would need to go to medical school for that degree. In reality, its a 2-year program at most. Or, there's my student who wants to be a pastry chef and would love to go to the Culinary Institute of America or Le Cordon Bleu. However, both of these schools are considered for-profit institutions that we are supposed to steer our students away from because of their less than stellar retention and graduation rates. I understand the concern, especially with for profit schools that are not specialized, but I also have no interest in sending my students to schools where they cannot study what they want.
So I wonder, then, if our emphasis on 4-year degree program is really motivated by theories of social mobility. Education is widely considered one of the primary sources of social mobility. All of our students are low income and I'm sure that parts of the unspoken goals of the organization is to help them move up in the socioeconomic class ladder. Is it then classist of me to believe that some of our students would be in some ways better off to do shorter programs that would land them in jobs faster rather than enrolling in longer term, less career specific, more expensive programs? Or, is that a good suggestion that would help our students more gradually change their social class standings: instead of jumping from low income, potentially non-educated groups to over educated liberal arts minded groups- taking a brief stop at the educated, hard working class that would actually allow them to support their families and communities?
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
What we do
So I just realized that despite having this blog now for about 2 weeks, I've never completely described what I actually do in this job. All four of us have cohorts of about 40 students. These students applied and interviewed and were accepted into the program because they had above a 2.0 gpa, are interested in attending a 4 year college or university, and meet certain income requirements (they either qualify for free or reduced price lunch or they don't but face other serious financial setbacks).
I lead two sessions a week six different times. In other words, I teach the same lesson monday afternoon, monday early evening, and tuesday afternoon then I teach a second lesson on wednesday afternoon, wednesday early evening, and thursday afternoon. Sessions are two hours each. My students only attend two sessions per week, one in the beginning of the week and one at the end. During the day Victoria and I lesson plan, do make up sessions with students, harass Mitch and Colin, and blog (today we also got into a lively discussion and research session about whether and for how long humans could survive on celery, oranges, or watermelon). On fridays we gather with all of the other members of our organization and do staff development type activities as well as even more lesson planning.
As far as the content of our lessons, in the Junior year the focus is mainly on ACT prep as well as a splattering of general college prep activities like going on college websites, creating a resumes, and learning about bank accounts (splattering was the appropriate term, no?). Senior year is very focused on preparing college and scholarship applications and involves a lot of workshop time where the coaches work individually with their students as they navigate the college application process. Right now Victoria and I work anywhere between 36-42 or so hours/week depending on weekend events and such. Mitch and Colin are putting in a lot more hours these days because of all of the letters of recommendation/support they have to write and the ridiculous amount of essays they read through and edit.
So, that's what we do! If you have any questions about anything at all, leave a comment! I'd love to hear that I'm not just writing into cyberspace... and that I'm making some sort of sense while I do so.
I lead two sessions a week six different times. In other words, I teach the same lesson monday afternoon, monday early evening, and tuesday afternoon then I teach a second lesson on wednesday afternoon, wednesday early evening, and thursday afternoon. Sessions are two hours each. My students only attend two sessions per week, one in the beginning of the week and one at the end. During the day Victoria and I lesson plan, do make up sessions with students, harass Mitch and Colin, and blog (today we also got into a lively discussion and research session about whether and for how long humans could survive on celery, oranges, or watermelon). On fridays we gather with all of the other members of our organization and do staff development type activities as well as even more lesson planning.
As far as the content of our lessons, in the Junior year the focus is mainly on ACT prep as well as a splattering of general college prep activities like going on college websites, creating a resumes, and learning about bank accounts (splattering was the appropriate term, no?). Senior year is very focused on preparing college and scholarship applications and involves a lot of workshop time where the coaches work individually with their students as they navigate the college application process. Right now Victoria and I work anywhere between 36-42 or so hours/week depending on weekend events and such. Mitch and Colin are putting in a lot more hours these days because of all of the letters of recommendation/support they have to write and the ridiculous amount of essays they read through and edit.
So, that's what we do! If you have any questions about anything at all, leave a comment! I'd love to hear that I'm not just writing into cyberspace... and that I'm making some sort of sense while I do so.
Monday, November 1, 2010
IB
Our school offers a number of IB (International Baccalaureate) courses which are meant to be honors courses that are held to an international standard. From my experience working in college admissions, IB courses are considered on par with AP courses, signifying a particularly challenging or intense choice that a student could make in his or her schedule if he/she was qualified to take the course.
