Caring Teachers and Zero Tolerance in Schools

Teachers care, let's just start with that statement. People enter the teaching profession for many diverse reasons, some have a passion for a certain content area, others want to make a difference in the lives of children, while still others like the vacations. Once people enter the field, they either become a statistic and leave within a few years, or they stick around. For those who stick around, something invariably happens, they begin to care very deeply about the students they work with.

Caring for others and having a positive impact on their lives is the very essence of humanity.

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” ~Elie Wiesel

For teachers, all it involves is looking at students as more than just numbers and scores, or labels of proficient and not proficient. Once you pull back the veil and begin to appreciate students for who they are as individuals, the job of being a teacher becomes a part of who you are, a part of your identity.

That's why when I hear stories of "zero tolerance," or idiots cracking down on students for no reason other than the fact that their job of teaching or being an administrator is nothing more than that, a job, it not only makes the rest of us look bad, but more importantly, it has the potential to destroy the education for many children.

This morning I came across a story on CNN.com titled Girl's Arrest For Doodling Raises Concerns About Zero Tolerance. Reading about the extreme level of reaction to a girl doodling, in marker, on her desk, is a cause for concern. The article discusses the fact that police are being asked to step into schools at younger and younger ages and more and more often. What is the reason for this? Have schools become this bad?

If you listen to a lot of what you read about in the media, yes, schools have become that bad. If you're actually in the schools, you know this isn't the case, especially in middle schools, which is where the above story happened. It's one thing to teach children about the difference between right and wrong, and to discipline a child for writing on a desk when it is forbidden, because part of being human is knowing the difference between right or wrong, but when we enact these zero tolerance policies, whose good does it serve?

When children are handcuffed, or expelled, the chances of them getting arrested or dropping out of school increase dramatically. In a society that seems so driven on punishment without rehabilitation, we can't afford to go down this path. Children make mistakes, children do stupid things, it's part of being a child. Responsible, caring adults take the initiative and educate them, that's the very essence of education. It's not all about literacy and mathematics. This is just a thought to ponder at this point.

Expert Teachers, the #1 Reason Kids Succeed

Recently I've been reading some research that pertains to the effects on student achievement of pre-packaged programs and curriculum designs that are being sold to schools across the world. Program A claims to raise student achievement higher and faster than ever before, while Program B makes the same claims. Sometimes these programs do make positive gains on achievement (usually measured by standardized and/or norm referenced tests).

The first few years of my doctoral studies have been focused on looking deeper at the negative aspects of business models in schools, of pre-packaged programs (Success For All and DNG to name a few), and of what actually has the most profound impact on student learning in the long term. It's a hard thing to study, because as a teacher-researcher I've decried standardized testing as inherently unequal and inaccurate. Of course the current studies, some of the best I've ever read, agree with this, but go a few steps further.

To put it quite simply, these articles, that I won't name here yet, because that's not the point of my discussion here, claim that the single biggest factor on student learning is quality teaching. Of course, quality teaching is almost impossible to define because it means different things to different students.

This is something I've tried to keep in mind every day when I enter the classroom. There's 28 young kids in my classroom, and what works for him may not work for her and so on. In the current era of test reform, rigorous political factors, and money being put at a higher level of importance than kids, it's hard for teachers to ever reach the level of teaching students, they're so focused on teaching content and teaching tests that they are afraid that actually *gasp* teaching to their students needs will be seen as subversive. I can confirm this, in my short five-year career, I've focused on teaching students and have been considered quite the rebel because of this.

I hope to continue looking at and pegging down indicators of great teaching, and hopefully researching it more in depth some day. If we can define it, if we can prove that it serves the best interests of children and scores them proficient on those ridiculous standardized tests, there might be a compromise out there that actually hands the reins of education to teachers while keeping the politicians at bay.

Departmentalizing (Blocking) Reading: Caution

This year, I moved to a new grade level in my building (a change that has been pleasantly nice), and we made the switch to departmentalizing reading across grades 3-5. If you're not familiar with the concept, to departmentalize in this case means that the grades involved share a common time for the subject, and students are put into ability groups, meaning that the majority will not be with their "homeroom teacher." This is also known as "blocking" in some circles, depending upon the jargon that is used where you teach. For the previous three years, the school I work in did self-contained reading groups (with the exception of some pull out special education students), and I was met with great success, because I was responsible for my students, and they performed up to the level that I demanded of them.

