"Mom... Is this how you feel every day?!?"
My daughter says this to me as we're sitting at my younger son's Cub Scout pack meeting, listening to the shouts and shrieks of 25 sugared-up grade schoolers as they echo off of the vaulted ceilings and brick walls of the elementary school cafeteria and ricochet through our ears and around the inside of our skulls. She's trying to gather her thoughts and start on the first post for her brand new blog (apparently she feels the need to share her side of any stories I might tell about her on mine ^_^), and the incoherent noise is pretty much shattering any chance at organized thought for anyone over the age of 9. (The 9-year-olds, however, are coherent enough to be making hyena noises in the bathroom down the hall... because somehow one of them was able to crawl under the stall door or something equally hyena-worthy...)
Perhaps this seems like a bizarre question for a daughter to ask her mother... Allow me to explain.
I seem to be what today's educators and psychologists would call a "high-functioning autistic". I say "seem to be" because it wasn't until the late 1980s/early 1990s that educators began recognizing that some kids with autism (or, alternatively, Asperger's Syndrome) could still function in "normal" society and so could be taught in the regular classroom with everyone else. By that time, I was beginning high school and had already been classified by the teachers and counselors as "mildly disturbed", "creative but troubled", "anti-social", and (my personal favorite) "bright but has trouble making and keeping friends." Never mind the fact that as a small child, I met 8 of the 12 criteria for autism as listed in the DSM-IV (3 from section 1, 3 from section 2, and 2 from section 3), and all but 2 of the 8 criteria for Asperger's Syndrome. Never mind the fact that both unexpected loud noises and the normal hubbub of the classroom drove me to tears and always had. Never mind the fact that changes in the daily routine or in what I thought should be the daily routine would invariably lead to me screaming, yelling, and cussing at whatever adult thought they were in charge at the time. Never mind the fact that people always seemed to think I was guilty and/or lying about something because I could never hold anyone's eye contact for more than a few moments. No, because I was already over the age of 3 and perfectly capable of talking, I could, by definition, not possibly be autistic.
Now, logically, it doesn't make sense that high-functioning autism would have magically begun in or around the year 1985 (so that all of its subjects would be young enough to be properly diagnosed in the late '80s or early '90s). In fact, the growing prevalence of autism in the general population right now and the growing body of research into the neuroscience of autism tells me that autism has been around for generations, maybe even forever. So, what this tells me is that there are probably thousands of almost-normal people out there who, like me, have always struggled with autism and have spent their entire lives free-falling through this diagnostic generation gap.
I began researching autism and Asperger's about 9 years ago, when my daughter became friends with a classmate with Asperger's. As I started focusing on special ed and elementary ed in college, I found myself fascinated with the dynamics of autism; the more I worked with kids on the autism spectrum, the more fascinated I became. Finally, here were kids who made sense to me... why couldn't the other teachers understand them? Unlike most kids, the autistic students actually reacted normally to noise, schedule changes, people touching them, and all those other irritations of life... well, at least it seemed normal to me, anyway :-) I could relate to them in their meltdowns because I used to freak out in the exact same way; the things that bugged them bugged me as well, and when we could fix those issues, we all did better.
It wasn't until the past couple of years, as the research on autism spectrum disorders finally grew up into adulthood, that I realized that autism isn't just a childhood problem. In other words, guess what? Autistic kids don't magically turn "normal" when they hit 18 and graduate from high school; autistic kids grow up into... wait for it... autistic adults. Adults who still struggle with sensory overload, making and keeping friends, expressing themselves through speech... and all of the other things in this list and this article. And if there is such a thing as an autistic adult... then maybe I'm not such a freak after all :-)
So, what is it like to be autistic?
First of all, because my brain doesn't filter out background noise from important information very well, every day is a brand new boiling cacophony of chaos to struggle through. The combination of the fans blowing, the clock ticking, the computer humming, the neighbors' salsa music salsa-ing, and the cars driving by outside drives me up the wall. All the time. The only way to drown it out so I can think is to play music that's louder than the combination so that the main sound I hear is music I can take meaning from instead of white noise that makes no sense. It's not so much the volume that get to me as it is the sheer number of different sounds to try and sort through. If you're trying to talk to me, make sure I can hear you over the noise and if possible, look at me so I can read your lips; this helps me to focus on what you're saying instead of losing your words in all the auditory clutter.
Eye contact is actually physically painful. If I don't look you in the eye when you're talking, it's not because I'm not interested or because I'm easily distracted or that I think you're repulsive to look at... it's because if I stare into your eyes for too long I start to feel like you could reach out and attack me at any moment, and I panic. This is why I love my sunglasses and wish I could get away with wearing them inside and out, all year round... when I'm wearing my shades, no one notices that I'm not looking at them :-)
When I talk, be patient with me. Regardless of what may come out of my mouth, I'm really not a complete idiot (I'm of the opinion that "not a complete idiot" is a pretty good loose translation of the Latin term summa cum laude... o.O ) The thoughts are in there somewhere and make total sense to me... I just may need several runs at translating them into words that everyone else will understand. Sometimes, I practice and rehearse what I mean to say in my head so that it will come out right the first time... only to have random words of it disappear on me just as I'm about to speak them. So if in mid-sentence sometimes, I start gesturing wildly or describing something blatantly obvious ("door" seems to be a word that disappears on me frequently, for some reason...), or even start trying to say it in Spanish (which has been known to happen more than once), be patient. Pretend we're playing Charades and try to help me find my missing word... unless I ask you to stop because your guesses are so colossally way far off that they're distracting me from everything else in my head (For example, if I'm thinking "that thing that goes like this **raises hands to form a rectangular archway over head** and then you walk through it...", then "elephant" is probably NOT the word I'm looking for, no matter how loudly you say it... ^_^) Let me restart as many times as I need to to spit out my sentence... by the third or fourth attempt, you'll probably have a pretty good idea of what it is I'm trying to say anyway, even if I get frustrated and give up. And please don't laugh at me... I'm doing the best that I can.
If you must change something about plans we've made or the way things usually go, give me some advance warning first. Even if it's an email the night before or a phone call on the way home from school, any advance warning will give me time to process and rearrange my mind to fit the new circumstances. I'm not real big on surprises... Give me hints or clues and I'll happily play along, but just don't spring things on me out of the blue. Oh, and when I'm in the middle of driving somewhere and I'm taking a route that I know well and am comfortable with, please, please, PLEASE do NOT constantly tell me about all of the more efficient and/or better ways to get there... If you want to drive, then you can drive, but if you want me to drive, then let me drive the way I know best, OK? :-)
I generally don't like to be touched. Unless I know you pretty well and trust you, and only if I know it's coming... like if I can see you coming from across the cafeteria and you're calling me "MOOOOOOOMMMM" at the top of your lungs as you run across the room to grab a hold of me. That might be OK... as long as you're one of my kids, one of their longtime friends, or one of my students, and not some 43-year-old guy who calls me "Mom" because he can't remember my name o.O So, basically, if I look like I need a hug, ask me if I'm OK with a hug first, OK? Because I really do like (and need) hugs and holding hands and a gentle touch on the shoulder and whatnot, just like everybody else... I just need to be prepared and know to expect it first.
Social situations-- especially if I'm not expecting them-- scare the living bejeebers out of me. This doesn't mean that I want to be a hermit and never ever see or talk to anyone-- heck, I'm an elementary school teacher and a mom, so that's not exactly an option :-) But it does mean that I have a LOT of preparation to do before I can be social and it takes a LOT out of me to be social. In all honesty, I have got to say that the most useful classes I ever took in any school anywhere were the drama classes I took in high school; it was in Mr. Putnam's drama classes that I learned how to create a character, put on that character, block out anything but that character, and stay in character until the curtain closes and I can finally be myself again. When I have to go out and be social-- whether it's in front of a classroom, on a school bus field trip, at a high school dance, whatever-- I have to take time beforehand to get over the inevitable pre-curtain panic attack and put on my competent-confident-teacher/competent-confident-parent persona. Only then can I go out and do what I have to do each day... and for the record, I don't mind doing it. The hours are great, the people are fascinating, and every once in a while I even have fun too :-D
After a social event, when the curtain falls and the audience (i.e. the rest of the real world) goes home and I am all alone by myself, I lay the persona aside... and usually proceed to have a nervous breakdown. I shake, I pace, I want to scream but can't because my husband and kids and the rest of the neighborhood are usually trying to sleep and would really not appreciate being awakened by a screaming banshee :-/ So I listen to my music really loud in the headphones or I blog or I sometimes just sit and wait for the synapses inside my head to stop firing like firecrackers so I can sleep like everyone else. This can take hours. And I feel like my skin is trying to crawl off from the inside out and there's nothing I can do to keep it together except to sit very very still... and it can take hours.