What's interesting about IB courses at our school is that students do not have to apply or especially qualify to take them. In fact, the school encourages every student to take at least one IB course before they graduate. IB courses are meant to come from a global perspective with the goal of educating children towards a mindset of world peace. The IB organization appears to pride itself on providing a higher level of education that could and should be recognized as advanced in colleges and universities worldwide.
When I noticed that I had a couple of students who were full IB diploma candidates (meaning that they are taking/have taken courses in all of the areas of study and are going to be writing a big final paper to culminate their studies), I assumed that they would be my highest achievers. However, these students still scored between 12-15 on their baseline ACTs, got 5-7s on their ACT essays, and, for at least one, will have to retake the GRAD reading and writing tests in order to graduate.
I found myself wondering: how does this happen? How do students make it all the way to IB courses without developing strong reading and writing skills? How can they be expected to write a "Senior Thesis"-esq paper if they cannot manage the ACT essay or their GRAD writing exam?
Through this whole discussion, these are my main concerns: 1. That my school merely implemented an IB program to pad the student's resumes with no ability to actually run the program in an advanced or correct way, 2. That these tests- the ACT and the GRAD tests are in no way able to measure these student's abilities, 3. That the emphasis on the IB program is just another form of world competition rhetoric that has completely infected our educational system.
More on all of these topics at some point.
What's interesting about IB courses at our school is that students do not have to apply or especially qualify to take them. In fact, the school encourages every student to take at least one IB course before they graduate. IB courses are meant to come from a global perspective with the goal of educating children towards a mindset of world peace. The IB organization appears to pride itself on providing a higher level of education that could and should be recognized as advanced in colleges and universities worldwide.
When I noticed that I had a couple of students who were full IB diploma candidates (meaning that they are taking/have taken courses in all of the areas of study and are going to be writing a big final paper to culminate their studies), I assumed that they would be my highest achievers. However, these students still scored between 12-15 on their baseline ACTs, got 5-7s on their ACT essays, and, for at least one, will have to retake the GRAD reading and writing tests in order to graduate.
I found myself wondering: how does this happen? How do students make it all the way to IB courses without developing strong reading and writing skills? How can they be expected to write a "Senior Thesis"-esq paper if they cannot manage the ACT essay or their GRAD writing exam?
Through this whole discussion, these are my main concerns: 1. That my school merely implemented an IB program to pad the student's resumes with no ability to actually run the program in an advanced or correct way, 2. That these tests- the ACT and the GRAD tests are in no way able to measure these student's abilities, 3. That the emphasis on the IB program is just another form of world competition rhetoric that has completely infected our educational system.
More on all of these topics at some point.
Friday, October 29, 2010
MinnPost - 'Waiting for Superman' forum elicits diverse reactions, universal concern
MinnPost - 'Waiting for Superman' forum elicits diverse reactions, universal concern
Colin is mentioned in this article- and it's a perfect description of him.
More to come soon!
Colin is mentioned in this article- and it's a perfect description of him.
More to come soon!
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
After two serious posts, here's a fun one:
I stole this right from the e-mail that we sent out to our coworkers:
Preface: our students think that Colin is a hunk of burnin' love.
A few weeks ago our check in question was "If you were stranded on a desert island what two items would you bring?"
An unidentified female student answers without hesitation "Colin, no guitar necessary."
That same student, in session yesterday, also picked colin for the question: "What person, living or dead, fictional or real, would you want to have dinner with."
This crush is getting a little creepy, no?
Preface: our students think that Colin is a hunk of burnin' love.
A few weeks ago our check in question was "If you were stranded on a desert island what two items would you bring?"
An unidentified female student answers without hesitation "Colin, no guitar necessary."
That same student, in session yesterday, also picked colin for the question: "What person, living or dead, fictional or real, would you want to have dinner with."
This crush is getting a little creepy, no?
Tough Topics
In the past few sessions some difficult topics have come up unintentionally. At these points the scholar and sociologist in me comes out, and I'm not quite sure that my students appreciate or understand my interest.
One issue was welfare, which came from our use of EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) Cards on a financial literacy vocabulary list. One of my most vocal and outgoing students began to talk about how his family has an EBT card- which, of course, was never asked. I didn't mind him sharing details about his financial situation if he felt comfortable, but the problems started when he began asking others about using EBT cards and claiming that it was only Black people who used them (not as bad as it could have been though, I suppose, since this student is Black). Now, the scholar in me thought "oh what an interesting moment to talk about the stereotypes of the Black community and ideas about poverty and government assistance!". The 'teacher' in me however was shocked and mortified about what this student had said and how uncomfortable he was potentially making the other students in class. We shut the discussion down pretty quickly, but I still wonder how I could effectively facilitate a discussion on this topic.
