This being pre-NCLB-centered education, what went on in the various classrooms was not as coordinated as it is today. Some teachers regularly covered more material than others, and the work load and expectations were certainly not standard within the school. Ms. Miller pushed her students harder than nearly any other teacher in the school and her popularity suffered as a result. As I remember, she didn’t really care – she was very confident she was doing the right thing.

For many of the honors students in her class, this was the first time we were challenged. Our “excellence” had allowed us to coast through classes with high floors for a long time, but here we were challenged. Sentences had to have context clues showing you knew the meaning of the work. Books used for book reports had to be above grade level. Spelling and handwriting had to be reflective of the bright students we were.

I hated it, and I rebelled in the most passive way possible. Nearly every day, about 10 minutes before English class, I would go to the nurse and complain of feeling “fluish”. This went on for several months. Sometimes I’d just rest in the nurses office, sometimes I’d go home. But I wasn’t going to English class.

Go me. Good job earning my first D! I really showed Ms. Miller, huh?

In hindsight, someone should have intervened. I should have been challenged by the nurse or a guidance counselor. Ms. Miller did have an “I know what you’re doing here” conversation with me once, but being enemy #1, I just dismissed what she said. But I never forgot it.

Nor, did I forget the things she taught me.

My son has never had a “Ms. Miller.” Some of his previous teachers have shown flashes of Ms. Miller’s values, but the heterogeneous grouping of students in his classes, overly generous classification of “honors students”, emphasis on high-stakes test scores, standards based reports cards, and grade-level wide uniform lesson planning have inhibited their efforts to emphasize spelling and hold high expectations.

So it has fallen to me to impart the lessons I learned (despite my best efforts to ignore them) from Ms. Miller. I stress the importance of good spelling in assignments where spelling mistakes will not be penalized. I encourage the construction of vocabulary sentences which allow the reader to discern the meaning of the word from context clues. I recommend reading accelerated reading choices which have been around since the 70s over the latest Judy Moody book. And I encourage my son to always do his best, even when a lazy effort will be considered among the top showings.

Like Ms. Miller’s lessons, these messages are not always popular with my son. And, like Ms. Miller I’m content with that. I do wish that he was hearing it in school and I could be in the role of reinforcing the ideas instead of seeming to add to the workload, but I’m confident it’s the right thing.

I never thanked Ms. Miller for what she did. I never apologized either… I was too young and immature to realize how wrong I was and how right she was. But she WAS right, and I’m happy to be in a position where I can help my son excel by sharing the things she taught me.

Her father and I did all we could to prepare her: clothes, school supplies, some summer “school work”, a number of talks about boys, peer pressure, “mean girls” and more. We made it a point to watch some of the classic coming of age films with her and discuss the fact and fiction components of it all, but one thing we couldn’t really prepare her for was the expectations that would be put upon her by her new teachers.

My husband and I lamented the hand-holding and low expectations we saw in elementary school and have long worried about our daughter’s ability to adjust to the higher expectations she’d face in Grade 7. I’m not simply talking about more homework and a faster pace, I am referring to the changing of classes, the start of note taking, and the like.

This week we have found that our fears were well founded. After only 2 days of school, my daughter is already feeling overwhelmed and unprepared. She has yet to come up with a notebook/folder system that will accommodate her schedule. Half of the school supplies we bought are the “wrong ones” (although they are very mainstream items). And, I can’t help but wonder if this could have been avoided by two things.

1) An orientation day for new students. Our district does not bring the Grade 7 students into the middle school until the first day of school. Aside from a schedule and bus information, we received no “heads up” about what would be needed or expected during the first week of school. My understanding is that many other towns hold orientations. And our local high school does too. But, the middle school is treated as just another grade.

This would be fine if it weren’t for the disappointingly low expectations of the Grade 5 and Grade 6 teachers in our district. After watching my daughter breeze through Grades 1 – 6, I can’t help but lament the time wasted and opportunities missed to better prepare her for middle school and to have taught her more.

2) Being a student in Grades 5 and 6 should be treated less like a significant accomplishment deserving of reward and special treatment, and more like a transition period with high standards and a curriculum more like what students will see in Grades 7 – 12.

My daughter will adjust as she always does. But it pains me to see her struggle and frustrates me to know it’s an unnecessary headache for her. She should have been better prepared by her school, but the sad thing is that her elementary school and middle school won’t even compare notes so her fate is destined to be suffered by many future classes of students, just as it has been for many in the past.

The topics include menstruation, malaria, smoking, drug abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases. Most Perspectives readers will have seen “Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land” before, but the other 5 may be new to you.

Now, as un-Disney as these videos may seem, we are sure that at the time they seemed completely appropriate. Disney was (and still is) a trusted source of entertainment for children. Educational films were quite common through the late 70s, and Disney’s animation studios is one of the more respected production houses.  The videos may be made by disney, but they are generally mature and serious in tone, and it is certainly easy to see why someone would feel like producing, purchasing, or sharing these would be a good idea.

