Cycle Three: Schools as Embryonic Communities

I may have mentioned before that the school that I am assigned to is our district's first "green school." The first "oooo"s and "aaahhh"s come from the gadgets and/or characteristics that qualify our school as a "green school." I will attach a link in a response to this post about just that. But, now what? What are we going to do with this designation? The school district community was excited at the onset, but you can pretty much tell that interest has waned, even for the teachers who work there, and, since our students were never introduced to much more than the solar panels in the two creation stations we have, I don't think they really care either. Picture this: A student wearing a/our school shirt, stopped by a member of the community who asks the student to tell them a little something about what makes their school green and the school's characteristics relate to their learning, and the student can't answer. What a saddening thought. And still another, perhaps, perhaps not, unrelated thought: What a waste of money!

I will say that at the onset of the 2012-2013 school year, I had big plans about how to engage our students in their learning environment. My first thought was that we could set up a milk weed butterfly garden and eventually witness the monarch butterfly migration in our own back yard. When my position changed, I became occupied with other school matters. I will not dote on the lost, but rather focus on the fact that I recruited and totally snatched a science teacher from another school who spent a summer in Wisconsin working with a monarch butterfly program. I'm hoping she can bring my idea to fruition. I don't know if this idea fits the mold of the embryonic community, but I definitely see it as a step in the right direction. The idea is that students will be engaged in the planning, construction (to the extent that elementary students can be), and maintenance of the butterfly garden. When they take ownership of the project, when we saturate "him with the spirit of service, and providing him with the instruments of effective self-direction, we shall have the deepest and best guaranty of a larger society which is worthy, lovely, and harmonious" (Dewey, p.20). I would love it if the entire project was initiated with "activity on the part of the children preceded the giving of information on the part of the teacher, or where the children had some motive for demanding the information," (Dewey, p.23). INQUIRY! I can see the smoke emitting from many tiny heads now. We, meaning my school, have a genuine space and premise for learning. Wouldn't this talk directly to "[P]ersonalizing the school environment is a central goal of effort to transform America's schools" (Felner, Seitsinger, Brand, and Burns, and Bolton)? Our student population desperately needs a concrete connection to their education. I often tell my students that they have to take responsibility for their own learning, but that means nothing to them. The statements in "Creating Small Learning Communities...About "What Works" in Creating Productive, Developmentally Enhancing, Learning Contexts" about "...bringing the learner in as a full and respective participant..." and "...engaging the student more deeply through building on connections..." really seemed to address my idea about taking our green school to an actual academic level for our students rather than have it become stagnant as a green school in name only.

Shifting from the "embryonic communities" focus, the Lieberman and Miller chapters were highly engaging for me, particularly the information about the National Writing Project. Many-a-winter I have invested time and energy in researching New Jersey Writing Project dates in my area. I have not had the pleasure of attending due to planned family vacations or summer district professional development. This year I got a little closer. A long-time colleague and friend attended the The New Jersey Writing Project as a district (not my district) initiative and is sharing some valuable information and insight with me. One day.

And loosely tying into were the references to professional development and particularly teacher buy-in. The premise of a collegial culture where teachers "move beyond consensus...and they go deeper to uncover and analyze problems" (Lieberman, Miller p.19) is one that I have experienced, if only at an introductory level, with my aforementioned long-time colleague. We have been working together on a project with our education service center and have engaged in some in-depth conversation about students and instructional practices. What I notice is that we both have a genuine interest in what happens in the classroom and with our students. From personal experience at one or two campuses I have been at is that constructive criticism, no matter how constructive, is uncomfortable and quite frankly unwelcome. There was so much in the Lieberman, Miller Chapter 2 that I could relate to in terms of what does and doesn't happen with and among teachers in professional development and implementation.

In the 2013-2014 school year, I am headed back to the classroom as a result of school board action. I am excited. I hope to take much, if not most, of what I have read and learned to provide a quality education to the little "esquinkles" (term of endearment which may not be a real word even in Spanish) who walk through my door next month.

Cycle 2: Challenges and Opportunities in Building Classroom Communities

I just responded elsewhere about the "levels" of community that come to mind when I think about communities in the school setting. My points of reference are at the campus level and begin with the community which is established to include the administrators and faculty and staff. I have worked on a campus where the rift is a tangible one. My next thought is that of the teachers in a grade-level. At that one particular campus, the community, the bond that the four of us formed helped us to get through some rough years. As I think back, I remember official grade-level meetings because they were required, but I couldn't count the times that we sat in each others' classrooms just to give each other a pat on the back or to take a deep breath together. Moving along to the classroom community, yes, as Kyle noted in his introduction to this cycle, I did use it to further my own agenda. I used it as a student management tool when my students were in other parts of campus, for example the gym for P.E. or the cafeteria at lunch. I would emphasize to my students that their behavior reflected on me, and that I did not want to be embarrassed by any reports of less-than-appropriate behavior. I know that I have a clear sense of what a classroom community should consist of, but other than typical classroom job assignments, I don't think I did anything, specifically, to build a community among the students.

