"Through My Eyes"

With the end of another school year, everyone's glad to have a break: students, teachers, parents, administrators. But some kids are glad to have made it through another year alive, and are already dreading the start of another school year filled with bullying next fall.

Most students who get bullied receive little or no help from the school. I taught middle school for 6 years, and I saw it -- a lot. I had zero tolerance for it in my classroom, but bullies are sneaky. They do their worst in the hallways, in the lunchroom, at recess. And when students ask for help from the school, they usually get very little support -- or sympathy -- from most school officials. A young man in West Islip, New York, has had enough of being bullied and has taken his case to teh Internets, creating a video titled "Through My Eyes." From ABC News:

Patrick Kohlmann, 13, said the violence got so bad, he was afraid to go to Udall Road Middle School.

"I'd be picked on, pushed and kicked," Kohlmann told "Good Morning America." "They said they wanted to kill me."

"I felt upset so I told my parents and the administrators at the school," Kohlmann said.

Despite the boy's pleas, administrators at the school did little to stop the attacks, Patrick and his mother, Beth Kohlmann, said.

"I've complained to [the school] numerous times and it's usually, 'Well, we'll look into that,'" Beth said at a recent news conference. "That's not an appropriate answer to have."

Frustrated with what he felt was inaction by the school's administrators, Patrick created a seven-minute video montage of photos and music, urging other teens to stop violent behavior. After he posted it on YouTube, it gained attention, attracting more than 15,000 viewers.

From NewsDay.com:

Patrick Kohlmann was scared. For more than a year at Udall Road Middle School in West Islip, the soft-spoken 13-year-old had been taunted and shoved, chased through the halls and slammed into lockers.

Then one day last month, Patrick says, one of his regular tormentors said, "I'm going to kill you tomorrow."

The next morning, Patrick's mother says, she warned the school's vice principal about the threat. That afternoon, Patrick says, the bully struck him on the head with a rock.

He suffered a concussion.

...

West Islip school district spokeswoman Nancy Lenz said yesterday the video will be shown to the faculty in the fall.

"Reading First": Another $6 billion wasted by the Bush Administration

From today's NYT:

Reading Program Is Called Ineffective

President Bush’s $1 billion a year initiative to teach reading to low-income children has not helped improve their reading comprehension, according to a Department of Education report released on Thursday.

The program, known as Reading First, drew on some of Mr. Bush’s educational experiences as Texas governor, and at his insistence, Congress included it in the federal No Child Left Behind law that passed by bipartisan majorities in 2001. It has been a subject of dispute almost ever since, however, with the Bush Administration and some state officials characterizing the program as beneficial for young students, even after federal investigators found extensive conflicts of interest among its top advisers.

I happen to know a little bit about teaching reading. Before I left teaching middle school I had met all the requirements to be certified as a "Reading Specialist," I just never applied for the certification before I decided to switch to teaching adults. And in the 6 short years that I taught kids, I can't even begin to tell you how many "new" reading programs were thrust upon us. And you know what never ceased to amaze me? There's nothing new about teaching reading. All these programs simply do is take a little of this and a little of that, call it something catchy, and put it in a shiny box. Oh yeah, and lobby the right people, the ones who run the budgets. Shall we count the programs?

• Recipe for Reading
• Wilson Reading
• Orton-Gillingam
• Success for All

Oh that's just a few. My reading teacher friends can fill in all the rest. In fact, one of my friends and I always said we should put together a "new" reading program so we could retire. Because in fact, there are elements of teaching reading that we have used as humans since the first symbols were scratched on the cave walls thousands of years ago. And the most useful element to teaching reading is the same as it always has been: access. Access to reading materials, access to teachers, access to time. So instead of spending $6 billion on a reading "program," as a one-size-fits-all way of teaching our kids, why not spend it on hiring more teachers? Building more schools? Buying more books for school libraries? Hiring more school librarians?

Why not? Because teachers and librarians are not Bush Administrations cronies, that's why. (Laura's brief career notwithstanding.) From Common Dreams, almost exactly one year ago:

A scathing report issued today documents “substantial financial ties” between key advisors of Reading First, a controversial federal reading grant program, and publishers who benefited from the program.

The report, issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, called the findings “troublesome because they diminish the integrity of the Reading First program.”

The Kennedy report centers on four directors of the Reading First Technical Assistance Centers, who, the report says, were highly influential in advising states on which reading programs to adopt in order to qualify for federal funds.

According to the report, the directors had “extensive ties with education publishers” at the same time they were responsible for evaluating other publishers’ programs. The report concluded that such ties may have “improperly influenced actions.”

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., has called for a criminal investigation of Reading First by the Justice Department. According to Miller, the conflicts of interest uncovered “raises questions about criminal activity and criminal intent about what a number of these players were doing.”

"No Child Left Behind" and all of the ridiculous scams associated with it need to be eliminated. End of story.

Education in America: May not be the sexiest topic, but it's crying out for your attention

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I used to teach middle school. After working for many years as a writer and editor, I enrolled in a sort of Boot Camp graduate program designed for career-changers like me, which helped me get certified to teach in a relatively short, but intense time. I ended up teaching for only 6 years before moving off into adult education, but those 6 six years were the most rewarding and challenging years of my life.

