Everything to lose

I am going to try to explain this situation without exposing too many details that may identify my school.  It is a critical situation that is so typical of the politics of education these days.  It is an example of top-down decision making, fear-based tactics, and a complete denial of academic research and real hard data.

Here is the story.  My school, like many in New York City, has many different programs.  Without naming my particular program, I can say that it was founded based upon sound academic research, and has been very successful in educating our language minority students.  In fact, students (almost 100% ELLs upon entry to K) in this particular program have repeatedly out-performed their peers in other programs in ELA (the state English Language Arts Exam) and are on-par with their peers in Math.  In addition, the good practices we use in our program were cited in both School Quality Reviews.  The case study we presented to the reviewer was based upon a child in our program backed by academic research of the practices we used.  The case study was one of the highlights of the review.  I might add that the quality reviewer, being from England, had never seen a program like ours in action and took a particular interest in understanding it.

The program has been around for over a decade and is one of the reasons why we have maintained our population of students.  Enrollment is overwhelmingly higher in grades K and 1 for this particular program than for our regular general education classrooms.  We also have extremely good teacher retention in this program.  In fact, it is the ONLY reason I am still at my school.  Over the last 3 years, since I have been in the school, we have maintained a high level of rigor and collaboration in this program despite a systematic loss of support for our teaching.  In essence, the teachers have been holding the school on their shoulders for 3 years.  

What happened?  Well, we have had a change in administration.  At first, we felt hopeful that maybe our program would be recognized for what it is and given more support by the new administration, but that has not been the case.  Instead, the administration has come out of NOWHERE with no data and no research and wants to essentially shut down our practices mid-year because of a personal feeling.  Our administrators feel, based on their own personal experience as language minority students themselves, that our practices do not work, even though they were not fortunate to have been in a program like ours.  They have not consulted our test scores (which show drastically different results), and have not even communicated with teachers.  They have not talked to parents who have had several children pass through our program.  They have not taken the time to even understand what we do and why we do it.  They have never spent time in our classrooms and I believe they have no idea how it even works.  They have no sense that if they get rid of this program, they will be losing ALL of the teachers that are dedicated to it along with a large population of students (including the indigenous mexican families).  They also have no clue about the history of the program, how hard it was to fight for and maintain it over the years.  If they get rid of it, they will NEVER get it back.  

Who loses?  The children.  

We as teachers will be fine.  We're all highly qualified.  Many have published in academic journals.  Others have presented at state and national conferences.  We will find jobs at other schools that have the program that we believe in.  We will never stop dedicating ourselves to the immigrant and language minority children.

The children will lose the consistency of a K-5 program that requires a commitment from families.  They will most likely switch schools which will mean that they will be separated from their friends and peers.  The professionalism in the school will take a nose dive if 20 teachers leave all at once.  

What are we going to do about it?  Well, we have scheduled an emergency meeting for all of the teachers in our program and have invited the administration (well, more like insisted that they be there).  In 40 minutes, we will have to teach them about our program.  Today is Yom Kippur.  I should be fasting and atoning for my sins, but instead, I am at home pulling out 5 and 10 year-old books from my masters degree, finding the parts which I think my administration might understand, scouring the online databases for more recent data and research, meeting with a colleague at a Starbucks to put this together so that we can advocate for ourselves and for the children at 7:30 AM tomorrow.   What other job requires you to educate your bosses like this?  THEY should be the ones who are up-to-date on the latest research.  

Okay, I have work to do!  I'll let you know how it goes.

Professional Development

It was 3:30 on Tuesday afternoon when I found the memo in my box saying that I would be attending professional development for a reading program on Thursday and Friday at 9AM in the school (no end time was listed). Annoyed that I hadn't been told with fair warning, but thankful I had been told at least a day in advance (sometimes you find out via a sub showing up at your door and you have no idea why you have a sub), I immediately began organizing the week's homework so I could send it all out with the kids on Wednesday and could avoid any substitute interaction with the homework (which is usually disastrous). All I could think was "I hope this is worth it."

You see, part of being a teacher is having the opportunity of professional development (PD). Another part is being forced to partake in PD that you don't necessarily want, need, or will do anything for your children. The Dept. of Ed. WASTES hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on useless PD. Like the time all FIRST GRADE teachers from my district gathered at a school for the election day PD. After spending the first hour opening boxes upon boxes of books and teachers guides that went along with this program, we were introduced to a year-long science program for THIRD GRADE (I know, not even our grade). It was the teachers (of course) who even noticed that the boxes were labeled "THIRD GRADE." The best part was that this particular curriculum spent an entire year covering "sound" which is only a small part of the third grade scope and sequence and covered nothing else. We didn't even get to take home the teacher's guides to at least give to the third grade teachers at our school. I felt bad about this because we had taken them out of the shrink wrap to follow the workshop. I'm sure those books ended up in a dumpster. We were promised that grade-level materials would be delivered to our schools. Guess what... we never got it. All I could think was that some bozo had the job of organizing the election day PD and probably had a budget of $40,000 or so and had no clue about what to do so he paid some company from Oklahoma (I kid you not) to come in and teach us something. This is how we WASTE money in the NYC public schools.

With all this talk of budget cuts I am often disgusted at how publishing companies and curriculum designers get rich off of these huge contracts with the NYC public schools. Like Everyday Math--- does it even work? Is it appropriate for our students? They make millions of dollars off of our kids. OUR KIDS, who have everything to lose if a program doesn't serve them. Or KAPLAN!!!! People would be shocked to know that our fourth graders are all given (excuse me, PURCHASED by the dept. of ed) a copy of KAPLAN test prep for their high stakes 4th grade test. Some people might think, "Oh, how great, they get a book to help them." NO!!!! Look who gets RICH off of NCLB-- KAPLAN! By the time we realize these programs are flawed, we move on to the next flavor of the month and spend millions of dollars on an entirely new curriculum, training, and materials. That's how it feels. I have been trained on so many programs that we don't use, can't use, or have become outdated.

This was my mentality going in to the PD this past week. I feel pretty bad for the facilitator, because I can honestly say that a majority of us were feeling this way when we walked into the cramped Literacy Coach's office on Thursday morning. I am happy to report that the program I trained for last week turned out to be something I truly believe in and something that will provide REAL intervention for our struggling readers in first grade.... but it is dependent on administration. This program requires one-on-one tutoring and it will ONLY work if the administrators schedule the time properly. We'll see. Hopefully it won't be another wasted PD.

Rudy Giuliani on Sunday morning political show- Sex Ed. for K

I have to comment. I was watching Fox News Sunday or maybe another Sunday morning political show...not sure, I was flipping channels... but anyway they were interviewing Rudy Giuliani. They asked him about a negative campaign ad run by John McCain accusing Obama of sponsoring a bill to teach Kindergartners about sex. Giuliani defended McCain and seconded the accusation. I wanted to explode!!!! I have been teaching the HIV/AIDS curriculum for two years now to first graders and I have to say that it is NECESSARY!!!! WE DON'T TEACH KIDS ABOUT SEX AT ALL!!!! in the lower grades. It's all about germs and how germs enter the body. It also talks about different diseases including HIV and categorizes them as highly contagious, contagious, and not contagious, and how to keep your body safe (i.e. DON'T TOUCH ANYONE ELSE'S BLOOD). This is the type of education many children are NOT receiving at home. I have seen kids touching each other's bloody wounds and it always horrifies me that they don't know better. I make a point to show the children my latex gloves and to emphasize that we need to keep our bodies safe.