I do believe it is possible for a classroom community to exist. I have seen it, believe it or not, through student tracking. "Many schools claim that they do not track students..." (Oakes, 2005, p. 1). For us, it begins with the Home-Language Survey that parents/guardians complete when enrolling students in school for the first time. If there is any indication that Spanish is spoken at home, either by the child or by those around him/her, the student is automatically tested through IPT (the full name of the test eludes me at the moment). If a student, usually a Pre-K student mind you, scores deficient in English, they are placed in a Spanish instruction classroom. And so as the years go by, these students continue in Spanish-instruction classrooms with the same classmates they started with in Pre-K. By the time they reach the upper elementary grades, why, they have already established family bonds. They defend each other from students in the all-English instruction classes, and they console each other through their trials and tribulations. What I have noticed most about these communities that they have built is that just like family, they are so loud when they are together. I don't mention it to insult, but more to show the ease and familiarity that they exhibit amongst each other. On the down side of this tracking, as I am sure occurs in schools across the country, is that students do not have much opportunity to interact with students in the same grade level in other classes. Oakes' statement, (2005, p. 3) "...how it both causes and supports differences in the lives of secondary students" couldn't describe this any better with the exception that I am talking about elementary students. This is not to say that sorting students by their spoken language is not an obvious route to take, but the bi-lingual program has such a negative connotation attached to it that some parents are willing to sign Denial Forms to keep their children out of these classes because they are perceived as classes in which their children will not learn anything.

In support of building a classroom community, I found the Johnson and Johnson (1986) chapter an excellent starting point with its discussion of Base Groups. The idea of "long-term, heterogeneous cooperative learning groups with stable membership...and (b) hold each other accountable for striving to learn" (p. 175) to be something to build upon as the school year progresses. I also agreed with their idea of the Informal Cooperative Learning Groups (p.170). I found many of the strategies and the suggestion for moving from lecture to small group at 12-15 minute intervals very similar to a Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) training that our faculty received throughout this past school year. It provided for us, much like Johnson and Johnson (1986) and the chapter by Parker (2003) did, different ways to pair off students so that they do not end up in a same-partner rut, and most importantly, a safe environment for our students to grow academically. As a result, I saw students throughout the elementary grades work within these strategies and share with their classmates. I loved the low-risk environment in which students were able to build some knowledge about whatever the topic was by working with their classmates. And of course, these small group assignments/activities could be in the form of writing something or illustrating their thoughts if they could not conjure the necessary written vocabulary. When a teacher walked around the room conducting informal assessments, she was also able to steer misguided students in the right direction without pointing out their mistakes in a threatening manner. In a second grade classroom, we had a non-responsive student. Her teacher noted that she was extremely shy and that we should move on to another student, but the trainer modeled an alternative. The trainer approached the student, turned her away from the class and asked her to whisper the answer to her. She then turned back to the class and said, "Myra just told me that...Is she correct, boys and girls?" The students were so excited that "Myra" had participated. It turns out that she never actually gave an answer, but that was the spring board for encouraging her to participate with her immediate group, her classroom community, for the remainder of that lesson. Much, if not most of the chapter, I could directly relate back to my experiences and observations this past school year.

In the Tomlinson and McTighe (2006) chapter, there is a section "Students need to know the learning goals of a unit or lesson and critera for successfully demonstrating proficiency with the goals," which again related to SIOP but also a book-study that our campus participated in The Fundamental Five (Cain and Laird, 2011). The Fundamental Five talked about providing a Lesson Objective and a Closing Task for every lesson, to "Frame the Lesson." This way, in much the same way that Tomlinson and McTighe stress, students are aware of what they are going to, or should, learn, and what they should be able to complete at the end of the lesson, whether it be a task, something spoken, or a product/project. Our SIOP training expressed the same concept through Content Objective and Linguistic Objective. The end product here, because SIOP more specifically addresses bi-lingual education, being something mostly spoken or written. Referring to The Fundamental Five, I experienced how communicating the objectives and outcomes to students gave them a reference point through-out the lesson. If they lost track of the objective, they could refer to its location on the white board. And of course, objectives and tasks were always written in student-friendly language..."I will...," or "We will..." Again, providing a connection for the student, sense of knowing that the writing on the wall was speaking directly to or about them. Also, the verbs listed in Figure 6.1 (Tomlinson and McTighe, 2006 p. 87) were a central part of both SIOP and The Fundamental Five. It turns out to be a great way to make students aware of they can be actively involved in their education for the day.

