The book about his work, Whatever It Takes, by Paul Tough has gotten a lot of press in a range of places. (I’ll link to some at the end of the post.) Tough spent a significant amount of time with Canada and in the various HCZ programs in the process of researching the book. He is an editor for the New York Times Magazine and has written quite a bit on education and on poverty. He knows his stuff.

The book follows the HCZ from fairly early stages through its first couple of years. You can find brief or detailed summaries in many other locations. Amazon’s page has quite a few readers’ reviews as well as brief interviews with Paul Tough and Geoffrey Canada.

NPR’s Fresh Air has an interview with both men from September of last year. It’s about half an hour long and quite powerful because Canada is passionate about his topic. At one point near the end he says, about children living in poverty, “We’re trying to save them in groups of twenty, or forty, or one hundred while we are losing them by the tens of thousands.”

He wants to save them by the tens of thousands and he has created his ‘conveyer belt’ to achieve that end. It begins with Baby College, designed for expectant parents through parents of two-year-olds. At three, there is another program for parents designed around the developmental needs of their children. At four, children will enter the Harlem Gems pre-school program followed by Promise Academy for kindergarten on. Obviously not all children will be able to benefit from all of this. However, Canada’s goal is to get children from the beginning and support them all the way through college.

He is aware that not all children in Harlem will be lucky enough to have their parents attend Baby College or they might not win the lottery to get into Promise Academy, a charter school. Canada’s expectation is that enough children and families will be participating in parts of the HCZ that it will ‘contaminate’ Harlem with its set of values. He expects to see attitudes towards learning and intelligence changing as a result of his work.

One aspect that fascinated me was Canada’s take on KIPP schools.

“If Canada’s model was one of contamination, in which positive ideas and practices spread within a family and throughout a neighborhood, the KIPP model sometimes seemed by contrast to be one of quarantine, walling off the most promising kids from a sick neighborhood’s contagion. As Canada often said, he was tired of programs that helped a few kids ‘beat the odds’ and make it out of the ghetto; his goal was to change the odds, and to do it for all of Harlem’s kids. The idea of success in the middle of Harlem’s ocean of failure – that felt entirely wrong to him.”

I think his work has many implications for schools serving students living in poverty. I have heard criticisms of him and his work in Harlem, but I have to admit, I am quite impressed. He made decisions during those first few years that I did not agree with, but typically they were decisions he did not want to make. Some decisions were made to ensure that the money kept coming in. He also puts significant weight on test scores. His reasoning is that the children in Harlem must be able to compete with middle-class children on standardized tests if they are going to get into colleges. While the focus on testing frustrates me, I am able to see his point.

Geoffrey Canada’s programs cost a lot of money. They require significant time and energy from a lot of people. However, I think that is what is necessary to create real change in the academically neediest areas. Investing in those areas is the only way those children have a fighting chance, on a grand scale. The book is definitely worth reading.

Links:
PRI’s This American Life episode narrated by Paul Tough This half hour segment gives the basics of the book and includes clips of events at the HCZ and interviews of involved individuals. The quote that most hit me referred to a young mom at Baby College, “For most middle class kids, the path that Taisha struggled to find is so straight and well paved that they barely even notice it’s there.”
Geoffrey Canada on The Colbert Report
Paul Tough’s website and blog
Harlem Children’s Zone’s website
Geoffrey Canada’s autobiography, Fist Stick Knife Gun, on Amazon

These benefits included a full-time, permanent substitute. This position made it possible for us to take advantage of professional development opportunities and have extra support in classrooms at times. We were required to choose a ‘research-based program’ to implement. My school chose literacy collaborative, which gained us a full-time, primary, literacy coach. This is also how we had the opportunity to move to the modified calendar.

All of this costs money. Some of it costs significant amounts of money. As a result there was griping from schools that were not identified about how we were getting special treatment. Which is true, we were.

Over time I sorted out my thinking as I justified the situation to teachers at other schools. My analogy became the idea of an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) for a school. In a traditional school district all schools receive the same resources. The only reason for any difference between schools results from the difference in population size.

The concept of treating all students the same way in education is outdated. Even without IEPs we modify lessons, work, and behavior plans for different students. We know that they don’t all require exactly the same thing in order to succeed. But we still seem to believe that all schools require the same support and resources. If we are truly going to meet the needs of all children we are going to have to move beyond this thinking. We must be more thoughtful about what our different schools need and what we can do to make it happen.

