Quote for the Day

If better is possible, then good is not enough.

Testing Blues

I received a frantic email from a teacher over the weekend. She is doing her very best to have kids prepared for our state exam. She has taught them well....and last week, she gave them a practice test. They blew the practice test. Now, she's in a frenzy. I think she is questioning if what she has done was OK...and/or "enough".

We work with some very low readers. They struggle. They lack background knowledge to help them understand what they read. It's not easy for them. These are not excuses...but they are conditions that exist with this population.

She is an EXCELLENT teacher. She works very hard. She is compassionate and passionate. She cares deeply for her kids. She teaches well.

I don't think questioning your practice is a bad thing...but I think she is actually doubting her ability to teach. This is wrong.

So, how do I help her to trust herself AND do the healthy type of questioning? I don't want her to be so uptight about this test. I want her to know that in the end she did the best that she knew how (and then some)...at some point, the student has to take over. I want her to know that she is an excellent teacher and that our profession (and our school) is better for her being here. I want her to know that this one test is not the be all and end all of proficiency measurement.

Most of all...I want her to trust herself and her ability to work with kids in powerful ways.

A Great Day...

I love the old bumper sticker that says: "Won't it be a great day when schools have all the money they need and the military has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber?"

Our county is in the middle of a campaign for a new tax referendum. This tax basically would ask home owners to give about $1.00/day (on average) to the school system. The school system in turn plans to use the funds to maintain teacher salaries, continue special programs, and generally "beef up" the school system a bit more in the areas of technology and educational opportunities.

Some teachers are upset about it. You see, also tied to this tax is the requirement that teachers (especially secondary teachers) will make some shifts in their instructional delivery. It means that teachers are going to be held accountable for teaching students using best practices.

Is that a bad thing?

One of the things that has bugged me since the day I became a certified teacher is that there are pockets of mediocrity out there. And worse, there are some people who simply should NOT be in a classroom. And we protect them. These are people who have no passion...they are simply marking time waiting to retire. Working under the radar. We allow it to happen and we allow them to be influences on new children year after year.

I wish there were also a bumper sticker that said: "Won't it be a GREAT day when every child is taught by a passionate teacher who believes his or her students have the potential to make a difference in our world?"

I hope the tax passes. But more than that, I hope that I see the day when passion and excitement for teaching and learning is alive and well in EVERY classroom everywhere. Kids are worth it!!

Whose Key Are You?

Last night, I started watching "Country Boys" a documentary on PBS. It is a three part series that documents the lives of two teens from Rural Kentucky for three years. The film shows clearly the effects of poverty on children and their families. It also makes it very clear that you can have some monitary resources, but be missing other resources (i.e., family) and have trouble. The boys attend an alternative high school.

The thing that struck me the most was the importance of that significant adult in your life. It is that mentoring-believing-in-you relationship that is the key to moving kids from a place of no hope to hope. It was the theme in "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" by Ruby Payne.

In the movie, Chris is heard saying, " I am the lock and my mother is the key. If she wanted me to finish my work, I would do it." This is how it is...there is someone out there who is the key for each child. The hard part is recognizing it. It's hard to know when you are the key for someone.

I often wonder what it is that kids might remember about our school. Will they remember that there were adults that cared about them? I hope so. Will they see us as keys to helping them get "unlocked"? I hope so.

I think the question that I will post near my desk somewhere is: "Whose key are you today?"

Word Walls

Word walls are an important way to build the prior knowledge of young students. Here is a fairy tale word wall that I created when I was doing a fairy tale unit with my second graders. All of the images were downloaded from Google image search. This is an extremely valuable resource when it comes to finding pictures of many different things.

These pictures could also be copied smaller to make mini-dictionaries.

Deep Thought for a Friday

Here is a great quote that is worth reflection:

Sir William Haley says:

Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.


Interesting, isn't it?

To Move or Not To Move

Today I handled an interesting situation. A teacher emailed me to discuss a first grader (we'll call "H") who is going to be nine-years-old in a few weeks. Nine years old in the FIRST grade! He is doing pretty well and is not a behavior problem. She is concerned about his placement---you think???