Like the actor who made zit cream commercials before becoming an action hero or the rapper who was class president back in the sixth grade, Disney has these videos in their past.

Are they not what we’d expect from Disney today?  Sure. Are they a bit odd, of course… but, no more so than those big bow ties and strange hair cuts from the 50s.

Check out the article at io9.com when you have a chance.

http://io9.com/5830596/dwarves-vs-malaria-and-cartoon-menstruation-the-weirdest-disney-educational-films

• 4 of the 13 families are done with their back to school shopping
• 6 of the 13 famlies have begun shopping but are not finished yet
• 3 of the 13 famlies have not begun shopping for school supplies at all
• 5 of the 13 have not yet received a formal “supply list”, and 4 of those 5 have begun shopping already.
• 10 of the 13 famlies expect to spend more money on school supplies than last year, even though 8 of the 13 plan to buy less items and/or reusue items purchased in past years.

What are your family’s shopping habits?  Do your children reuse most supplies? Do you shop at a single store? Do you use a school issued supply list?

Please share your thoughts below.

• 5 of the 7 parents said their children were assinged summer work by their local school district.
• 4 of  those 5 said they felt the schoosl’ assignments were poorly designed.
• 3 of the 5 called the schools’ assignments “not worthwhile”.
• Only 1 of the 7 parents said they planned to have their students do any formal academic work beyond the summer assignments given by their local school district.

Apparently families are not buying into the “use it or lose it” mantra when it comes to academics.

Unfortunately, there is little consequence for taking the summer “off” or not coming into school at your peak form. Most schools spend quite a bit of time shaking the rust off, and all it takes is a small group of unprepared students to hold the whole class back.

Educators we spoke to mentioned concerns about trying to enforce summer work, and several said they were required by their districts to provide an adequate amount of September time for students to complete any required summer work.  Still others say they are told not to grade the quality of the work, only whether it is completed or not.

We wrote earlier about the wasted time at the end of the school year. Here too, we are seeing a chance to improve student understanding and achievement that is not being well utilized.

There has to be a better way.

What were your experiences with summer work?  Please share your thoughts below.

Next year’s class lists are all set, pending the results of state examinations. Barring any surprises, I could tell you who will be in my classroom, who will be in the accelerated pull out, and who has been tagged as a risk to our district’s funding. Not surprisingly, the groupings are the same as they were last year. In fact, we began the process of dividing the student body into groups for the 2011-2012 school year as early as February.

To an extent, this makes sense. Students who perform at a particular level relative to the peers tend to do so month to month and year to year, with little deviation. But, I’ve spent the last two months wondering if that’s a direct result of the expectations we have for them.

The sad truth is that the students who are identified as low achievers in our district, will carry that tag regardless of the grades on their report cards or test scores. High classroom grades are informally perceived as the result of low expectations or soft grading on the part of the teacher. Possibly the student will receive credit for being the best of a sorry lot. But, even if the student were to earn a perfect score on the state test, she won’t be moved into an honors class. She was tagged back in Grade 2, and this will be her label thoughout her schooling. The best she can do is move up to “college prep”.

On the other hand, honors students with the parents who pushed to get them into the gifted program had better watch out. Our guidance team will comb over each of their report cards and test scores, looking for an excuse to drop them into the mainstream track. This strengthens the middle and culls the weak from the advanced class. As it is, 28% of our sixth grade students were in what are considered advanced classes. That’s four sections of Mathematics and five of Language Arts. I guarantee you that there will only be 3 sections of each by the time they reach eighth grade.

Weighing most heavily on my mind this summer are some of the comments made about student placement in our second to last staff meeting. Our lead guidance counselor spoke openly of his resentment of parent pressures on scheduling decisions, effectively saying that the parents should stay out of the process. In this era of rubrics and selection indices, the teachers in my district believe more in a less transparent, more subjective system. We know who the good (and not-so-good) kids are, and from what I hear and see, it looks like we go with our guts over the rubrics more often than we should.

There’s something wrong about hoping your low achievers don’t score too highly on the state test and disrupt the schedules made mid-year. There’s something equally troubling about giving unequal attention to the performance of the student body.

I would call for you all to be more involved in and aware of you children’s placement processes, but I know too well the repercussions you’ll face: increased scrutiny of your chlid’s work and a negative label for your whole family. I’m certainly no saint, and I’ve resented the input of involved parents on more than one occasion, but that’s nothing compared to what I’ve seen go on behind closed doors.

So what’s the answer? Probably to take your lumps and advocate for your child. You just need to ensure that from that point on you and your child follow through. If you ask for extra opportunities, you had best seize them. If you request support, you had best make full use of it. There are countless eyes looking to use you as a means of deflecting all criticism leveled at the process.