My school serves a population of students who have many needs; linguistic, financial, emotional, etc. Obviously, as a school we can’t fill in all these gaps. However, we do try to help out where we can. We offer English language classes to parents and other community members during the school day and in the evenings. Teachers have driven students to school for evening events and home afterward. Teachers or other staff members have driven students and/or parents to see a doctor, dentist, or mental health professional to help with paperwork, especially when there is no insurance.

I’m wondering about the role and limitation of the school. What should a school be doing? Where does it end?

Obviously, our responsibility is the education of the students. It is easy to simply draw a line that divides educational duties apart from everything else. I believe our students deserve better from us. I’m unwilling to abdicate responsibility simply because something is not clearly related to my educational duty. My students deserve every opportunity to be successful and sometimes that requires more from me or from my school.

But a school can’t be everything to everyone. At some point we can’t or shouldn’t be involved. Where is that line? Does the line differ at different schools? Should I be doing more at my Title I school than a teacher at a school in a middle-class neighborhood? How do we help students whose parents can’t or won’t care for them properly? What is the role of a school in our society?

My school started this program several years ago in order to keep our GT students from leaving to attend a center program at another school. The GT classes include students who qualify for the center program, the highest level of services, as well as students who qualify for school-based GT services and young scholars (talented students from underrepresented populations who show great potential). As a result, there is still a wide range of abilities and needs among my students.

That said, I have found that teaching this class has been eye opening for me. I believe that prior to this experience I held high expectations for my students and pushed them academically. And yet, these students have shown me how much more they are capable of doing.

In schools like mine, with lots of students living in poverty, lots of students who are learning English, lots of students who do not have much support at home, it is easy to focus on those students who are struggling and the effort to help them reach grade level expectations. It is easy to focus on the weaknesses and miss the strengths. Sadly, I think the emphasis on standardized testing has only increased this trend.

Teaching the GT class has shown me opportunities I missed with my students in the past. I have been willing to take risks with these two groups that intimidated me before. I have given them more freedom as learners and have been amazed. They have stretched themselves and pushed me as a teacher.

For years now I have been frustrated by hearing comments like, “My kids couldn’t possibly do that,” or “That’s way beyond my students.” Our students can’t do anything we don’t allow them the opportunity to try. We’ll never know how talented they might be if we continue to focus on what they can’t do.

I don’t want to suggest that we should ignore their needs. It is important that we continue to work as hard as possible to help all our students reach, and possibly exceed, grade level benchmarks. But the fact that they are performing below grade level in one or more areas shouldn’t mean that we restrict their access to higher level thinking activities, technology, collaboration, and other activities or tools we would want our own children to have.

On the down side, I just came face to face with one of the challenges of online activity. About half of my class spends time on a social-networking site (for which you have to be 13 to register; my students are not 13). One student received threatening messages through the site including references to a recent assault in our area and personal information. We suspected these messages came from another student at our school, but couldn’t be sure and turned the matter over to the police. The police did a fantastic job and traced the messages to the home of a student. Fortunately, we could rule out the possibility of a stranger lurking around the school and homes of students. Sadly, it means another fifth grader felt a need to anonymously terrify a classmate.

I teach in a title one school, I don’t expect most of my students to have consistent access to the internet. It’s clear to me that I have relied on that as a safety net. The majority of our students don’t have access at home. However, plenty do and we’ve done precious little to educate them about being safe online. In this instance, of which we are aware of the specifics, there wasn’t really any danger. But it did show me that they are online and in places they shouldn’t be. It seems I have a responsibility here.

Therein lies my question about it all. What is my responsibility? I consider myself to be fairly savvy about the online world, certainly more so than the parents of our students. I can, and will, teach my students more about internet safety. However, I think their parents need to be educated as well. If students have computers with internet access in their bedrooms or in basements isolated from the family, they will push the boundaries. Parents need to be watching, talking, and aware of their children’s activities. How do we help ensure that or at least promote it?

My student teaching experience was twelve or so weeks long, split between two different classrooms. In both classrooms I took over for a couple of weeks and taught independently. That was good. There was one other student teacher in the same school, but I don’t remember seeing her often, if at all. A supervisor from the college came out several times to observe and meet with me, but I had not known her before this.