So, stupid question time... Why bother? Why do I teach, chaperone, let my kids bring their friends home after school each day if it drives me absolutely nuts? Why don't I mind doing this crazy stuff? Because the kids and the teens I get to work with are waaaay more than worth it, and who knows... maybe, just maybe, if I can set aside my own little chaos for a while and focus on them, then they will see that they are worth the world to me, and to the God who made me-- and maybe some of them too-- this way.
I don't believe that I was made this way by mistake, or even by accident. I'm convinced that a huge number of our modern psychological and learning "disorders" are actually not disorders at all, but are instead a reflection of our increasingly intolerant educational system. We carve out a narrow niche that we demand all students conform to in order to succeed, and then we pinpoint the kids who don't fit perfectly into that niche and give them a label of "_____ disorder" so that we can blame factors out of our control for our failure to educate every child. We have our autistic disorders, our attention-deficit disorders, our oppositional-defiant disorders, our anxiety disorders, and so on... and in labeling these students as "disorderly," we give ourselves as teachers and as adults a pass on educating them, convincing ourselves that if these kids don't learn, it's not our fault ("we don't have the training to manage these kids") or their fault ("they can't help it, they have a disorder"), but just the way it goes sometimes.
But what if all of these "disorders" are actually just beautiful variations in the way God makes individuals? What if the disorder is in our unwillingness to see outside our own little boxes, and not in the way these kids' minds work at all? Ask any parent of an autistic child, or a child with ADHD, or an anxiety disorder, and they will tell you that their child is brilliant and special and full of potential... if only other people would choose to see them that way.
So, basically, I'm choosing each day to live like I was made this way on purpose, like my autism is a gift from God. He would not have given me my autism unless He knew I was strong enough to handle it, and unless He knew of a way for me to use it to love others. So... this is why I go out in public when it drives me out of my mind, why I volunteer for all the crazy chaperone duties that make my friends think I'm out of my mind, why I open my home to all of my kids' crazy friends and their mile-a-minute ramblings that prove they may be out of their minds... It's because each and every one of them is totally worth the insanity :-D
--------------------------------------------
"Mom... Is this how you feel every day?!?"
As you might guess, the answer to her question is yes... This is what I feel every day. The noise, the chaos, the inability to focus or concentrate, the panic that it creates... all of those are a part of being autistic. But I know that this is the way I was made, that I'm not a freak of nature after all... and that there is a reason I am the way I am.
I also know from her reaction that my daughter is not autistic, and that because she is a "neurotypical," she will probably have a simpler life than I did. She doesn't view herself as a freak or a mistake, and for this I will always be grateful. But if things like this make her aware of what people like her childhood friend and I go through each day, then perhaps she will have more compassion and a better understanding, and will be able to share that with others.
April 2nd is my daughter's birthday; it's also World Autism Awareness Day, when people all over the world are supposed to wear blue to show their awareness and support of people with autism and for autism research. I'm sure that's all fine and dandy... I've worn blue to support my students with autism and Asperger's in the past, and probably will this year as well just for the heck of it. But I think that, as far as raising autism awareness goes, I can be more effective by living my life out loud and being honest and open about who I am and why I think I was made this way with anyone who will care to listen. Because for me, every day, every hour, every minute is about autism awareness.
For some of us, every day is April 2nd.
Showing posts with label public education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public education. Show all posts
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Saturday, June 16, 2012
What To Expect When You're High-Schoolering...
Yesterday, my daughter and most of her friends graduated from the 8th grade; as she keeps reminding me, she's "officially" a high schooler now, and "not some little seventh grader anymore, Mooooommmm... " <insert dramatic eye-rolls here> I'm kind of hard-pressed to find the words to say how proud I am of her and all of her friends, and how hope-filled, excited, and nervous I am for all of them as they start the final leg of their journey to adulthood: high school.
With that in mind, here is what I'd like to say to them-- the little bits and pieces of advice that I'd like to give them as one who went through high school and survived. Not that they would listen at the moment, since they're too busy reveling in the fact that it's finally SUMMER (Yay! Yah! WooHOOOOOOOOO!!! and all that jazz) to actually listen to anyone, but hey... that's what my blog is for, right? ^_^
So, without further ado (sounds so much more dramatic than it really is, huh? ^_^), here is my Top 8 list of Things Every New High Schooler Should Know:
1. Everything counts.
If you have a goal of succeeding in high school, going to college, and getting a job where you get paid a lot of money for not working very hard (as one of my daughter's friends was quoted as saying in their graduation ceremony), you have to start now, with that first Freshman Study Skills class. In high school, there are no MDFs to turn in when you were too busy to finish your homework and need an extra day or two (or 17, as the case may be) to get it in... Either you turn it in on time or the teacher docks you by half, no ifs ands or buts. It's not that there are no second chances in high school... it's just that second chances in high school are called "Credit Recovery" and you have to take them during your summer vacation :-( Which just plain sucks. Big time.
2. Don't underestimate the little things.
You never know what someone else is going through, and your one insignificant little action could be the thing that either makes their day bearable or destroys their will to go on. A whole school year of little things can make the difference between giving up and pushing through... especially since you have no idea of all the other "little things" that someone is thinking about in any given moment.
3. Kindness.
No matter what, you will never go wrong with kindness. Don't do to others just because they did it to you... an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind and all that. It doesn't matter who started it... You can be the one to finish it :-)
4. You don't know the future.
You may get the chance tomorrow to make amends for the stupidities of today. Then again, you may not. You have no way of knowing what is going to happen next to yourself or to that person walking away from you... As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone, and don't wait to make the wrong things right.
5. You can't change the past.
When all else fails, today is a new day, and you can always choose to keep walking forward. It really doesn't matter what everyone says you are or what everyone is predicting based on yesterday and all that came before... You are who you are because God has formed you and shaped you to be in this place, and where you go from here is between you and Him. Don't let the haters tell you who you have to be.
6. YOLO.
When Nickelback says to live like today was your last day, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should go out and give everything away and refuse to plan for the future. Rather, live each day so that when you lay down at night, you don't have any regrets to keep you awake. If you have to think about how you're going to hide what you're about to do, chances are good you probably shouldn't be doing it. If you've screwed up and need to make things right, do it today, ASAP. Very few people will be ticked off at you for calling or texting them at 10:45 PM to say you're sorry :-)
7. YODO. You only die once too. Don't be excessively stupid :-) (And, since I forgot to include a video in the last post, I'll throw in a bonus video here...
And finally, with all that being said...
8. Enjoy high school.
This is your last chance to be a kid, before you have to worry about a job, a place to live, insurance, settling down and raising kids, etcetera. Think about it... If you're 14 now, you could have at least 60 years ahead of you to do all those things. You don't have to choose a husband or wife, a career path, or a house right now (although the choices you make now could end up having a huge effect on those choices down the road...) Enjoy being young and having your whole life ahead of you... Don't be in such a hurry to weigh yourself down with the worries of being an adult just yet, because in 20 years, you'll be looking back and going, "Y'know, I really, really wish I hadn't done that...", and you'll end up sitting at your kitchen table writing all of these things down in a blog instead of actually telling your kids and their friends what they need to know to survive high school ^_^
I think this song pretty much sums up everything I want to say here... and knowing my daughter, chances are good that she'd rather hear it from somebody yelling into a microphone than from me, anyway ^_^
Today really is the first day of the rest of your life... and not just because that's what the vice-principal said in his official 8th grade graduation speech that he's probably been giving from memory since Vanilla Ice was still cool o_O No, today is the first day of the rest of your life because, as long as you still have life in you, you can choose to make it the first day. This is your life, no one else's... and no one can take that away from you :-)
With that in mind, here is what I'd like to say to them-- the little bits and pieces of advice that I'd like to give them as one who went through high school and survived. Not that they would listen at the moment, since they're too busy reveling in the fact that it's finally SUMMER (Yay! Yah! WooHOOOOOOOOO!!! and all that jazz) to actually listen to anyone, but hey... that's what my blog is for, right? ^_^
So, without further ado (sounds so much more dramatic than it really is, huh? ^_^), here is my Top 8 list of Things Every New High Schooler Should Know:
1. Everything counts.
If you have a goal of succeeding in high school, going to college, and getting a job where you get paid a lot of money for not working very hard (as one of my daughter's friends was quoted as saying in their graduation ceremony), you have to start now, with that first Freshman Study Skills class. In high school, there are no MDFs to turn in when you were too busy to finish your homework and need an extra day or two (or 17, as the case may be) to get it in... Either you turn it in on time or the teacher docks you by half, no ifs ands or buts. It's not that there are no second chances in high school... it's just that second chances in high school are called "Credit Recovery" and you have to take them during your summer vacation :-( Which just plain sucks. Big time.