Today another issue surrounding race came up. Our school has an indoor ice rink attached but no ice hockey team. Supposedly, the school used to have an ice hockey team- but that was years ago. One student chalked it up to 'white flight'- which is actually probably true. I tried to turn that comment into a teaching moment- talking my students through the link between people who are wealthy (as my students perceived the participants in this 'white flight' to be) and the existence of a hockey team- discussing the cost of participating in hockey, buying equipment, etc. I worry, though, that instead of inspiring my students to think about the connections between income and various types of organized sports, I simply reinforced the stereotype that the White population is always wealthier than anyone else. oy.
One issue was welfare, which came from our use of EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) Cards on a financial literacy vocabulary list. One of my most vocal and outgoing students began to talk about how his family has an EBT card- which, of course, was never asked. I didn't mind him sharing details about his financial situation if he felt comfortable, but the problems started when he began asking others about using EBT cards and claiming that it was only Black people who used them (not as bad as it could have been though, I suppose, since this student is Black). Now, the scholar in me thought "oh what an interesting moment to talk about the stereotypes of the Black community and ideas about poverty and government assistance!". The 'teacher' in me however was shocked and mortified about what this student had said and how uncomfortable he was potentially making the other students in class. We shut the discussion down pretty quickly, but I still wonder how I could effectively facilitate a discussion on this topic.
Today another issue surrounding race came up. Our school has an indoor ice rink attached but no ice hockey team. Supposedly, the school used to have an ice hockey team- but that was years ago. One student chalked it up to 'white flight'- which is actually probably true. I tried to turn that comment into a teaching moment- talking my students through the link between people who are wealthy (as my students perceived the participants in this 'white flight' to be) and the existence of a hockey team- discussing the cost of participating in hockey, buying equipment, etc. I worry, though, that instead of inspiring my students to think about the connections between income and various types of organized sports, I simply reinforced the stereotype that the White population is always wealthier than anyone else. oy.
The perils of facebook
Today we faced an issue I wasn't expecting: Our students wrote about their Baseline ACT scores in their facebook statuses. I think the most damaging post was the one from my high achiever who got a 28. Without him in the mix, my cohort's average is a 14.1-HALF of his score. He has every right to be excited about this baseline score- I'm sure that we can help him so much and that he can apply to some of the most competitive schools in the country with that score, but I cannot imagine being a student who scored an 11 and saw that status. What's even more surprising is that some of my students who scored between 13 and 15 also facebooked about their scores- something I'm not quite sure they should be proud of...
After a serious talk I think that all of my students have agreed not to post about their scores anymore, but it's interesting how much this shows that facebook is a huge part of my student's lives and they regularly share the most personal details of their lives on it.
After a serious talk I think that all of my students have agreed not to post about their scores anymore, but it's interesting how much this shows that facebook is a huge part of my student's lives and they regularly share the most personal details of their lives on it.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Gotta Catch 'Em All!
or "Pokemans" according to Colin
So, Victoria and I decided that we should decide which pokemon character we would be. We don't know why and when we asked Colin where this idea came from he started telling us about the origins of the words that combine to make the word "Pokemon"... not our question, Linguistics!
So here are the results:
This is electrode who we've decided is Colin's character. Don't know why.
This it Ditto: aka Mitch's pokemon. We decided that this applies to Mitch because he is a twin and ditto signifies a duplicate... LIKE TWINS!! Also- Ditto looks friendly and Mitch is pretty friendly. Victoria adds that he suspects that Ditto makes weird noises, like Mitch. This is a giant image because it is that awesome, clearly.
This is Vulpix- Victoria's pokemon. Seems enthusiastic, fluffy and "probably enjoys a good pickle", says victoria.
Lastly, This is mine, Togepi... look it's so happy! And it dances kind of awkwardly just like me!
I swear that we actually do work some times.
So, Victoria and I decided that we should decide which pokemon character we would be. We don't know why and when we asked Colin where this idea came from he started telling us about the origins of the words that combine to make the word "Pokemon"... not our question, Linguistics!
So here are the results:
This is electrode who we've decided is Colin's character. Don't know why.