As we checked his history we found:
1. He has been bounced between three schools over the past four years. In fact, I think I counted about 7 registration slips for when he would start a new school.

2. He has also been bounced around between households. He has been in custody of three different family members.

3. He missed 46 days of school last year---that's a whole quarter!

And we wonder why children get "left behind"? He literally is going to fall through the educational system's cracks if someone doesn't intervene. Thank God for the first grade teacher who is SO kid-oriented that she caught this one.

Once again, I find myself in the position to "play God" with a child's future. At my school I end up in the midst of these conversations and meetings that determine a child's placement. I don't like it. It is such a rock and a hard place. If we promote him now to 2nd grade...he'd be more appropriately placed age-wise, yet he would be missing some of the skills and strategies readers get in first grade. If we don't promote him now, it's almost a sure thing that he will drop out of school before he graduates and become another educational system casualty.

We decided to take a middle ground with this one. We will keep him in first grade on paper, but send him to a second grade classroom to give him the opportunity to make up for lost ground. At the end of the year, we will use the data, his performance and current information to determine whether he will go straight to third grade.

It's his best chance at this point...otherwise, he will turn 13 in the fifth grade.

I am hoping that this time, the decision was a good one and that we have paved the way for a child to have a chance when he thought things were hopeless.

A New Year...but the Same Old

It's the first day back for students after Winter Break at my school. It's sad because for many of them breaks are not happy times. They mean more time in homes that aren't always happy positive places. They mean that they experience more dysfunction than normal. So transitioning back to school is difficult. It takes time and patience to help them get back in the swing of things.

It's hard sometimes to not want to "save the world". I want to help them see that things could be different. I don't necessarily think they need to live in my world...I just want them to break the cycle that grips so many of them. I want them to know that I believe in them and the people they can become. A hard message to deliver.

Today in many school where poverty abounds, we go on delivering the messages that are part of classrooms everywhere: I believe in YOU, I think you CAN, You ARE a learner, You can do GREAT things. It's a new year. I hope that I can deliver these messages in new ways. I hope that at least some of the children whose lives I touch believe them.

Quote of the Day

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.


Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) English biologist and writer.

Hooray!! I received my National Board Certification in Early and Middle Childhood Language Arts this week! This process was tedious, but reflective for sure. It certainly required that I look at and evaluate my practice in the area of Language Arts. And while I know this is not the "be all and end all" in certifications, it does seem to be gaining national attention.

Certainly, I am thankful for a process that requires educators to act as professionals and think deeply about their practice. I just wish it didn't take the incentive of extra money for some. I wish we all would be more reflective on our practice.

Now that the twenty year mark is in sight for me, I understand what makes teachers stick their heads in the sand and think, "I'm not changing." "The pendulum is just swinging." "What worked for me ___ years ago, should be good enough for kids today." In fact, I realized this summer in a big way that I have reached a place in my teaching life where I "could" be staunchly unteachable. Recognizing this was half the battle of dealing with it and moving on in a positive way.

Many teachers are reflective though. They just reflect backwards instead of forward. We get stuck in the "way it used to be" and the "way kids used to be" ruts. I think the world could be a different place if we would all reflect a bit more and then make necessary changes to be the best teacher for the kids that we teach currently. It may mean stepping out of a comfort zone for some of us. It may mean giving up some lessons we love. But in the end, it would create what I think we all want anyway: Kids who are more ready to become productive members of society.

And that's not a bad thing, is it?

Movin' On Up

In my state, there is a mandatory third grade retention for any child who does not pass our state's standardized assessment test. Under this policy, a child can be held back up to twice by the end of third grade. Over the past three years that the policy has been in place, it has been tweaked a bit annually. For the most part, though, it has stayed strong. It is part of the "No Child Left Behind Act".

I have seen kids who were 11 and still in the third grade...kids who truly HAVE been left behind. I have seen anger, frustration, and resentment. I have also seen success stories...kids who rose to the occasion and showed "on level" work by the end of the year because someone believed in them. Mostly, though, the stories have been very sad. Kids who have been behind since day one of PreK or K and are still lagging behind...kids who lack resources and support at home...kids who struggle at everything...are often the ones who are victims of this law. They don't seem any better off for their retention...they only seem older, taller and more aware of the difference in them and their peers.