2. Don't underestimate the little things.
You never know what someone else is going through, and your one insignificant little action could be the thing that either makes their day bearable or destroys their will to go on. A whole school year of little things can make the difference between giving up and pushing through... especially since you have no idea of all the other "little things" that someone is thinking about in any given moment.
3. Kindness.
No matter what, you will never go wrong with kindness. Don't do to others just because they did it to you... an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind and all that. It doesn't matter who started it... You can be the one to finish it :-)
4. You don't know the future.
You may get the chance tomorrow to make amends for the stupidities of today. Then again, you may not. You have no way of knowing what is going to happen next to yourself or to that person walking away from you... As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone, and don't wait to make the wrong things right.
5. You can't change the past.
When all else fails, today is a new day, and you can always choose to keep walking forward. It really doesn't matter what everyone says you are or what everyone is predicting based on yesterday and all that came before... You are who you are because God has formed you and shaped you to be in this place, and where you go from here is between you and Him. Don't let the haters tell you who you have to be.
6. YOLO.
When Nickelback says to live like today was your last day, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should go out and give everything away and refuse to plan for the future. Rather, live each day so that when you lay down at night, you don't have any regrets to keep you awake. If you have to think about how you're going to hide what you're about to do, chances are good you probably shouldn't be doing it. If you've screwed up and need to make things right, do it today, ASAP. Very few people will be ticked off at you for calling or texting them at 10:45 PM to say you're sorry :-)
7. YODO. You only die once too. Don't be excessively stupid :-) (And, since I forgot to include a video in the last post, I'll throw in a bonus video here...
And finally, with all that being said...
8. Enjoy high school.
This is your last chance to be a kid, before you have to worry about a job, a place to live, insurance, settling down and raising kids, etcetera. Think about it... If you're 14 now, you could have at least 60 years ahead of you to do all those things. You don't have to choose a husband or wife, a career path, or a house right now (although the choices you make now could end up having a huge effect on those choices down the road...) Enjoy being young and having your whole life ahead of you... Don't be in such a hurry to weigh yourself down with the worries of being an adult just yet, because in 20 years, you'll be looking back and going, "Y'know, I really, really wish I hadn't done that...", and you'll end up sitting at your kitchen table writing all of these things down in a blog instead of actually telling your kids and their friends what they need to know to survive high school ^_^
I think this song pretty much sums up everything I want to say here... and knowing my daughter, chances are good that she'd rather hear it from somebody yelling into a microphone than from me, anyway ^_^
Today really is the first day of the rest of your life... and not just because that's what the vice-principal said in his official 8th grade graduation speech that he's probably been giving from memory since Vanilla Ice was still cool o_O No, today is the first day of the rest of your life because, as long as you still have life in you, you can choose to make it the first day. This is your life, no one else's... and no one can take that away from you :-)
Monday, April 30, 2012
Last day of student teaching... AKA The Spring of my Starlight Mints :-D
Well, it's official... I'm an official university graduate with an official BS degree in Elementary Education (which, if one thinks too hard about it, actually makes quite a bit of sense, as about 67% of what we El Ed people do is pure improv anyway ^_^) Not to mention that during my last week of student teaching, I caught the flu bug that was spreading through my class, and so stumbled through graduation on a cocktail of Nyquil, coffee, and Mountain Dew... ah, those wild and crazy college days :-D
Rather than post pics of graduation, I figured I'd share a story from my final day of student teaching. Of course, before I tell the story, I have to explain a little bit about Casey. Casey is the A-Number-One, Oregon's Most Wanted "problem child" in the fourth grade... actually, in the whole school. First off, he's been held back once, and is none too happy about it. Second, this is his first year at our school, so to start the year off right, Casey found the biggest, most-feared fifth grader in the school and picked a fight with him. He got thoroughly pounded, of course... but the point was made that you don't mess with Myles or Casey o_O Third, he's become the subject of both a school-wide anti-bullying campaign AND an ESD-level threat assessment... simply by making an offhand comment to a staff member that he was planning to bring a gun to school and that he already had 3 people "on the hit list". And then there are all the little day-to-day joys of life with Casey... such as him warning me that, if I didn't handle his most recent disagreement with a classmate properly, he would have to take care of the matter himself, and that I wasn't "going to like the results 'cause there's gonna be lots of blood and concrete and somebody would probably be going to jail afterwards." Rather considerate of him to warn me, all things considered... o_O Casey's not at all stupid, though he seems to have a lot of people convinced that, because he refuses to do most of his schoolwork, he must be a slow learner. Personally, I think he's just got the system figured out already... which tells me a lot about his intelligence that I wouldn't get from looking at his grades :-)
When he's not terrorizing his peers, though, Casey can actually be a pretty funny, sweet kid. Such as the time when his classmate Yesenia was told by another student, "Well, at least I'm white...", and Casey went out of his way to comfort her and make her laugh again. Or the incident that happened on my last day in the classroom:
That morning, I busted Casey with his iPhone in class again... third time in four days. After first refusing to put it in his backpack and then stuffing it in his back pocket and lying outright about it ("Whaaaaat? It IS in my backpack!!!" "Yeah, OK, so what is that in your pocket, then?" "That? Well, it's NOT my PHOOOOOONE... it's my iPHOOOOONE! Hahahahahahaha..."), Casey eventually did go and put the phone away like I had asked... yes, we celebrate the small victories here... ^_^
... and came out of the coat closet with two fistfuls of candy and both cheeks stuffed full besides...
... which became really interesting because it was his turn to lead the class in the Pledge of Allegiance. Which is a little difficult to do with a mouth full of Starlight Mints ("Ipfffawwjttdffphguv d Oontdfdd Stttsuvv Mrrrguhh...") Natural consequences FTW ^_^
The day progressed normally (this was the same day as Casey's oh-so-considerate pre-warning about the blood and concrete and all that... pretty typical, all things considered o_O), until about half an hour before the end of the day. At that time, Casey was headed out to one of his Special Ed classes, when he suddenly turned and ran over to hand me two Starlight Mints. "It's a good-bye present."
"Oh... OK. Thanks!" How sweet of him :-) Really, it was actually pretty sweet... no kidding :-D
When Casey returned from his class to get his things at the end of the day, he came over to my desk, where I was starting to pack up my things. "Here," he says, and gestures for me to hold out my hands. I do so, and he dumps a couple of handfuls of Starlight Mints into my hands and onto my desk.
"Um... Thanks. By the way, where did you get all of these mints from?"
"My backpack. Duh..." And he shows me that the bottom of his backpack is filled with about the same amount of mints as he's just given me.
I laugh. "Okay, yeah, 'duh...' I meant before they were in your backpack... Where did you get so much candy from?"
"Oh, from the restaurant."
"The restaurant?"
"Yeah, the restaurant. My mom said that, for 50 bucks for dinner, we deserved as many mints as we could carry!"
Lovely. Just... lovely :-D Wonder if they take away your teaching license for accepting stolen goods from your students...
Rather than post pics of graduation, I figured I'd share a story from my final day of student teaching. Of course, before I tell the story, I have to explain a little bit about Casey. Casey is the A-Number-One, Oregon's Most Wanted "problem child" in the fourth grade... actually, in the whole school. First off, he's been held back once, and is none too happy about it. Second, this is his first year at our school, so to start the year off right, Casey found the biggest, most-feared fifth grader in the school and picked a fight with him. He got thoroughly pounded, of course... but the point was made that you don't mess with Myles or Casey o_O Third, he's become the subject of both a school-wide anti-bullying campaign AND an ESD-level threat assessment... simply by making an offhand comment to a staff member that he was planning to bring a gun to school and that he already had 3 people "on the hit list". And then there are all the little day-to-day joys of life with Casey... such as him warning me that, if I didn't handle his most recent disagreement with a classmate properly, he would have to take care of the matter himself, and that I wasn't "going to like the results 'cause there's gonna be lots of blood and concrete and somebody would probably be going to jail afterwards." Rather considerate of him to warn me, all things considered... o_O Casey's not at all stupid, though he seems to have a lot of people convinced that, because he refuses to do most of his schoolwork, he must be a slow learner. Personally, I think he's just got the system figured out already... which tells me a lot about his intelligence that I wouldn't get from looking at his grades :-)
When he's not terrorizing his peers, though, Casey can actually be a pretty funny, sweet kid. Such as the time when his classmate Yesenia was told by another student, "Well, at least I'm white...", and Casey went out of his way to comfort her and make her laugh again. Or the incident that happened on my last day in the classroom:
That morning, I busted Casey with his iPhone in class again... third time in four days. After first refusing to put it in his backpack and then stuffing it in his back pocket and lying outright about it ("Whaaaaat? It IS in my backpack!!!" "Yeah, OK, so what is that in your pocket, then?" "That? Well, it's NOT my PHOOOOOONE... it's my iPHOOOOONE! Hahahahahahaha..."), Casey eventually did go and put the phone away like I had asked... yes, we celebrate the small victories here... ^_^
... and came out of the coat closet with two fistfuls of candy and both cheeks stuffed full besides...