This it Ditto: aka Mitch's pokemon. We decided that this applies to Mitch because he is a twin and ditto signifies a duplicate... LIKE TWINS!! Also- Ditto looks friendly and Mitch is pretty friendly. Victoria adds that he suspects that Ditto makes weird noises, like Mitch. This is a giant image because it is that awesome, clearly.
This is Vulpix- Victoria's pokemon. Seems enthusiastic, fluffy and "probably enjoys a good pickle", says victoria.
Lastly, This is mine, Togepi... look it's so happy! And it dances kind of awkwardly just like me!
I swear that we actually do work some times.
Heard around the Office:
"Linguistics is a sub-topic in the English department- I'm offended!"
- Guess who
- Guess who
Monday, October 25, 2010
Realities
Today was a little bit heartbreaking because it was the first day that we shared our student's baseline ACT scores with them. In this organization we focus a lot on ACT prep in the junior year and we start off the year with a baseline ACT- a test where we tell them where to go and when but nothing else.
Our student's baseline scores ranged from 9-28 (the 28 was a major outlier... after this student no one had higher than a 20). To give some context: the national average is 21 and the state average is almost 23. A good portion of both mine and victoria's students fell in the bottom 1% of test takers.
This is incredibly disheartening. Our students are smart energetic students- yet the test in no way shows that. Our English Language Learners definitely struggle the most, being unable to come even close to finishing the reading section and getting a majority of those questions wrong.
I think what affected me the most was how immune my students seemed to being in the bottom 30% or lower of test takers. Most of my students failed their GRAD tests in reading and/or writing and they are completely used to being below average. I guess this is better than being destroyed by this fact. I even had one student make a joke about it. He had a 10 or 11 and was in the bottom 1%, instead he remarked: "I'm in the top 1% of test takers!"... all I could do was look at him with a sad smile.
The ray of hope here is that we are basically guaranteed to raise our students' scores. Our organization averaged a 25% score increase last year. But, I don't really think 25% is enough for most of my students and sincerely hope it will be possible to improve their scores even more.
Our student's baseline scores ranged from 9-28 (the 28 was a major outlier... after this student no one had higher than a 20). To give some context: the national average is 21 and the state average is almost 23. A good portion of both mine and victoria's students fell in the bottom 1% of test takers.
This is incredibly disheartening. Our students are smart energetic students- yet the test in no way shows that. Our English Language Learners definitely struggle the most, being unable to come even close to finishing the reading section and getting a majority of those questions wrong.
I think what affected me the most was how immune my students seemed to being in the bottom 30% or lower of test takers. Most of my students failed their GRAD tests in reading and/or writing and they are completely used to being below average. I guess this is better than being destroyed by this fact. I even had one student make a joke about it. He had a 10 or 11 and was in the bottom 1%, instead he remarked: "I'm in the top 1% of test takers!"... all I could do was look at him with a sad smile.
The ray of hope here is that we are basically guaranteed to raise our students' scores. Our organization averaged a 25% score increase last year. But, I don't really think 25% is enough for most of my students and sincerely hope it will be possible to improve their scores even more.
Overheard in the Office:
Mitch's student:
"I don't know how she does it, but somehow my mom always finds money for me when I need it."
suspicious.
"I don't know how she does it, but somehow my mom always finds money for me when I need it."
suspicious.
Awkwardness:
AKA Every day at School.
We've been working in this school for about 7 weeks. Despite this- we always get mistaken for high school students and told to get to class or provide a pass.
Also- whenever we go into the teachers lounge to get a soda, or pop, if you will, no one talks to us. Awkward, as is my life.
We've been working in this school for about 7 weeks. Despite this- we always get mistaken for high school students and told to get to class or provide a pass.
Also- whenever we go into the teachers lounge to get a soda, or pop, if you will, no one talks to us. Awkward, as is my life.
Overheard in the Office:
"My barbie could have eaten that pickle"
This is Victoria's new favorite lunch time snack.
Meet the Office
Four of us work in the office:
There's me, Abigail , an East Coast transplant to the midwest who never spent a day in public school before starting this job. Dangerous combination? probably. I majored in religion in college but have no interest in becoming a professor... or a minister (well, Rabbi, actually) and I always thought I wanted to teach. Now I'm questioning whether or not I really want to do that- too much bureaucracy in the school system if you ask me, but that's for another post. I work with 40ish Juniors, and I'm worried that they think I'm too nice.