The interns I work with now are in our building from day one. They spend the first semester in one classroom everyday, with the exception of Tuesdays when they are at the university for classes. They take over in that room for up to three weeks, depending on their comfort level and abilities. During the second semester they are in another classroom at a different grade level, again for four days each week. They teach in this classroom independently for four weeks. At the end of the year, they substitute throughout the building. A professor from the university is at our school once a week to observe and to lead seminars after school twice a month. She works with these interns in their university classes and they know her well. Also, there are four to six interns at our school each year. They have a built in support group.

I know this internship is intensive. They have work to do for their university classes and they are practically full time teachers as well. It’s a program that is post-undergraduate and lasts less than two years total. But at exit they are better prepared for their first year teaching than I could even have imagined. They have not only taught lessons and units as all student teachers have done; they’ve participated in all the other aspects that were such a shock to me my first year teaching. They’ve collected forms and money for field trips, they’ve attended staff meetings, team meetings, planning days, parent conferences and more, they’ve written newsletters, they’ve rearranged schedules for class pictures, assemblies, and fire drills. In short, they’ve been a teacher. It almost feels like an apprenticeship to me, which is probably what we need to prepare people.

In thinking about the reasons why this internship feels more useful and productive than my student teaching experience I’m left thinking about best practices with our students. We would never isolate our students as learners, as I felt isolated in a school. We wouldn’t send someone in to grade/assess them they did not know and had not had the opportunity to build a relationship with. In this instance I feel that we are doing well as teachers and that our schools of education could learn from the classrooms they send their students to.

However, sometimes we need help more quickly or from other individuals. I spent my lunch recently meeting with two other teachers. One of them, a Reading Recovery teacher, has a student that she is quite concerned about. She asked the other two of us to sit down with her and brainstorm. Due to the three different schedules, lunch was the only time we all had free anytime soon. So, while we ate lunch she described this first grade boy who is struggling in school. Her greatest concern about him is his lack of ability to persevere. He is unwilling to struggle through things and simply doesn’t try. Just the time spent talking and brainstorming helped her feel better about this. We didn’t solve his problems or find some perfect answer for her, but the collaboration gave her ideas to try, ways to go, and the chance to talk.

Another blogger wrote an analogy comparing education to the tv show house. She wants a team of experts working together to analyze students to try and determine causes for certain behaviors and strategies for improving achievement. After reading this post, a first-year teacher at my school sent out an email asking for such a ‘team of experts’ to help her. That afternoon five of us got together and listened to her concerns, asked her questions, and thought of new ways to help this student and teacher. Again, no big solution, but a lot of options and a chance to think aloud.

My school has a lot of students who face a wide range of challenges in their lives; poverty, families in turmoil, moving frequently, learning English, adapting to a new culture, and more. These students are working hard, are bright, and have a lot to offer. We, as a school and community, have a responsibility to work as hard for them as they are for themselves. It’s not something we can do alone. Collaboration, discussion, and debate all help us continue to find new ways to help our students.

Clued in now, I started really paying attention. It became clear that these students have plenty of books at home as well as access to a computer and the internet. Not so true for the majority of my students. Many, at this school, are involved in organized sports or other types of clubs. Again, not my students. These kids have traveled to DisneyWorld, Europe, and the Grand Canyon. My students have visited their home countries, if they are lucky. These two groups of students are living in different worlds just a few miles apart.

I often have sympathy for my students that they haven’t had the same sorts of opportunities as many children in our area. They often haven’t been to the Smithsonian museums, seen shows at the Kennedy Center, or visited the White House. I want those experiences for them.

On the other hand, my visit to this school helped me see how much my students do have. This class has twenty-seven students in it. I have nineteen. The teacher has an instructional assistant’s help during her math time. I co-teach reading with another teacher. In some years I’ve also co-taught math and writing. My students benefit from multiple teachers’ support and care. Our school provides books for our classroom libraries. This teacher has spent her own money to begin to create a library for her classroom. I have four computers in my classroom, this room had one.

My students often speak at least one language other than English. While their parents frequently work more than one job they spend a lot of time with them. My students know they are loved, at home and at school. Their lives have not been easy, but they are strong and wise beyond their years.

I know that I have painted with broad strokes here. Many of the wonderful things at my school (books, computers, so many teachers) result from teaching in a wealthy county and from innovative, smart principals. Many non-title 1 schools have lots of books and computers. Each school and school district has to set its own priorities.

My students face many educational challenges in their future. As their teacher, I will do everything I can to help them reach their goals and be successful. They may be starting from behind, but I have faith they can soar just as far. I wouldn’t trade working at a Title 1 school for anything.