Educator x has been teaching related arts classes at a mid-size, suburban middle school since 2002.

1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1-1+1+1+1+1+1+1×0 =?

As of noon PST on Tuesday June 14, the correct answer was NOt the most popular answer.

781,143 people believe the expression is equal to 0.

[These people are forgetting their order of operations. The 0 is multiplied by the final 1 and this takes place before any addition or subtraction.]

185,218 people belive the expression is equal to 16.

[These people are simply being careless and not noticing that there is a minus sign mixed in with the addition signs.]

34,805 people believe the expression is equal to 17.

[We can only assume these people miscounted the number of ones or counted all the digits. Either way, the answer is wrong.]

Only 663,922 people (barely 40% of the sample) would make their math teachers proud because they recognize the correct answer to be 14.

The most troubling part to us is the fact that the question is treated as an opinion problem as opposed to having a single correct answer.

• 6 of the 10 teachers said they had stopped recording new grades for their students by May 20
• 8 of the 10 teachers said they had stopped teaching new material by Memorial Day
• When given asked to identify the least academically productive month of the year, 10 of the 10 teachers chose “June”.
• 4 of the 10 teachers included comments in their responses saying they felt the wasted month(s) were justifiable because “it’s too hot to get anything done,” “the kids are shot,” “we covered everything anyway,” or “it’s always that way.”

If an employee spent 10% of his workday browsing the internet instead of working, he would likley be fired. If a store manager shirked her responsibilities every other Friday and let the employees just hang out and play instead of working, she would be fired. Why is our elementary education system allowed to waste 10% of the school year.

Add to this the time spent remediating weaknesses at the start of the next school year and you have to wonder what might be if time were used more efficiently in schools.

We recognize that recognition assemblies, field trips, spelling bees, science fairs, etc., have some educatoinal value; however, it would be difficult for any objective person to look at the difference in productivity during October and June and not question what more could be done.

What were your experiences with what goes on in schools during the final weeks of the year? Please share your thoughts below.

My daughter came armed with letters that Abigail had written to her husband in 1776:

“Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

Did the 1st Lady really threaten that there would be a rebellion against the government? Did she really state that the laws of the government do not apply to women if they don’t have a voice? This was the forefront of giving women a right to vote! How is that not exciting! Alas, to a 1st grader, receiving a penny from the Abe Lincoln character was more thrilling.
My daughter had to research what Adams would have worn, what her childhood was like, what made her famous, and what contributions she made to history. Not only did she need to complete an essay about Adams, but she also had to come up with a costume and be prepared to answer questions as if she was Adams. She even researched whether or not Adams spoke in an ‘English’ accent. This made learning exciting and it resonated with the 8th graders. I believe it hit the mark with the younger kids as well.
I have to give it up to the teacher for encouraging her class to get to know someone from our US history. Rather than simply teaching by the text book, taking the tests, or writing the occasional essay, this teacher recognized the opportunity for the kids to truly learn about an individual who made a difference in US history. I hope that other teachers can take note of this type of teaching – finding fun and unique ways of teaching our kids about those who helped shape this nation.

I would have liked to see the parade of US figures walking down the street today – “Abigail” was also accompanied by Susan B. Anthony, Abe Lincoln, George Washington, Betsy Ross, George Washington Carver, John Adams, Sacagawea, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others. That would have been a sight to see…

• 8 of the 9 parents said they feel they cannot help their child with their homework
• 0 of the 9 parents said they looked through their child’s math notebooks at least once a week

This troubles us to no end.

If your child is in an Algebra 1, Geometry, or Algebra 2 class, then they should have both a textbook and a set of class notes designed to illustrate how to solve homewok problems. Not to mention that the topics students learn in each of the three courses are progressive and build upon previously learned material, so any child who needs help on Day Q, should have an understanding of days A – P and those resources to help parents understand well enough to make a reasonable attempt at helping with homework. If this is not true, then the issue was allowed to fester too long.

We will run our unScientific study of parent conference comments in the coming weeks, but we will tease that “I can’t help my child with their homework anymore” and “I was never good in [Subject]” topped the list for high school instructors.

We are not suggesting that every adult needs to be at the top of their game in high school mathematics for the rest of their lives; however, they should certainly be able to read the child’s notes and skim the textbook and get the gist of it. Alas, none of the parents we surveyed regularly looked through their child’s math notebooks. As one staffer at J2 Content puts it “A notebook should read like a textbook. Teachers create lesson narratives that students are to either copy verbatim or take notes from. They are creating a resource. If a student cannot open to any page in their notebooks and explain to anyone [especially their parents] what is being illustrated there and describe the concept, then the child is not being an active participant in their education and that issue should be addressed immediately by the parent and teacher.”

What were your experiences with parents helping or being unable to help children with high school mathematics? Please share your thoughts below.