... which became really interesting because it was his turn to lead the class in the Pledge of Allegiance. Which is a little difficult to do with a mouth full of Starlight Mints ("Ipfffawwjttdffphguv d Oontdfdd Stttsuvv Mrrrguhh...") Natural consequences FTW ^_^
The day progressed normally (this was the same day as Casey's oh-so-considerate pre-warning about the blood and concrete and all that... pretty typical, all things considered o_O), until about half an hour before the end of the day. At that time, Casey was headed out to one of his Special Ed classes, when he suddenly turned and ran over to hand me two Starlight Mints. "It's a good-bye present."
"Oh... OK. Thanks!" How sweet of him :-) Really, it was actually pretty sweet... no kidding :-D
When Casey returned from his class to get his things at the end of the day, he came over to my desk, where I was starting to pack up my things. "Here," he says, and gestures for me to hold out my hands. I do so, and he dumps a couple of handfuls of Starlight Mints into my hands and onto my desk.
"Um... Thanks. By the way, where did you get all of these mints from?"
"My backpack. Duh..." And he shows me that the bottom of his backpack is filled with about the same amount of mints as he's just given me.
I laugh. "Okay, yeah, 'duh...' I meant before they were in your backpack... Where did you get so much candy from?"
"Oh, from the restaurant."
"The restaurant?"
"Yeah, the restaurant. My mom said that, for 50 bucks for dinner, we deserved as many mints as we could carry!"
Lovely. Just... lovely :-D Wonder if they take away your teaching license for accepting stolen goods from your students...
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
My Top 5 list of phrases that will heretofore be forever banned from my classroom...
As I draw near to the end of my full-time student teaching experience (Graduation in t-minus 11 days... Squeeeeee! :-D), I've come to the conclusion that there are certain phrases that should be banned from any classroom anywhere at any time...
5. "But you never TAUGHT us THIS...!"
In some cases, this is OK. Just not when we're talking about nouns after I've spent a week and a half covering them. In detail. With all sorts of color-coded whiteboard games and Mad Libs. And Schoolhouse Rock videos. Did I mention that I'm teaching fourth grade? Yeah. You see how it is...
4. (Careful... this one is a two-parter)
Student: "I don't GET it..."
Me: "OK... what part don't you get?"
Student: "... AAAALLLLL of it!"
Me: Sigh. Consider banging head against wall. Decide against the wall plan and take a peek at Student's paper. Point. "First, put your name on the paper." Walk away and repeat with the student three desks over. If you make it through 5 students before your head explodes, you win. Go directly to the teacher's lounge and scarf down any form of unguarded chocolate you find.
3. "But this is HAAAAAAARRRRRD..."
My response to this varies with the student. Sometimes it's, "Well, let's take it one step at a time... First, put your name on the paper..." Sometimes it's "Yes... Welcome to fourth grade. Your point is?" And sometimes (if it happens to be Rennie or Jason saying it) it's "Noooo, this isn't hard, it's complex... Which are two related but linguistically separate things." Which means I now have to tell y'all about Rennie, but that's a whole other post entirely...
2. "But I don't WANT to..."
Of course you don't want to... If you DID, you would have already come up with this idea on your own and finished it. Probably while I was explaining something else, to which your response was...
1. "Do we HAAAAAAAVVVVVE to do this???"
No, no, of course not... I just spent the past 5 minutes explaining the directions for this art project/math game/vocabulary worksheet because I enjoy talking to myself in front of a room full of 10-year-olds, all of whom are now wondering if it would be better to notify their parents of their teacher's insanity or just sit back and enjoy the ride... ^_^
When I (someday) have my own classroom, one of the first things I'm going to do is create one of these bad boys... Many thanks to Ms. Teach for the idea :-D
As soon as any one of those phrases passes the lips of one of my students, they will earn a pick from the Fortune Teller of Doom... I swear on the soul of my father... Domingo Montoya...
Well, maybe not, but still... you see how utterly serious I am about this subject. ^_^
And now, for those of you who know exactly what Schoolhouse Rock song I was referring to (and who now have it running around in your head like a caffeinated hamster...)
5. "But you never TAUGHT us THIS...!"
In some cases, this is OK. Just not when we're talking about nouns after I've spent a week and a half covering them. In detail. With all sorts of color-coded whiteboard games and Mad Libs. And Schoolhouse Rock videos. Did I mention that I'm teaching fourth grade? Yeah. You see how it is...
4. (Careful... this one is a two-parter)
Student: "I don't GET it..."
Me: "OK... what part don't you get?"
Student: "... AAAALLLLL of it!"
Me: Sigh. Consider banging head against wall. Decide against the wall plan and take a peek at Student's paper. Point. "First, put your name on the paper." Walk away and repeat with the student three desks over. If you make it through 5 students before your head explodes, you win. Go directly to the teacher's lounge and scarf down any form of unguarded chocolate you find.
3. "But this is HAAAAAAARRRRRD..."
My response to this varies with the student. Sometimes it's, "Well, let's take it one step at a time... First, put your name on the paper..." Sometimes it's "Yes... Welcome to fourth grade. Your point is?" And sometimes (if it happens to be Rennie or Jason saying it) it's "Noooo, this isn't hard, it's complex... Which are two related but linguistically separate things." Which means I now have to tell y'all about Rennie, but that's a whole other post entirely...
2. "But I don't WANT to..."
Of course you don't want to... If you DID, you would have already come up with this idea on your own and finished it. Probably while I was explaining something else, to which your response was...
1. "Do we HAAAAAAAVVVVVE to do this???"
No, no, of course not... I just spent the past 5 minutes explaining the directions for this art project/math game/vocabulary worksheet because I enjoy talking to myself in front of a room full of 10-year-olds, all of whom are now wondering if it would be better to notify their parents of their teacher's insanity or just sit back and enjoy the ride... ^_^
When I (someday) have my own classroom, one of the first things I'm going to do is create one of these bad boys... Many thanks to Ms. Teach for the idea :-D
As soon as any one of those phrases passes the lips of one of my students, they will earn a pick from the Fortune Teller of Doom... I swear on the soul of my father... Domingo Montoya...
Well, maybe not, but still... you see how utterly serious I am about this subject. ^_^
And now, for those of you who know exactly what Schoolhouse Rock song I was referring to (and who now have it running around in your head like a caffeinated hamster...)
Monday, February 6, 2012
My favorite moment of the past week... Learning to speak softly :-)
OK, yes, it's been several months... FTST (Full-Time Student Teaching) will do that to a person o_O
I'm currently in a 4th grade bilingual classroom in rural Oregon... 29 kids, 12 girls and 17 boys... that right there should tell you 80% of what you need to know about how it's going o_O
But anyway, I figured that 1) it's been a while since I posted anything, and 2) I had to share this little incident with somebody other than my hubby and kids.
A little background: On my first day at the school, one of the boys in my class (who I'll call Jason) decided that he hated my guts simply because I was there. As it turns out, Jason has an ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), so he pretty much hates everything that doesn't fit into his schema... which includes student teachers, apparently. Which is fine... we have a family friend with the same ASD, so I totally get where Jason was coming from.
Over the first few weeks, Jason and I developed a special kind of relationship... I would make eye contact with him, he would glare at me; I would ask him how he was doing, he would growl and turn his back; I would ask him to get out his homework, he would pull his hoodie over his face and pretend to sleep. It was a beautiful and heartwarming thing, this budding friendship of ours.
And then, one day, we discovered that we had something in common: we've both read and loved the Warriors books by Erin Hunter :-D
After that, it was a whole different story... kind of a Longtail-and-Firepaw sort of thing, if you've read the books ^_^ As it turns out, Jason is off-the-charts brilliant... which goes a ways towards explaining why, as he puts it, "99% of the people in this school irritate me..." He also does a killer Christopher Judge impersonation...
... though I seriously doubt that he would ever contemplate watching Stargate SG-1. Ever. Because everybody knows that intergalactic travel through a wormhole is both physically and theoretically impossible. As are time travel and the existence of alternate realities. Oh, well...
So, anyway, this week, I had just finished teaching a lesson when a random fourth grader walked up to me and randomly handed me a meterstick. For no apparent reason. Just... thought I should hold onto it, I guess... o_O
"OK... I now have a big stick. Any idea what I'm supposed to do with it?"
Random Child shrugs, grins, and walks off. Which is typical, but more on Random-Child later on, I'm sure...
At this point, Jason leans over, gives me his Teal'c look, and remarks, "Now all you need is to learn how to speak softly..."
Gah! Roosevelt quotes from a fourth grader??? OMG... I love this kid! :-) (And for the record, yes, he was able to tell me which Roosevelt he was quoting...)