This week, I saw a light, a glimmer of hope for the future of 12 such children. These 12 children had the right score on a district assessment. I am not sure who determined the "right score"...although I think it is correlated to our state assessment program. These 12 children met the "cut-off" to be promoted mid-year (right away) to the fourth grade.

Whether you philosophically agree or not, it is important to think about the self-esteem boost that this could potentially give some students and their parents. It is also important to realize that this could keep them from falling into the same trap again come testing time.

Each year, in May, I often find myself fielding calls from distraught parents and trying to offer them hope. Today I had the pleasure of calling some of these same parents (and grandparents) to tell them the good news.

The first call I made was to T's Grandma. She and I had spent hours on the phone at the end of last year as we talked about her hopes and dreams for her grand daughter. She told me that T's mother was in jail and she wasn't about to let that same thing happen to T. She was angry, hurt and frustrated with the system. After a VERY LONG phone conversation, she and I had connected. I promised that I would watch T's placement this year (and I did). I promised that we would have T tested for possible learning disabilities (and we are). And I promised that we would do all we can for her "little girl" (and we have).

Today when I called, I told her the "good news" and T's Grandma said, "Girl, you are lying! Shut up! You must be lying!" Then as the truth sank in and I assured her that I was speaking the truth--her joy bubbled up into our conversation! She said Monday is her birthday and she just received the BEST present ever. She promised to keep working with T and help her.

Every call was similar. There was the mother who said, " I have to rush out and get a cake and balloons. We need to celebrate!" There was the Dad that was obviously moved to tears as he choked, "I am so excited!"

I wanted to cry! Each and every call reminded me of the human element in all of it. No matter how nicely you try to package it...in our state we call it the "Gift of Time"...it's failure in the eyes of so many.

Offering these students and their families hope, I think, was one of the most powerful things we could ever do. These are the kids I'd like to "track"...I hope that this one act made a difference. I hope that they will realize that they ARE somebody and that they CAN be a productive and important member of our society.

No matter what happens in their future, I suspect those students might sit a little taller and try a littler harder on Monday. After all...they're "Movin' On Up"!

This year I became a mentor at my school. Our Title I school has many students that are living in poverty and need a support system. One program that we started last year is called, "SOS--Save One Student". The idea is that each adult who can will select a student (or two) and develop a relationship with him or her.

I chose P (a fifth grade girl who was in my Literacy Champions program two years ago) and her niece (yes, you read that right), T--a third grader who is struggling. I love both of these girls. They are both full of vim and vigor. They have attitude that exudes from almost every word they speak. They are tough on the outside, but VERY soft and lovable on the inside. They make me smile on a regular basis.

After getting her breakfast at school yesterday morning, T came to me crying as if the world was ending. Through her sobs she explained that they told her she could not get lunch today. Then she proceeded to tell me that she "hates peanut butter and jelly" and how unfair it is that she would have to eat that because they lost the form her Mama sent in. Picture all of this being said by a child is just taller than three feet with the head bobbing side to side. (I should explain that with the federal lunch program if the free lunch form is not returned, then you have to have peanut butter and jelly until you either pay or bring in the application.)

I realized then that we had a choice. She wasn't going to be able to let this go. There was NO WAY she could go on to class and focus on learning to read better. She was too locked in on that peanut butter and jelly sandwich that she DID NOT deserve (in her opinion). I tried to calm her down and suggest that I could call her Mom and see where the form is. She wouldn't settle down. My choice, when it came right down to it is this: she could eat peanut butter and jelly at lunch or she could learn. I chose learning. I went into the cafeteria and made the two day deposit for lunch into her account.

I am not writing this story because I want any praise. I simply want to make it clear: For students who come from poverty and underpriveledged living conditions, it is very difficult to settle down to the task of learning when the basic needs go unmet. The sense of "fairness" is very high---whether we agree with it or not.

I went to T's classroom to tell her that her lunch would be there for her and that she had to get the form filled out and returned tomorrow. We wiped her eyes and talked about the focus she would need for learning. When I asked her teacher how she did that day, she said "great". And all it took was to have a "non-peanut butter" lunch!!