To end with a little humor, I loved the example (Johnson, Johnson 1986) of the teacher providing the explanation for a simplex algorithm. It reminded me of the movie The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) when Rose tells Gregory that he's up there having a Math Party and didn't invite anyone else. We mustn't forget to invite the students!

Cycle One: Interpretations of the Meaning and Causes of Failure

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Plain and simple, failure is the secret to success.

I will first refer to my experiences as a parent. My son once developed a secret code and used it to write, “You are evil” about a teacher assistant with whom he had had a bad experience. It earned him his first, and so far only, trip to the office. While I stood there, fuming mind you, I listened to the counselor tell him that he should not hold a grudge or be angry with anyone. When I got him home, I told him to throw that hooey out the window. I told him that it was a necessary part of life to hold grudges and to be angry. How on Earth can he be expected to know what forgiveness and moving on are if he doesn’t know what leads up to them? And what about happiness and peace? How can he truly bask in them if he doesn’t understand what the alternative is? It’s the same with success? Do you know what success is just because someone tells you that you are a successful individual? No. Success comes from knowing that a time or two before, you experienced failure.

And so it happens in our classrooms to us as teachers as much as to our students.

As a fourth grade teacher, by the time a student walks through my door, there could be a long list of failures. It becomes a daunting task to encourage a student toward success. I certainly would not want a student walking away, into yet another school year, with more self-esteem issues than what s/he came into my classroom with at the beginning of the school year. Our school counselor attempted to address this through a variety of approaches including a mentor program and a Fill the Bucket program. My principal also implemented a “Kids for Character” pledge that was recited every morning after the national anthem, and a Pillars of Character program. I was not in the classroom this year and therefore do not have a full understanding of how the Pillars of Character was implemented, but I do know that it was applied more as a campus-wide discipline plan rather than what Paul Tough describes as what occurred at KIPP. Those “Spotted” cards are more like the previously mentioned Fill the Bucket. I took the time to fill student buckets by writing little notes like, “Congratulations on being class valedictorian,” or “Thank you to Mr. G’s class for teaching me how to multiply using the Lattice Method.” IDEA Public Schools: College Academy where I live uses a similar process once or twice a year in which students write their name at the top of a sheet of paper, pass it around the classroom, and every other student must write a positive comment about every other student in the room. So, after days, weeks, months, or even years of failure, a student is finally reading anywhere from 20-30 positive comments about themselves. Maybe there is an insight that another student can provide which will allow that fearful student to overcome any one or more of the fears that Palmer discussed. This is a practice that I can see using to move several students beyond their fears and internalized failures at once. The Fill the Bucket I think is an excellent approach for those days when there is a danger of that one student not making any forward progress, from teacher to student, but I can see having a “suggestion box” type set-up where students can fill each other’s buckets, too.

I like these suggestions about how to bring students out of the failure of fear funk. Positive ways to address the issue.

On the other hand, McDermott’s closing statement, “…we must protect ourselves constantly against accepting our culture’s own definition of its problem and student instead the problems of the people…” floored me. I just submitted a reflection for another MATC course in which I indicated that I am the students I teach because I’m of the same “diverse group” that they are. That, in fact, couldn’t be further from the truth. I am Hispanic. I was poor growing up, and from the age of fifteen, I lived in a single-parent home and that allows me to identify with them to some extent. However, I am not an immigrant and I was never faced with having to learn a new language because I grew up bi-lingual. Have I been a detriment to my students because I thought I knew them?

Using Ogbu’s (p.290) definition of an involuntary minority, I recall a student who had been in our public school system since Pre-Kindergarten, but had not acquired the English language. She fought it with every fiber of her being. That school year I had an even-split student population: half English instruction, half Spanish instruction. I remember Norma physically turning her back to me when I began my English instruction.  Whether “consciously and/or unconsciously (she worked to) avoid crossing cultural and language boundaries” (Ogbu, p.291). And just like with Palmer’s “Student From Hell,” I focused on her deliberate refusal to progress in English. It was a very real fear for me because as a fourth grader, it was expected that Norma would make enough gains in her use of English to exit the bi-lingual program. I was failing to even engage her in her own progress.

To close out this post with what seems like a complete disconnect to rest, I thoroughly enjoyed “Good Video Games and Good Learning,” mostly because it provided an entirely new perspective about video games. I am far from being their number one fan as a result, but I never would have connected the higher-order thinking skills that they involve and certainly never would have thought of them as a feel-good, risk-taking environment. I have presented turn-around trainings for our teachers and on more than one occasion I have touted the importance of providing a safe classroom environment in which our students can take English acquisition risks. Should I return to the classroom, I will certainly refer to Gee’s points in order to provide my students with authentic connections between academics and their home lives.