I'm currently in a 4th grade bilingual classroom in rural Oregon... 29 kids, 12 girls and 17 boys... that right there should tell you 80% of what you need to know about how it's going o_O
But anyway, I figured that 1) it's been a while since I posted anything, and 2) I had to share this little incident with somebody other than my hubby and kids.
A little background: On my first day at the school, one of the boys in my class (who I'll call Jason) decided that he hated my guts simply because I was there. As it turns out, Jason has an ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), so he pretty much hates everything that doesn't fit into his schema... which includes student teachers, apparently. Which is fine... we have a family friend with the same ASD, so I totally get where Jason was coming from.
Over the first few weeks, Jason and I developed a special kind of relationship... I would make eye contact with him, he would glare at me; I would ask him how he was doing, he would growl and turn his back; I would ask him to get out his homework, he would pull his hoodie over his face and pretend to sleep. It was a beautiful and heartwarming thing, this budding friendship of ours.
And then, one day, we discovered that we had something in common: we've both read and loved the Warriors books by Erin Hunter :-D
After that, it was a whole different story... kind of a Longtail-and-Firepaw sort of thing, if you've read the books ^_^ As it turns out, Jason is off-the-charts brilliant... which goes a ways towards explaining why, as he puts it, "99% of the people in this school irritate me..." He also does a killer Christopher Judge impersonation...
... though I seriously doubt that he would ever contemplate watching Stargate SG-1. Ever. Because everybody knows that intergalactic travel through a wormhole is both physically and theoretically impossible. As are time travel and the existence of alternate realities. Oh, well...
So, anyway, this week, I had just finished teaching a lesson when a random fourth grader walked up to me and randomly handed me a meterstick. For no apparent reason. Just... thought I should hold onto it, I guess... o_O
"OK... I now have a big stick. Any idea what I'm supposed to do with it?"
Random Child shrugs, grins, and walks off. Which is typical, but more on Random-Child later on, I'm sure...
At this point, Jason leans over, gives me his Teal'c look, and remarks, "Now all you need is to learn how to speak softly..."
Gah! Roosevelt quotes from a fourth grader??? OMG... I love this kid! :-) (And for the record, yes, he was able to tell me which Roosevelt he was quoting...)
Monday, August 1, 2011
"But I'm an A student...!" -- Part 2
Apologies all around for the loooooooooong delay between posts... I've just finished up a couple of Summer Term condensed classes in order to stay on track to graduate in April (about 9 months from now... Squeeeeeeeee! As my little sister would say :-D), and trying to balance those with the general chaos of 3 kids (including 2 middle schoolers) at home for the summer and bored and a hubby looking for work in an economy with about 11-12% unemployment has been... a little bit time consuming :-)
But anyway...
So, time for Part 2 of my little rant...
I'm currently carrying a 4.0 GPA going into my senior year of college, and let me tell you, it's a lot tougher to pull that off in a university than it ever was in the public schools I grew up in. However, I've noticed a really weird phenomenon as I'm attending classes with students who have grown up in today's public school system... Let me illustrate with an example:
One of the classes I had to take last year was a class in the basics of mathematics for elementary educators. One day, the professor was passing back an exam we had all taken, and offered to explain any of the questions that we had missed. One girl's hand immediately shot into the air, and before the prof could call on her, she launched the attack: He had made a mistake in one of the questions, therefore, her answer was not incorrect at all, and she deserved credit for his mistake. With a sigh, the prof ran through the problem on the overhead... and discovered that she was in fact right, he had made a mistake in the problem. As about half of the class had given the same answer as my classmate, the professor gave an extra point to everyone... leading my classmate to begin cheering, "Yes! 100% Oh yeah, oh yeah..." Later on in the term, on a class project, this same student was infuriated to discover that she had only scored a 15 out of 25 (60%)... "But, I'm an A student! You're grading us too hard and expecting too much of us! This is just ridiculous..."
Which is what brings me to the point of this part of my rant... When we make the "A" the standard for our education system (see my previous post for more on that...), we not only discourage a sizable chunk of our student population, but we artificially puff up the kids on the other end of the spectrum... We tell them that they deserve their high grades and that their grades are an integral part of their personal worth. We give them the expectation that they will always get high grades, and that the school system will always work with them to help them maintain their high potential.
However, there are other factors at play and systems at work when it comes to "raising the standards" in our school system. Federal mandates for visible proof of student achievement (no, I'm not going to even start in on NCLB... way too much ink and way too many pixels have been spent on that whole hornet's next for me to add anything worthwhile... :-/) have led to a simplifying of skills and information so that more students will be able to grasp the fundamentals of a wide range of topics and perform more consistently on state tests. This simplifying of skills to reach the majority of students makes it easier for the already advanced students to get A's... which gives them the impression that school is always going to be easy for them because they are naturally smart.
Mixed-ability grouping continues that process, since advanced students in a class often are rewarded with extra free time in class to read, work on projects, or visit while the teacher works with students who need additional help to grasp new concepts; the "smart" kids see that their classmates are still struggling and they assume that there must be something lacking in other children because they don't "get" something as simple as adding fractions, or writing a paragraph, or reading a short story for examples of irony. And then the teachers come up with the brilliant idea of having the "fast" learners tutor the "slow" learners as a way of building community... which gives the "smart" kids the chance to demonstrate to their tutorees just how inferior they really are and how much harder their life is going to be because they have to work for something that "should" come so easily... And the chasm grows ever wider.
By the time kids reach middle school, mixed-ability groupings are discarded (which really makes one wonder about the long-term benefits of such groupings, but anyway...) and all students are tested for placement into the classes that will pretty much determine their high school careers. The kids who struggle are placed into the basic skills classes, and the kids who excel (many of whom have been excelling from the start for a wide variety of reasons) are placed into Honors classes, where they gain the foundational skills to help them in high school AP classes.
However, for a lot of these kids, Honors classes give them their first experience with struggling. All of a sudden, they're not getting the easy A's anymore, and when they start bringing home B's and C's, it shakes their self-confidence and their sense of who they are. Maybe they're not naturally smart... maybe they're just like everyone else after all.
Or maybe the class is too hard. Or maybe the teacher just hates them. After all, teachers hate smart kids, right? Because it's the smart kids who don't just buy mindlessly into whatever the teacher says, and who will stand up for the rights of all of the other kids who are being discriminated against by big, mean, evil teachers around the world... or so my daughter's middle school friends would have me believe, anyway ;-) The B's, the C's, the D's... they're all there just because the teacher didn't agree with what the student wrote. The Missing Work Notices are only because the teacher forgot to tell the class that the assignment was due the next day... and the kids who got theirs turned in on time only did so because they're the teacher's favorites and they always turn their work in early anyway. And the whole "only-giving-half-credit for late assignments" deal? "Well, if these stupid teachers would just realize that students have lives too, then they wouldn't be so picky about an extra day or two... I mean, in the big picture, who really cares if I turn it in on Friday or on Monday? The teachers should be grateful that I gave them a little extra time to enjoy their weekend before having to grade my paper... but noooooo, they only want to give me 50% so that they can feel in control! How unfair is that? I mean, I am an A student, after all..."
And then the report cards go home... and the parents hit the warpath. Some crack down on their "lazy teenagers", grounding them or confiscating the iPhones until their grades improve. Others demand to speak with the teacher and threaten to go to the District Superintendent if something isn't done to "rein in" this control freak behavior and put an immediate end to the age/gender/cultural/socio-economic discrimination. And quite often, if the grades don't rise, the students find themselves in "regular" classes the next semester, where they very quickly regain their status as "A" students and return to their happy, bubbly, "smart" selves.
For a lot of kids, this continues throughout high school; they graduate from 4 years of classes that aren't too hard with 4.0 GPAs and are accepted to the universities of their choice... where they crash headfirst into The Real World of university professors who don't really give a rat's patooty what grades they got in high school and who actually hold them accountable for studying-- on their own time-- the material assigned in class o_O Now, maybe I'm just seeing one small sliver of life on this topic... after all, I am in a major of study that has been labeled as "the nation's easiest college major", so maybe we get a LOT of these kinds of students. But still, I wonder if this isn't yet another side-effect of our current public school system :-/
What if we began grading students not on whether or not they meet the minimum requirements on assignments, but on how far beyond the minimum they choose to go? In other words, instead of giving a 100% to all students who met the baseline requirements, what if we gave 50% for meeting the minimum and then additional points for how far above and beyond they went? Granted, this wouldn't work for multiple-choice exams, but maybe we shouldn't be using multiple choice exams as our main form of assessment anyway.
