It’s Getting Ugly, Scary For Some (repost)
September 29, 2007 by Brian Crosby
INS agents raided all the McDonald’s in the greater Reno area Thursday and arrested numerous employees for being in the country illegally. At my school a number of parents came and removed their kids from school so that police would not come and get them – or so that the students wouldn’t go home and get picked up at their homes by waiting INS agents (a rumor being spread). At my daughter’s high school – announcements were made by administration asking for teachers to volunteer to spend the night at school so students whose parents were arrested would have a place to stay.
I wonder how many times “Sorry kids, but we can’t spend time discussing this, we have to be ready for the test.” will be uttered by teachers tomorrow?
UPDATE: I originally posted this on my blog, but thought it fit the theme here so I’m re-posting here on “In Practice” and adding to it. Since the original post there has been some fallout for the local economy and school district. Some workers have refused to return to work (even those here legally) and that forced some resturants and other businesses to open late. Some parents kept their kids home from school – none from my own classroom, but my school had about 30 students more than usual out. 2 of my students reported (and I didn’t ask, they came to me) that an uncle and cousin were part of those arrested and seemed concerned.
How much effect does something like this have on learning? Other world events, neighborhood events and events at home, can all leave students stressed, confused and otherwise not in their best “learning mode” at school.
How much responsibility and time should school spend dealing with issues like this? None, ignore it – what does this have to do with school, it happened outside of the school site? A quick explanation and statement of understanding, but now lets get to work? Use it as a “teachable moment” and mine the emotions involved to have students write, discuss, use oral language to talk about their views? Spend time counseling students … you’re not getting through to them if their stressed or angry anyhow … might as well do them some good?
What does your “practice” tell you is the right thing to do here?
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I think a discussion in the classroom has to take precedence over today’s lesson plan. I work in an inner-city district in Phoenix, so we are very familiar with the illegal-immigration issue. One of the more troubling factors is that the students were either born here or brought here when they were very young, but they are going to suffer sever consequences.
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I agree John … however 2 or 3 years ago and more if my principal had walked in and seen me taking time to discuss anything like this… I would have heard about it (an exception was 9/11 because the superintendent specifically told us to discuss it). I know teachers at certain schools in my district that have been specifically told by their principal NOT to discuss “current events” or get off the curriculum unless specifically told by them – “you can’t get through the pre-planned/timed curriculum if it is deviated from.” Guess which schools get/got that message? Um … not the non-Title 1 schools.
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Brian, at first when I read this, I thought (and still do) that you should discuss it. But when I read you saying that only curriculum related discussions are allowed in the classroom, I become all the more appreciative of the community and administration for the school I work in. I’d like to believe that we’d address an emotionally difficult situation that affected a big part of the school population. How can we hope to continue with business as usual, if kids feel threatened?
A lot of kids live through difficult things that we only learn about incidentally, and we do what we can to help them through their day. Because we know that they have to feel safe before they can focus on academics. If this situation is public, and everyone knows about it, how does that take it off the table? Maybe you could have a special meeting for the kids who are most directly impacted, during a recess break maybe, if the regular school time is really that closely monitored.
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Brian, I ran across issues with the curriculum being divorced from my students’ lives. There was one story in Open Court in particular that was long, and really didn’t work well the first year I taught it. It was about a great-grandmother remembering her dangerous journey out of Czarist Russia to escape the Jewish pogroms. It was a very long selection with lots of Yiddish vocabulary. It might have been the story of my great-grandmother, but it was hard bringing it to the kids. Last year (my second year with the story), I pre-taught asking them to think about their families’ experiences leaving to come to America or moving from one place to another. By the end of the week, they had one of the best discussions of the year. The African-American students were asking the rest of the class, did any of your families have to escape to or from somewhere like this? The Mexican American students shared stories about immediate family crossing the border to the U.S. The Hmong students about families leaving camps in Thailand, or the harrowing journey to Thailand. It was fantastic! When you are pre-teaching things like perseverance, cooperation and competition, heritage, or the other myriad themes that text books supply us with, ask the kids about their families. You’ll be on the standards, on the topic, and more importantly on topic with the students’ lives.
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Alice – Great story and point about pre-teaching practice.
Doug – I could, and have, and will discuss this with my students. My principal is very supportive of that … now. Some principals won’t and several years ago almost none would. The real issue is the curriculum being so full that for testing purposes you won’t get through everything if you take time like this because the curriculum is written like we have no interruptions or students that ask questions or want to find out more about something (hence programs like curriculum mapping) and they all master things according to the “Pacing Guide”.
Therefore some principals hold the line on any deviation, thinking that way their students will have the best opportunity to learn everything they were suppossed to (like the standards were designed that way … umm right).
Reality however rears its head. We’ve found in our experience that our primary grades held tight to no deviation for years (because they were under the very most pressure not to deviate from program), The downside of that is they stayed away from anything but reading and math … except where they could easily integrate them into the reading program without any time away from the program. The upshot has been that as our students get older, more and more of what they read and are tested about in their reading are the inferential and other kinds of questions that rely so heavily on students having schema for what they read.
HMMM … what are the “schema building” subjects that teach us about how the world works and what has happened before? Science, Social Studies, PE, Art … you guessed it the very things cut the most in primary grades and cut as much as they could force us to cut them in upper elementary grades. When you’ve NEVER played an organized game more than once or twice its hard to make connections with sports stories. When you don’t know much about history it is hard to get references to moments in history in a story. Throw in the language issues many kids have in Title schools – especially vocabulary – and you reap what you sowed.
Brian
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So, I’m looking at the units in Houghton Mifflin units for Fifth Grade (http://www.houghtonmifflinresources.com/), if you were on Nature’s Fury, you could discuss being at the mercy of elements vs. being at the mercy of others as a tie-in. With Give It All You’ve Got talk about why people come here and work so hard for so little. For One Land, Many Trails, how did your family get here? For Voices of the Revolution, how we become Americans now. Person to Person, what is your family story?
Discuss the THEME but use their lives. The discussion can also be based in higher level Bloom’s Questions (I had a great flip book of those questions). It’s the question strategies they are tested on, NOT the exact text they are reading, so if you have them asking/answering higher level questions with their own family stories, you’re on task.
See, I think with some of these text (as you’ve indicated earlier) we get stuck on the pacing guide and MASTERING the text. They are NEVER tested on state/federal tests on these text books. They are tested on concepts, and mastery of comprehension strategies.
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Great point Alice, yes. I think too, some get tied to the series because you can do what it says to do (it is district mandated afterall) and just fall into the rythmn of pre-reading activities, reading activities, post reading activities, etc. and say you are “doing the program” (which technically you are) so no one can say you’re not, AND you can prove it, and hopefully they will leave you alone.
Then with most of that planning and “thinking about it” burden removed you have time to think about and plan and create other lessons you feel are important (note I’m not saying to do that, but it is easy to do and frees up some time and relieves some stress so some go that way).
The only other issue is what if your principal or “literacy coach” or whatever demands you stick with the program as written? (we were initially told we would be checked on – uh not sure by who…the curriculum police? – to see that we were doing the program as written – some schools’ principals here expect to see materials and lesson from the program … anything else is “poor teaching”). Fortunately, that isn’t the case at my school for various reasons and because we made AYP … but we have to make that 10+% jump this year to make ayp next year …
Your point is well taken, do what’s best for kids, not what’s best for the curriculum pacing chart … or something like that.
Thanks,
Brian
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