Disclaimer: I am writing these other introductions without the complete approval of my subjects. If they would like to introduce themselves they are free to do so.
Victoria- Victoria is my partner in crime, of sorts. She is the same position with me, and works with 40 other Juniors, though I don't worry that they think she's too nice (that's not to say that Victoria isn't a nice and wonderful person, which she is, just that she's much less of a pushover) . A little Type A, Victoria is always on top of things, usually with a lesson plan written before I even crack open the curriculum. Law school and lawyer-dom is Victoria's ultimate goal, but I think we've convinced her to put off that dream for another year and potentially come back to this job next year!
Colin, aka- Linguistics. In case this isn't painfully clear, Colin was a Linguistics major and, despite having graduated from college quite a few years ago, remains fascinated with the topic. Colin is our returner in the office- he knows the lingo at our school and the people to (and not to) talk to. Colin works with the 40ish students that he helped through their Junior year in their senior year as they begin to apply for college, financial aid, and tons of scholarships.
Mitch- Mitch has the same position as Colin, except that he didn't work with these students last year- which I think would make the job incredibly difficult. Three things to know about Mitch if you are going to continue reading this blog: 1. He's a twin, 2. He makes funny noises on occasion, and 3. HE'S GETTING MARRIED (more to come on all of these subjects, I'm sure). We also harass him the most... sad times for Mitch.
There's me, Abigail , an East Coast transplant to the midwest who never spent a day in public school before starting this job. Dangerous combination? probably. I majored in religion in college but have no interest in becoming a professor... or a minister (well, Rabbi, actually) and I always thought I wanted to teach. Now I'm questioning whether or not I really want to do that- too much bureaucracy in the school system if you ask me, but that's for another post. I work with 40ish Juniors, and I'm worried that they think I'm too nice.
Disclaimer: I am writing these other introductions without the complete approval of my subjects. If they would like to introduce themselves they are free to do so.
Victoria- Victoria is my partner in crime, of sorts. She is the same position with me, and works with 40 other Juniors, though I don't worry that they think she's too nice (that's not to say that Victoria isn't a nice and wonderful person, which she is, just that she's much less of a pushover) . A little Type A, Victoria is always on top of things, usually with a lesson plan written before I even crack open the curriculum. Law school and lawyer-dom is Victoria's ultimate goal, but I think we've convinced her to put off that dream for another year and potentially come back to this job next year!
Colin, aka- Linguistics. In case this isn't painfully clear, Colin was a Linguistics major and, despite having graduated from college quite a few years ago, remains fascinated with the topic. Colin is our returner in the office- he knows the lingo at our school and the people to (and not to) talk to. Colin works with the 40ish students that he helped through their Junior year in their senior year as they begin to apply for college, financial aid, and tons of scholarships.
Mitch- Mitch has the same position as Colin, except that he didn't work with these students last year- which I think would make the job incredibly difficult. Three things to know about Mitch if you are going to continue reading this blog: 1. He's a twin, 2. He makes funny noises on occasion, and 3. HE'S GETTING MARRIED (more to come on all of these subjects, I'm sure). We also harass him the most... sad times for Mitch.
Introductions
Today I was facebook chatting with a friend from my alma mater. He’s interested in the work that I do and the organization that I work with and always asks me how its going. During this conversation, though, he had a brilliant idea: start a blog. Every day I come home from work full of stories- about my students, my lessons, and the inside jokes from the office. Usually I just bore my roommates with such stories, but hardly ever remember them day to day to tell the other important people in my life. That coupled with the fact that I’ve been listening to books on tape so much during my commute that I’ve started to narrate my own life as though my life is a book on tape, made the blog a perfect idea.
As I mentioned, I work for a college access program and I’m based in an urban high school. I think I’ll keep most everything and everyone anonymous for now, until I’m sure that I can’t get in huge amounts of trouble for naming anything. But, here are the basics: The school has a few thousand students- most of the students are minorities, specifically Hmong. All of my students are low income and most will be the first members of their family to go to college.
Our office is located in the library in a room about the size of my mom’s closet (which is actually a pretty nice size). One of our walls is a counter with a large open “hole” that faces into the library. There is a metal grate that rolls up and down, which is what makes me feel like I’m always behind the counter at a concession stand (any guesses how I got to the name of this blog?). Every once in a while I think it would be amusing to give away hot dogs to the students in the library, it would feel appropriate.
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