Category: School Daze

The teachers at Katherine’s pre-school do something very, very strange.

Home visits.

I.e., before the school year starts, the teacher and her aide (and, in our case, a special ed teacher) actually travel to the home of each pupil and chat with the parents.

This is, actually, both really nifty and extremely self-interested. Nifty because it provides the teacher a chance to see the home environment, do some evaluation of the kid, introduce themselves to the kid on the kid’s own turf, etc.

Self-interested because it’s probably the only chance in hell of their actually meeting some of the parents. Trust me, I’ve been there.

Anyway, they came over yesterday afternoon, as we were finishing vacation prep. I’d gotten the living room cleaned up, so, of course, we ended up in the family room. There was her teacher, Miss Dana, as well as her speech therapist, and Miss Dana’s aide (who kept Katherine busy, and did some eval on her, while the rest of us talked).

Most of the talk was about school rules, and the program, and what they do, and solicitation to volunteer for snacks (which we did, and volunteered for extra snacks if some parents couldn’t/wouldn’t, which was greeted with repeated profound thanks). The speech therapist chatted with us about how we wanted to communicate, and I astonished her with the concept that e-mail would be even better than notes, and certainly better than phone calls.

Filed under “It’s a Small World,” it turns out that the speech therapist used to live, until a few years ago, a couple of houses down the street. Indeed, she once returned one of our cat collars which had been lost in her yard. We chatted a bit about neighbors and houses for sale in the area, etc., and she noted she needed to swing by some friends who she’d promised she’d visit during the summer, but hadn’t.

They were much impressed that we went from the furthest corner (literally) of the school district to the Village. We basked in the adulation.

The teacher mentioned that Katherine might end up picking up some Spanish, since there were some Spanish-speakers in her class. We noted that she enjoyed watching Dora the Explorer, and actually could count up to ten in Spanish. The next thing we knew, we could hear her doing so, and beyond. “She just counted to twelve in Spanish,” the aide announced.

She also impressed them by singing the sign language song she’d learned a couple of days before. With prompting, sure, but better than I could have done it.

“She’s going to be teaching the other kids,” Miss Dana speculated. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

The latest report from the Ed Biz is that red is out, purple is in.

“If you see a whole paper of red, it looks pretty frightening,” said Sharon Carlson, a health and physical education teacher at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Northampton. “Purple stands out, but it doesn’t look as scary as red.”
That’s the cue pen makers and office supply superstores say they have gotten from teachers as the $15 billion back-to-school retail season kicks off. They say focus groups and conversations with teachers have led them to conclude that a growing number of the nation’s educators are switching to purple, a color they perceive as “friendlier” than red.

Give. Me. A. Break.

The purpose of marking up papers is to identify errors and areas for improvement. Kids should be apprehensive if they see a lot of marks on there, and red is a hard-coded danger sign for humans, so that seems perfectly proper. Switching colors isn’t going to make kids feel better about poor grades — or themselves — nor should it.

A mix of red and blue, the color purple embodies red’s sense of authority but also blue’s association with serenity, making it a less negative and more constructive color for correcting student papers, color psychologists said. Purple calls attention to itself without being too aggressive. And because the color is linked to creativity and royalty, it is also more encouraging to students.
“The concept of purple as a replacement for red is a pretty good idea,” said Leatrice Eiseman, director of the Pantone Color Institute in Carlstadt, N.J., and author of five books on color. “You soften the blow of red. Red is a bit over-the-top in its aggression.”

I may scream. Really.

I have nothing against purple, really. But this really, truly reads like someone is making a good chunk o’ money off of it.

“I do not use red,” said Robin Slipakoff, who teaches second and third grades at Mirror Lake Elementary School in Plantation, Fla. “Red has a negative connotation, and we want to promote self-confidence. I like purple. I use purple a lot.”
Sheila Hanley, who teaches reading and writing to first- and second-graders at John F. Kennedy Elementary School in Randolph, said: “Red is definitely a no-no. But I don’t know if purple is in.”

I may invest in red pens. Really. I mean, if this is the top — or even a major — consideration among teachers, there’s something seriously wrong with the Ed Biz.