Now with this move to departmentalization, something I had previously dealt with four years ago, I have been forced to advocate for what I believe is best, both in my own experience and from what the research says.

I will first discuss my own opinions apart from the research:

I believe that self-containing classrooms in an elementary setting have many great advantages, ESPECIALLY in the area of literacy. We teach pre-service teachers that reading should be cross curriculur, that students need consistency, they need to reflect on their reading all day, and that they should have a classroom where they are able to revisit their readings and branch out into the other disciplines with their new knowledge.

My school has blocked reading from 3rd grade through 5th grade, and it basically looks like this:

Highest Group (taught by a 5th grade teacher)
2nd Highest (taught by 5th grade teacher)
Next (taught by 4th grade teacher)
So on and so forth, moving down the line to 3rd grade.

Now, for the highest groups, these teachers keep their high 5th graders, and are given the highly advanced 4th graders and off the chart high 3rd graders. So the highest 4th grade group is not truly the highest 4th grade group, because the highest 4th graders move up, while lower 5th graders move down. So basically, all but the top two groups become remedial in nature. Students, whether we want to admit it or not as teachers, are keenly aware of what group they are in. They know if they are "high" or "low," and this has detrimental effects on the motivation of all but the highest students.

Putting these facts aside, let's look at the effect of splitting the classes up for reading block. I love to teach literacy thematically, and let it flow over into social studies, math, and writing. With my students spread all over the building, I can no longer do this. To sum this up, everything that WORKS in the classroom is fundamentally impossible to do in a blocked environment.

The research in this area in the past has been mostly qualitative in nature, and has focused on standardized test scores, as well as student input, mostly in the form of narrative or question responses. For every study that opposes blocking, I can easily find one that is in favor of it, both in theory and in data. As with most issues in reading, there are opposing camps, and if this had been definitively proven one way or the other, it doesn't necessarily mean that we wouldn't be here anyways (because a shockingly low number of teachers actually read and understand current research). I am currently performing some doctoral level research on this very subject, and hope to have some beginning level results in by Thanksgiving.

Obviously I am opposed to the departmentalization of reading. I would like to continue this discussion. Maybe some of you have success stories, and that's great. But personally, I do not see the value, have not seen the value, and continue to not see the value.

Public Education: Yes It's Broken, But We Can Have Hope

Budget shortfalls are the norm here in the state of New Mexico as it relates to public education. Budgets are being slashed, salary raises are being frozen, and staff is being cut at schools all across the state, especially here in the southern part of the state.

Yes, things are bad, and it does not have all to do with the bad economy. Years of mismanagement or outright shady business practices by central office administrators all over the country (especially here in New Mexico) have put us in this mess. In my short career, I have already seen numerous snake oil salesmen come along, unloading their programs upon my district, all because one person downtown was impressed by what they had to say. I've seen millions of dollars spent on a program and a year or two later have seen that program forgotten. I have seen more and more kids crammed into classrooms, while the same central administrators who tell us that there was simply no more funds to hire another teachers gives themselves hefty raises. I've seen school funds funneled into new schools and schools where the wealthier students go while poorer and older schools literally fall apart.

There's no way around saying this, public education in New Mexico, and the United States, is in perilous disrepair. The people who actually do the educating, and the students, who are the point of this whole education thing, have been shelved so far down the food chain that they've been all but forgotten. In this age of standardized testing, with the multi-billion dollar testing industry banking in, and with the government happily playing along, there's not much left to go around. And what is left has been pilfered a dozen times before it reaches the classroom.

So yeah, things are screwed up, but there is hope. Hope lies in the fact that central administrators really don't do much (trust me, their decisions have minimal impact on classroom instruction, they could just sign paychecks and make sure the money is divvied out evenly and everything would work fine). Hope lies in the fact that there are many great teachers out there, who can make a difference without Reading First, Nancy Fetzer, Malcolm Baldridge, Reading 180, and all the other flavor of the moment programs. Hope lies in the fact that there are people out there who care, and who don't appreciate seeing tax money thrown away on nonsense.

There are a lot of reasons to think that public education is faltering, and I would agree with many of them. But that doesn't mean we give up. Public education teachers, support staff, and other interested people will keep caring, will keep working, and will do it even if there is 50 kids crammed into a class and there's not enough money to run the air conditioner. Because after all, at least we know that the head honchos can afford another year of membership at the country club, right?