What if we began expecting more of our students-- not just our strugglers-- to actually work hard to earn their grades? Honestly, the only way I see this working is if we go back to ability grouping at the elementary school level, where kids who need additional help are grouped together and given the assistance they need to catch up and kids who are advanced are either moved up a grade or given more challenging work to do so that they too can learn to work hard and achieve more. And by more challenging, I don't mean just more worksheets or longer books... I mean figuring out new ways to them to use what they already know and to move on to the next level of a subject when they are ready.
Some will say that this second change would be damaging to children's self-esteem. I would answer that by stating the obvious: children who struggle in a mixed-ability class are not blind to the fact that they are struggling, and this is also damaging to their self-esteem. It may even be more damaging, because the kids to whom they (and, sadly, their teachers and parents as well) are comparing themselves are often so far above the benchmark that even the average learners in a class feel inferior and incompetent by comparison.
But then again, this entire argument rests on the foundational assumption that students' self-esteem should be based upon their academic achievement... and maybe that's the gravest error of all in the whole system. What if we could find ways to tell all of our students that they are valuable and precious no matter what grades they get or how they score on their tests? What if we as teachers, as parents, and as friends constantly strove to reassure the kids in our lives that we love them no matter what, and that those letters at the top of the page are nothing more than a snapshot of a fragment of their lives?
The song I'm ending with here is a (relatively) old one called "Stupid Kid" from Caedmon's Call... It may take a little bit to find a YouTube video for it (no luck so far :-/), but I will add a link if I find it :-) Until then, here are the lyrics...
I think this place is swell
There’s much familiar here
I get my laundry done
And I get home-cooked meals
And when I’m feeling tired
I can turn off all the lights
Ignore the knocking on the door
Pretend I’m not alive
Daddy, it’s Saturday
And I don’t want to go outside
And mow the grass today
So, would you love me just as much
If I was just your stupid kid?
Would you love me just as much
If I was just your stupid kid?
They tell me that I’m bright
Sometimes I think they’re right
But I guess I’ll never know
‘Cause I won’t go outside
Some days it’s just so hot
And others it’s so cold
Too much exposure to the sun
Would just make me look old
Daddy, it’s Saturday
And I don’t want to go outside
And mow the grass today
So, would you love me just as much
If I was just your stupid kid?
Would you love me just as much
If I was just your stupid kid?
Well, isn’t this Saturday?
It sure feels like Saturday
So, wake me Saturday
Daddy, it’s Saturday...
And my mind wanders off
To things I’ve never seen
Are these walls higher than the cost
Of opportunity?
'Cause I’m too big for my bed
And I’ve outgrown my shoes
But my fear of leaving
Is the one thing I just can’t lose
Daddy, it’s Saturday
And I don’t want to go outside
And mow the grass today
So, would you love me just as much...
If I never got a job?
If I never left your house?
Would I be of use to you
If I never amounted to much more
Than just your stupid kid?
So, would I love me just as much
If I was just your stupid kid?
UPDATE (8/2/2011): OK, so here's a video for the song so you can all sing along... Just kidding, no singing necessary-- I figure if I can't carry a tune in a bucket, I have no right expecting anyone else to either :-D
But anyway...
So, time for Part 2 of my little rant...
I'm currently carrying a 4.0 GPA going into my senior year of college, and let me tell you, it's a lot tougher to pull that off in a university than it ever was in the public schools I grew up in. However, I've noticed a really weird phenomenon as I'm attending classes with students who have grown up in today's public school system... Let me illustrate with an example:
One of the classes I had to take last year was a class in the basics of mathematics for elementary educators. One day, the professor was passing back an exam we had all taken, and offered to explain any of the questions that we had missed. One girl's hand immediately shot into the air, and before the prof could call on her, she launched the attack: He had made a mistake in one of the questions, therefore, her answer was not incorrect at all, and she deserved credit for his mistake. With a sigh, the prof ran through the problem on the overhead... and discovered that she was in fact right, he had made a mistake in the problem. As about half of the class had given the same answer as my classmate, the professor gave an extra point to everyone... leading my classmate to begin cheering, "Yes! 100% Oh yeah, oh yeah..." Later on in the term, on a class project, this same student was infuriated to discover that she had only scored a 15 out of 25 (60%)... "But, I'm an A student! You're grading us too hard and expecting too much of us! This is just ridiculous..."
Which is what brings me to the point of this part of my rant... When we make the "A" the standard for our education system (see my previous post for more on that...), we not only discourage a sizable chunk of our student population, but we artificially puff up the kids on the other end of the spectrum... We tell them that they deserve their high grades and that their grades are an integral part of their personal worth. We give them the expectation that they will always get high grades, and that the school system will always work with them to help them maintain their high potential.
However, there are other factors at play and systems at work when it comes to "raising the standards" in our school system. Federal mandates for visible proof of student achievement (no, I'm not going to even start in on NCLB... way too much ink and way too many pixels have been spent on that whole hornet's next for me to add anything worthwhile... :-/) have led to a simplifying of skills and information so that more students will be able to grasp the fundamentals of a wide range of topics and perform more consistently on state tests. This simplifying of skills to reach the majority of students makes it easier for the already advanced students to get A's... which gives them the impression that school is always going to be easy for them because they are naturally smart.
Mixed-ability grouping continues that process, since advanced students in a class often are rewarded with extra free time in class to read, work on projects, or visit while the teacher works with students who need additional help to grasp new concepts; the "smart" kids see that their classmates are still struggling and they assume that there must be something lacking in other children because they don't "get" something as simple as adding fractions, or writing a paragraph, or reading a short story for examples of irony. And then the teachers come up with the brilliant idea of having the "fast" learners tutor the "slow" learners as a way of building community... which gives the "smart" kids the chance to demonstrate to their tutorees just how inferior they really are and how much harder their life is going to be because they have to work for something that "should" come so easily... And the chasm grows ever wider.
By the time kids reach middle school, mixed-ability groupings are discarded (which really makes one wonder about the long-term benefits of such groupings, but anyway...) and all students are tested for placement into the classes that will pretty much determine their high school careers. The kids who struggle are placed into the basic skills classes, and the kids who excel (many of whom have been excelling from the start for a wide variety of reasons) are placed into Honors classes, where they gain the foundational skills to help them in high school AP classes.
However, for a lot of these kids, Honors classes give them their first experience with struggling. All of a sudden, they're not getting the easy A's anymore, and when they start bringing home B's and C's, it shakes their self-confidence and their sense of who they are. Maybe they're not naturally smart... maybe they're just like everyone else after all.
Or maybe the class is too hard. Or maybe the teacher just hates them. After all, teachers hate smart kids, right? Because it's the smart kids who don't just buy mindlessly into whatever the teacher says, and who will stand up for the rights of all of the other kids who are being discriminated against by big, mean, evil teachers around the world... or so my daughter's middle school friends would have me believe, anyway ;-) The B's, the C's, the D's... they're all there just because the teacher didn't agree with what the student wrote. The Missing Work Notices are only because the teacher forgot to tell the class that the assignment was due the next day... and the kids who got theirs turned in on time only did so because they're the teacher's favorites and they always turn their work in early anyway. And the whole "only-giving-half-credit for late assignments" deal? "Well, if these stupid teachers would just realize that students have lives too, then they wouldn't be so picky about an extra day or two... I mean, in the big picture, who really cares if I turn it in on Friday or on Monday? The teachers should be grateful that I gave them a little extra time to enjoy their weekend before having to grade my paper... but noooooo, they only want to give me 50% so that they can feel in control! How unfair is that? I mean, I am an A student, after all..."
And then the report cards go home... and the parents hit the warpath. Some crack down on their "lazy teenagers", grounding them or confiscating the iPhones until their grades improve. Others demand to speak with the teacher and threaten to go to the District Superintendent if something isn't done to "rein in" this control freak behavior and put an immediate end to the age/gender/cultural/socio-economic discrimination. And quite often, if the grades don't rise, the students find themselves in "regular" classes the next semester, where they very quickly regain their status as "A" students and return to their happy, bubbly, "smart" selves.
For a lot of kids, this continues throughout high school; they graduate from 4 years of classes that aren't too hard with 4.0 GPAs and are accepted to the universities of their choice... where they crash headfirst into The Real World of university professors who don't really give a rat's patooty what grades they got in high school and who actually hold them accountable for studying-- on their own time-- the material assigned in class o_O Now, maybe I'm just seeing one small sliver of life on this topic... after all, I am in a major of study that has been labeled as "the nation's easiest college major", so maybe we get a LOT of these kinds of students. But still, I wonder if this isn't yet another side-effect of our current public school system :-/
What if we began grading students not on whether or not they meet the minimum requirements on assignments, but on how far beyond the minimum they choose to go? In other words, instead of giving a 100% to all students who met the baseline requirements, what if we gave 50% for meeting the minimum and then additional points for how far above and beyond they went? Granted, this wouldn't work for multiple-choice exams, but maybe we shouldn't be using multiple choice exams as our main form of assessment anyway.