Red marks stand out. Red marks are visible. Red marks garner attention. Those are all good things. And if kids don’t want to see marks on their papers, pointing out areas for improvement — maybe they should be encouraged to do better on their papers, not change the colors to make the marks “friendlier.”

Red has other defenders. California high-school teacher Carol Jago, who has been working with students for more than 30 years, said she has no plans to stop using red. She said her students do not seem psychologically scarred by how she wields her pen. And if her students are mixing up “their,” “there,” and “they’re,” she wants to shock them into fixing the mistake.
“We need to be honest and forthright with students,” Jago said. “Red is honest, direct, and to the point. I’m sending the message, ‘I care about you enough to care how you present yourself to the outside world.’ ”

Amen, sister.

(via Joe Kelley)

As a legal principle, separate-but-equal died in the 50s and 60s. That’s because, particularly in the case of racial segregation, it was recognized that separate is, in fact, rarely equal. Whether racial desegregation of schools and the like accomplished everything that was desired, it was what needed doing.

Sexual segregation is a more problematic kettle of fish. The days are not so long gone when separation of genders, academically, was a cover for routing kids into gender-appropriate skills and careers — happy home-makers for women; athletes and scientists and businessmen for the guys. The gender desegregation of our classes, the Womens Lib movement, and the decline of single-sex institutions of higher learning have, in general, been seen as good things.

But there’s a lot of evidence out there that differences in maturation and in learning modalities between boys and girls makes gender-segregated classrooms a good idea, at least in terms of helping kids learn their academics. While there’s a strain of thought that wants to treat each gender as identical, that is, on the face of it, just plain erroneous — there are clear physical and biochemical differences between the genders (and vive le difference!), and to think that these play no cognitive role is politically correct but scientifically dubious.

Of course, the great danger is that the recognition of differences becomes overplayed — that we return to the days of believing that all women are best suited to keep house, or that all men are better as athletes and politicians and whatever. Recognizing differences doesn’t mean that the conclusions of such differences can be so sweepingly generalized, let alone understood.

All of which is a long introduction to an article on how public schools are finding that academic gender segregation is an interesting idea whose time may have come.

“Usually it’s the guys that distract all the whole class. They’re usually the class clowns,” said Kristielle, who entered the seventh grade last week. “With no guys in the school, I can know we will really get busy without much distraction.”
At least 11 single-sex public schools will open this fall in six states ? Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, South Carolina and Oregon. Advocates say separating the sexes can improve learning by easing the peer pressure that can lead to misbehavior as well as low self-esteem among girls.
[…] The number of U.S. public schools offering single-sex classes jumped from four to 140 in the past eight years, Sax said. At 36 of those schools, at least one grade will have only single-sex classes this year. Advocates said they expect the number to increase now that the U.S. Education Department has announced plans to change its enforcement of the landmark discrimination law Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in schools.

Of course, it’s possible to overstate such things.

“John Kerry, George W. Bush, his father and Al Gore all went to all-boys schools. We don’t think that’s a coincidence,” said Dr. Leonard Sax, a Maryland physician and psychologist who founded a nonprofit group that advocates single-sex public education. “We think single-sex education really empowers girls and boys from very diverse backgrounds to achieve.”

Depending on who you talk to, I’m not sure everyone would agree with all of the above folk as exemplars of the value of single-sex schools.

Some women’s groups and the American Civil Liberties Union say segregation of any kind is wrong. “We think segregation has historically always resulted in second-class citizens,” said Terry O’Neill, a National Organization for Women vice president.

And that’s a valid concern — though it’s a concern as to how the system might be abused rather than whether such schools actually work.

Sax said separating the sexes allows teachers and administrators to focus on the different ways boys and girls learn. Girls, he said, learn better in quiet classrooms and intimate schools where they are on a first-name basis with their teachers. Boys learn better when teachers challenge them to answer rapid-fire questions and address them by their last names.

One question would be whether such behavioral differences are cultural vs. biological. If the former, it might be better to try to correct the societal forces that lead to such behavioral differences. On the other hand, it may not be possible to tell, and if it improves academic learning, that’s the important thing — or is it?