I went into teaching hoping, thinking, that I could make a change in some kids' lives, and I think I probably did. But it just drained the life out of me. It takes a certain type of person to be an effective teacher and maintain your sanity. Oh, there are plenty of people who can do one or the other, but keeping those two things in balance is a rare gift, I've found. You see, teaching can be the easiest job in the world — if you don't really care about it. But if you do care, it is the hardest job you'll ever do.

I felt an enormous amount of guilt when I decided to go into adult education: I felt I was abandoning a sinking ship. You see, the American education system is in big trouble. If you have any doubt about it, look at the level of debate in this primary season — there is none. Instead of exchanging ideas, the entire population is engaged in name calling and repeating unsubstantiated rumors as "facts." Instead of celebrating that we have different opinions, we harass and intimidate those who speak out with ideas different from our own. This has become obvious in the blogging world, but is just as true in our schools, where 15-year old Lawrence King was bullied and then finally shot because he was gay. As a teacher I always felt it was my duty to teach my students not only to accept our differences, but to value what we can learn from each other — but who has time?

The biggest reason why I left teaching when I did was the No Child Left Behind Act. I began teaching just before this legislation went into effect, and so I had a taste of what it's like to teach when you are respected as a professional and given some small amount of room to be creative to meet established standards. You see, I taught Special Education for 4 years, and that requires an enormous amount creativity. But once NCLB became law, we were expected to follow strict guidelines. Any sane person understands that teaching math to students with learning disabilities might require an extra day in, say, fractions. But our eyes were not on teaching the concepts. Our eyes were on the testing in March. We have to move on, Billy. Come after school and we'll work on it some more. Every day. Along with the rest of the class. Because we learn differently.

It wasn't any better my last 2 years when I taught computer technology to the entire middle school. You might think every student would take this class, as it seems like a basic skill they will need to be successful. But no. At my school, the administration decided that Computers, Health, and Family Studies classes would not be available to students who scored unsatisfactorily on the state assessments — those students would instead have an extra period of either reading or math. Yes, that's right. The students who were the lowest performing ones, the ones most in danger of dropping out, would not be getting the basic life skills of typing, cooking, or sex ed. But dammit they will pass that test!

The point of this rather long post is to ask you to really pay attention to the state of education of America and to call on our politicians to take a strong stand for change. One of the reasons why I support Hillary Clinton is that she is calling for a complete end to NCLB. Reforming it will not work, because the entire basis of it is misguided. We cannot have national standards unless we have national funding. And you cannot compare our national scores with other countries which do have one state-run education system. So please just stop doing that.

Education is the foundation of a strong society, and I think this election cycle is beginning to show the cracks in that foundation.

The life of a teacher today

The video below was put together by the Maryland State Teachers Association, but it applies to schools all over the country. As a former cart-pushing teacher myself, I love this. Of course some of it's over the top. But sadly, most of it is not — teachers who "float" and have to carry their supplies on carts from room to room, over-crowded classes without enough supplies, teachers working with students in corners and hallways — I've seen (and lived) them all.

For all my teacher friends ....

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

To All My Teacher Friends: Congratulations on Closing Out Another Successful Year!

If you’re a hardworking person who cares, teaching is the most difficult profession on earth. If, however, you are lazy, don’t give a rat’s $#^%, and want to “have the summer off,” teaching is the easiest job there is. The shame is that the community often recognizes only the latter, when in reality, most of the teachers I worked with in my short time in the public schools were of the caring type.

I started writing an essay once, entitled “Why I Became a Teacher … and Why I Quit.” But some of the memories were so depressing that I never finished it. I should. Teaching public school has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done with my life so far. For those of you who don’t know, I taught middle school for six years and elementary summer school for three of those years. Most of that time I was a Special Education Resource teacher in an inclusion setting, but I also taught computer technology for two of those years.

When I started teaching, I thought I was in heaven. I taught in a large county with a good reputation, but I was in a school that was in a challenging part of town. So I was working to make a difference to students who needed it, with the resources of a large, stable school system behind me. My principal was a former guidance counselor who believed in lots of positive reinforcement for his teachers, as well as students. I taught small English and Reading classes to students who primarily had learning disabilities, with a few cases of extreme ADHD layered on for good measure.

One of my favorite memories of teaching was from those early days. After doing some research, I decided to try teaching grammar in my 6th grade English classes by having the students diagram sentences. (Yes, I did!) After the initial groaning and moaning of “why can’t we do something fun,” I got the students to give me a chance. And low and behold, they loved it.

From a special education standpoint, it was perfect. By having the students (I only had six in each class) diagram on the board, they were able to get out of their seats and move. Because they were essentially “mapping out” the sentence, they could visualize the knowledge. Afterwards we would share and discuss their diagrams orally. It was effective. They were engaged. And on my best teaching day ever, my principal walked through the room as the entire class was at the board, silently diagramming sentences. It was a Kodak moment alright. The look on his face was such astonishment and joy – these were the “trouble” students, the ones who disrupted the “regular” English classes. He smiled at me in disbelief and snuck out the back door – I don’t think the students even knew he was there.

So why’d I quit? I’ll tell you in the next post ….