What if we began expecting more of our students-- not just our strugglers-- to actually work hard to earn their grades? Honestly, the only way I see this working is if we go back to ability grouping at the elementary school level, where kids who need additional help are grouped together and given the assistance they need to catch up and kids who are advanced are either moved up a grade or given more challenging work to do so that they too can learn to work hard and achieve more. And by more challenging, I don't mean just more worksheets or longer books... I mean figuring out new ways to them to use what they already know and to move on to the next level of a subject when they are ready.
Some will say that this second change would be damaging to children's self-esteem. I would answer that by stating the obvious: children who struggle in a mixed-ability class are not blind to the fact that they are struggling, and this is also damaging to their self-esteem. It may even be more damaging, because the kids to whom they (and, sadly, their teachers and parents as well) are comparing themselves are often so far above the benchmark that even the average learners in a class feel inferior and incompetent by comparison.
But then again, this entire argument rests on the foundational assumption that students' self-esteem should be based upon their academic achievement... and maybe that's the gravest error of all in the whole system. What if we could find ways to tell all of our students that they are valuable and precious no matter what grades they get or how they score on their tests? What if we as teachers, as parents, and as friends constantly strove to reassure the kids in our lives that we love them no matter what, and that those letters at the top of the page are nothing more than a snapshot of a fragment of their lives?
The song I'm ending with here is a (relatively) old one called "Stupid Kid" from Caedmon's Call... It may take a little bit to find a YouTube video for it (no luck so far :-/), but I will add a link if I find it :-) Until then, here are the lyrics...
I think this place is swell
There’s much familiar here
I get my laundry done
And I get home-cooked meals
And when I’m feeling tired
I can turn off all the lights
Ignore the knocking on the door
Pretend I’m not alive
Daddy, it’s Saturday
And I don’t want to go outside
And mow the grass today
So, would you love me just as much
If I was just your stupid kid?
Would you love me just as much
If I was just your stupid kid?
They tell me that I’m bright
Sometimes I think they’re right
But I guess I’ll never know
‘Cause I won’t go outside
Some days it’s just so hot
And others it’s so cold
Too much exposure to the sun
Would just make me look old
Daddy, it’s Saturday
And I don’t want to go outside
And mow the grass today
So, would you love me just as much
If I was just your stupid kid?
Would you love me just as much
If I was just your stupid kid?
Well, isn’t this Saturday?
It sure feels like Saturday
So, wake me Saturday
Daddy, it’s Saturday...
And my mind wanders off
To things I’ve never seen
Are these walls higher than the cost
Of opportunity?
'Cause I’m too big for my bed
And I’ve outgrown my shoes
But my fear of leaving
Is the one thing I just can’t lose
Daddy, it’s Saturday
And I don’t want to go outside
And mow the grass today
So, would you love me just as much...
If I never got a job?
If I never left your house?
Would I be of use to you
If I never amounted to much more
Than just your stupid kid?
So, would I love me just as much
If I was just your stupid kid?
UPDATE (8/2/2011): OK, so here's a video for the song so you can all sing along... Just kidding, no singing necessary-- I figure if I can't carry a tune in a bucket, I have no right expecting anyone else to either :-D
Saturday, June 4, 2011
"But I'm an A student...!" -- Part 1
About a week ago or so, I had a couple of conversations with a couple of different friends about their kids and those kids' recent experiences in school... which got me thinking (once again) about the way we've set up our school system. Or more specifically, about what we've turned it into over the past few generations...
A little bit of context before I jump up onto my soapbox...
One of my friends posted on a major social networking site, in frustration, about how her son came home with D's and F's on his most recent report card... after multiple emails, phone calls, conferences, and whatnot about how he's perfectly capable of getting As and Bs but just doesn't seem to care. I know this kid, and he's not a dumb kid in any sense of the word... granted, there are days when he'd forget his head if it wasn't attached, but hey, we all have days like that, right? Having been that kind of student at points in my own life, I tried to be encouraging: middle school's not all THAT big of a deal, and even if this kind of thing continues into high school, it's not the end of the world, etcetera etcetera.
Later that day, I ran into another friend at the grocery store, and we started talking about her first grader, who is in the middle of the IEP process at the elementary school he and my younger son both attend; because he struggles with behavioral issues and decoding skills, his teachers get frustrated with him because he has trouble completing his work in the same time frame as his classmates... even though he can talk circles around them and demonstrate his understanding of the concepts just fine. The usual first impression that teachers, specialists, and other kids seem to have is that my friend's son is a "slow learner"; once the IEP process is finished and he starts receiving special education services, this may serve to reinforce this misconception.
OK, so this is probably the point at which I start soapboxing... consider yourselves warned :-)
For those who don't already know, I'm an elementary education major, with one more year left until I graduate and apply for my Initial Teaching License. Before I transferred to my current school, I was working towards an Associate's Degree in Paraeducation, with an emphasis on Special Education; in my days of running a day care center, I worked with several students designated by the school system as having "special needs", ranging from ADHD to ODD (Oppositional-Defiant Disorder) to PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). The kids I know with these alphabet-soup labels are actually the reason I wanted to become a Special Ed teacher in the first place; these kids are people, not disorders.
Which is in part the whole reason for this post.
Where along the road of American Education did we get the idea that the "A student" is the standard, the ideal? Why do we beat ourselves up whenever our kids don't get straight As, or when they're diagnosed with learning disabilities, or when their test scores come back placing them in the 50th or 60th percentiles instead of the 90th or 98th? Why, when our kids start failing things at school, do we automatically assume that there's something wrong with them, something broken that needs to be fixed?
Maybe the problem isn't them at all... Maybe it's us.
Our schools and our educational system are designed for maximum instructional efficiency... How can we educate the largest number of kids in the most effective way possible so that as many kids as possible score at or above the minimum required benchmarks? We seek to streamline our educational practices so that we can fit more information into a shrinking amount of time (as more and more districts cut school days to keep their budgets in the black), and then we worry and fret about whether or not they will get enough of the answers right on our state's standardized tests for us to keep our jobs. We align our curriculum and our daily lessons with our state's Dept. of Ed. standards, and make sure to cover the items that we just know are going to be on the upcoming OAKS (or ITBS, or CTBS, or whatever they call them in your state) tests. We focus on getting as many of our students as possible to Benchmark, and then hope that someone later on will have the freedom to teach them how to postulate, how to ponder, how to seek, and how to discover.
And then we wonder why some of our students don't seem to be "getting it", and why others don't seem to care. We wonder why our middle schoolers agree via Facebook that school is boring, and that it's a waste of time that they can't wait to leave. We wonder why the drop-out rates don't seem to be dropping, even with all the Positive Behavioral Supports, effort incentives, extra privileges, and other bribery systems we've put into place for motivation. We wonder at the fact that the diagnosis rates for specific learning disabilities are skyrocketing, and why ADHD is diagnosed 3 times more often in boys than in girls. We wonder at the increasing violence in our middle and high schools, and we wonder why our anti-bullying programs don't seem to be making a difference. And we wonder at the rising numbers of teen and young adult suicides, especially among those diagnosed with learning or behavioral disabilities.
What if the problem is that, by aiming our instruction and our behavior management plans at the 68% of students in the middle of the bell curve, we have created an environment where the other 32% of our students are allowed to fall by the wayside? In a classroom of 30 students, that means we accept that at least 3 out of every 10 of our students-- at least 9 out of our whole class-- are going to fall short of the mark in some way... and we consider that to be an acceptable casualty rate.
Who are these 9 students that we're not aiming for? Maybe they're the kids who already know the material we're teaching, or who learn it quicker than most students, and they're the ones sitting at their desks bored and looking for trouble. Maybe they're the kids who, no matter how hard they try to focus and make sense of our teaching, just don't understand what we're talking about. Maybe they're the kids who have so much other stuff going on in their lives outside of the classroom that our exciting new lesson on phonics or slope-intercept form just really isn't all that important to them.
Does any of this make them stupid, or disabled, or defective, or broken?
We and our multi-billion dollar educational system seem to keep telling them that it does.
When kids start pulling in Ds and Fs, the first thing we do is try and encourage the kids with incentive systems such as Friday Fun Day or punish them by keeping them in from recess. When that doesn't work, we call in the parents for a conference, where we ask them to tell us what is wrong with their child that keeps him from doing his work (and where we surreptitiously watch to see if the problem is perhaps with the parents instead of the child). When that still doesn't work, we (and/or the child's parents) lecture the kid about how they're throwing their future away, and how when they get into "the real world" (as if their own world is somehow imaginary or something...), they'll find out how important slope-intercept form, the Pythagorean theorem, and the life cycle of a frog really are. When all our impassioned lectures, our wheedling, our nagging, and our screaming doesn't work, we sigh and shrug and either place them into a lower skill group (where maybe they won't mind doing the work as much because it will be easier), or else refer them for Special Ed evaluation in the hopes that someone, somewhere will be able to figure out what to do with them.
The key problem with this whole scenario? It focuses on the kid (and the parents, if we're feeling particularly generous that year) as the source of the problem. It never stops to consider that maybe we-- our classrooms, our schools, our districts, and our American public school system as a whole-- are contributing factors to our students' struggles.
What if our students aren't motivated to turn in their worksheets and comprehension questions because they don't see the point in jumping through hoops to prove to us what they already know? What if they don't see why they need to learn slope-intercept form when their graphing calculator and computer can do the work for them? What if the reason that their homework isn't done and their library books keep disappearing is because they were stuck riding around in the car all afternoon while their parents are turning in job applications or babysitting their younger siblings all evening so that their parents can work and pay the bills? What if they're tuning out because we're teaching on something they already know or because we've lost their interest 7 minutes into the 15 minute lesson?
I guess my point here is that maybe, when our students aren't performing (which may be the most accurate word for the process in this whole blog post) to our expectations, we should first look to see if the problem is something we can fix before relegating the student to our academic Island of Misfit Toys. Perhaps by telling students that their academic problems are something broken in them that they need to fix to earn our approval, we have created the monsters that we identify as the biggest problems in the public school system today.
But then again, there's the other side of the story... which, considering the length of this post already, I think I'll post another day. I'm sure there's enough here to tick enough people off for one day :-)
I like to include at least one song in each of my posts... a bit of a shout-out to those of us (not me, unfortunately) who are musically inclined, I guess. The only song I can think of at the moment that even remotely applies to the topic is this one, but hey, it's Switchfoot, so it works if for no other reason than that :-)
A little bit of context before I jump up onto my soapbox...
One of my friends posted on a major social networking site, in frustration, about how her son came home with D's and F's on his most recent report card... after multiple emails, phone calls, conferences, and whatnot about how he's perfectly capable of getting As and Bs but just doesn't seem to care. I know this kid, and he's not a dumb kid in any sense of the word... granted, there are days when he'd forget his head if it wasn't attached, but hey, we all have days like that, right? Having been that kind of student at points in my own life, I tried to be encouraging: middle school's not all THAT big of a deal, and even if this kind of thing continues into high school, it's not the end of the world, etcetera etcetera.
Later that day, I ran into another friend at the grocery store, and we started talking about her first grader, who is in the middle of the IEP process at the elementary school he and my younger son both attend; because he struggles with behavioral issues and decoding skills, his teachers get frustrated with him because he has trouble completing his work in the same time frame as his classmates... even though he can talk circles around them and demonstrate his understanding of the concepts just fine. The usual first impression that teachers, specialists, and other kids seem to have is that my friend's son is a "slow learner"; once the IEP process is finished and he starts receiving special education services, this may serve to reinforce this misconception.
OK, so this is probably the point at which I start soapboxing... consider yourselves warned :-)
For those who don't already know, I'm an elementary education major, with one more year left until I graduate and apply for my Initial Teaching License. Before I transferred to my current school, I was working towards an Associate's Degree in Paraeducation, with an emphasis on Special Education; in my days of running a day care center, I worked with several students designated by the school system as having "special needs", ranging from ADHD to ODD (Oppositional-Defiant Disorder) to PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). The kids I know with these alphabet-soup labels are actually the reason I wanted to become a Special Ed teacher in the first place; these kids are people, not disorders.
Which is in part the whole reason for this post.
Where along the road of American Education did we get the idea that the "A student" is the standard, the ideal? Why do we beat ourselves up whenever our kids don't get straight As, or when they're diagnosed with learning disabilities, or when their test scores come back placing them in the 50th or 60th percentiles instead of the 90th or 98th? Why, when our kids start failing things at school, do we automatically assume that there's something wrong with them, something broken that needs to be fixed?
Maybe the problem isn't them at all... Maybe it's us.
Our schools and our educational system are designed for maximum instructional efficiency... How can we educate the largest number of kids in the most effective way possible so that as many kids as possible score at or above the minimum required benchmarks? We seek to streamline our educational practices so that we can fit more information into a shrinking amount of time (as more and more districts cut school days to keep their budgets in the black), and then we worry and fret about whether or not they will get enough of the answers right on our state's standardized tests for us to keep our jobs. We align our curriculum and our daily lessons with our state's Dept. of Ed. standards, and make sure to cover the items that we just know are going to be on the upcoming OAKS (or ITBS, or CTBS, or whatever they call them in your state) tests. We focus on getting as many of our students as possible to Benchmark, and then hope that someone later on will have the freedom to teach them how to postulate, how to ponder, how to seek, and how to discover.
And then we wonder why some of our students don't seem to be "getting it", and why others don't seem to care. We wonder why our middle schoolers agree via Facebook that school is boring, and that it's a waste of time that they can't wait to leave. We wonder why the drop-out rates don't seem to be dropping, even with all the Positive Behavioral Supports, effort incentives, extra privileges, and other bribery systems we've put into place for motivation. We wonder at the fact that the diagnosis rates for specific learning disabilities are skyrocketing, and why ADHD is diagnosed 3 times more often in boys than in girls. We wonder at the increasing violence in our middle and high schools, and we wonder why our anti-bullying programs don't seem to be making a difference. And we wonder at the rising numbers of teen and young adult suicides, especially among those diagnosed with learning or behavioral disabilities.
What if the problem is that, by aiming our instruction and our behavior management plans at the 68% of students in the middle of the bell curve, we have created an environment where the other 32% of our students are allowed to fall by the wayside? In a classroom of 30 students, that means we accept that at least 3 out of every 10 of our students-- at least 9 out of our whole class-- are going to fall short of the mark in some way... and we consider that to be an acceptable casualty rate.
Who are these 9 students that we're not aiming for? Maybe they're the kids who already know the material we're teaching, or who learn it quicker than most students, and they're the ones sitting at their desks bored and looking for trouble. Maybe they're the kids who, no matter how hard they try to focus and make sense of our teaching, just don't understand what we're talking about. Maybe they're the kids who have so much other stuff going on in their lives outside of the classroom that our exciting new lesson on phonics or slope-intercept form just really isn't all that important to them.
Does any of this make them stupid, or disabled, or defective, or broken?
We and our multi-billion dollar educational system seem to keep telling them that it does.
When kids start pulling in Ds and Fs, the first thing we do is try and encourage the kids with incentive systems such as Friday Fun Day or punish them by keeping them in from recess. When that doesn't work, we call in the parents for a conference, where we ask them to tell us what is wrong with their child that keeps him from doing his work (and where we surreptitiously watch to see if the problem is perhaps with the parents instead of the child). When that still doesn't work, we (and/or the child's parents) lecture the kid about how they're throwing their future away, and how when they get into "the real world" (as if their own world is somehow imaginary or something...), they'll find out how important slope-intercept form, the Pythagorean theorem, and the life cycle of a frog really are. When all our impassioned lectures, our wheedling, our nagging, and our screaming doesn't work, we sigh and shrug and either place them into a lower skill group (where maybe they won't mind doing the work as much because it will be easier), or else refer them for Special Ed evaluation in the hopes that someone, somewhere will be able to figure out what to do with them.
The key problem with this whole scenario? It focuses on the kid (and the parents, if we're feeling particularly generous that year) as the source of the problem. It never stops to consider that maybe we-- our classrooms, our schools, our districts, and our American public school system as a whole-- are contributing factors to our students' struggles.
What if our students aren't motivated to turn in their worksheets and comprehension questions because they don't see the point in jumping through hoops to prove to us what they already know? What if they don't see why they need to learn slope-intercept form when their graphing calculator and computer can do the work for them? What if the reason that their homework isn't done and their library books keep disappearing is because they were stuck riding around in the car all afternoon while their parents are turning in job applications or babysitting their younger siblings all evening so that their parents can work and pay the bills? What if they're tuning out because we're teaching on something they already know or because we've lost their interest 7 minutes into the 15 minute lesson?
I guess my point here is that maybe, when our students aren't performing (which may be the most accurate word for the process in this whole blog post) to our expectations, we should first look to see if the problem is something we can fix before relegating the student to our academic Island of Misfit Toys. Perhaps by telling students that their academic problems are something broken in them that they need to fix to earn our approval, we have created the monsters that we identify as the biggest problems in the public school system today.
But then again, there's the other side of the story... which, considering the length of this post already, I think I'll post another day. I'm sure there's enough here to tick enough people off for one day :-)
I like to include at least one song in each of my posts... a bit of a shout-out to those of us (not me, unfortunately) who are musically inclined, I guess. The only song I can think of at the moment that even remotely applies to the topic is this one, but hey, it's Switchfoot, so it works if for no other reason than that :-)
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