Single-sex schools also reduce the pressure to preen for boyfriends or girlfriends, Sax said. “Single-sex schools, in ways that matter, are much more like the real world. Because unless you are a model or an actress, how you look is not the most important thing in your life,” Sax said.

I went to an all-boys high school for a year and a half. I don’t know that my academic education was any improved by the experience — though I suspect my social education was likely hampered. My sense is that while a single-sex education may reduce the opportunity for social mingling (and thus preening and other “unimportant” things), it has a distorting effect when you finally get the genders back together (“Look! Girls!”).

As to the “real world” similarities, I’m not sure that’s true. How one looks — dresses, etc. — is an important part of the business world, as is learning to deal with both genders equally. To that extent, separation only heightens the awareness of differences, and the assumptions one then makes about it. Is a man more likely to treat a woman as an equal when there’s been a state-sanctioned demonstration that they are not (regardless of whether different means better or not).

I dunno. I know that, already, Katherine plays differently with little boys vs little girls, though she plays well with both. I think either gender segregation in (some) schooling or integration in all has its benefits and drawbacks. It will be interesting to see what opportunities Katherine has in that, and what decisions we make about it.

Katherine, after the summer-school-ending-a-month-before-pre-school-begins hiatus, is back in the “extended care” (day care) at her school this week, largely due to (a) Margie absolutely needing to be in the office this week before we hie our ways hence to California, and (b) Margie’s office’s day care being full up.

Actually, it’s not a bad deal, since it gets her back warmed up for pre-school starting (ack!) next week. M-Th, 12:30-4 (with an extra half hour then back in the Rainbow Room until Daddy can break away from the office to pick her up).

Margie took her in this morning, as she will most days, and was jazzed that, when Katherine arrived, the Rainbow Room head adult pointed her out and a number of kids were enthused by her return. Huzzah! I always worry about her socialization and having friend and all that (project much, Dave?), and so seeing stuff like that makes me happy.

When I picked her up, she opined that today would be a good day to go to Starbucks. See, during her previous pre-school year, M and W, I would pick her up, and on Wednesdays we would go by the comic book store (a few blocks away) and the Starbucks (just down the strip mall from that).

Now that it’s going to be four days a week, I informed her that neither my wallet nor my waistline could endure Starbucks that often. Wednesdays are The Day for Starbucks (since that’s when comics are in).

We went downstairs, after I picked her up from the Rainbow Room, to peer into her new class, the Brown Room. She’s very excited over the whole prospect. So, frankly, are we, because, damn, not only is she continuing to grow like a weed, but her cognitive skills keep taking hitherto-undreamt-of permutations. Teach that girl to speak straight, and nothing will stop her — and I’m not 100% certain that’s a prerequisite.

Why are kids at a prestigious Connecticut private school so worried about the new version of the SAT and it’s essays? Not because of academic training, but because of lack of handwriting training.

At Greenwich Country Day, a prestigious Connecticut private school, computers have all but replaced pencil and paper. Typing instruction starts in second grade, and laptops are mandatory by seventh. Essays are typed, and often class notes are, too.
“As an adult in today’s work world, you don’t write anything,” said Carol Maoz, head of the upper school (grades 7-9), adding she couldn’t think of an occasion students would write out a longhand essay. “You type everything. There really is no need for proper handwriting.”
Maybe not — indeed, even notes get passed in class via text message these days.
But next spring, many of Country Day’s alumni, along with millions of other high school juniors, will have to write a very important, 25-minute longhand essay — as part of the new SAT. Nearly as many will write a new optional essay on the ACT.
The new tests are causing general anxiety for the high school class of 2006, guidance counselors report. And some students who think they’ll write a good essay are worried scorers won’t be able to decipher it, raising the question of whether penmanship should be getting more attention in the classroom.

Heh.

Perhaps we’ll hear complaints about how the new SAT discrimnates against rich (or at least technologically well-endowed) kids.

The obvious answer is to come up with a computer-based SAT, though that raises a whole different set of questions, so to speak.

Katherine had a tornado drill at her school today.

A tornado drill, ferchrisssakes! What kind of Bizarro World state do we live in these days? Everyone knows that duck-and-cover exercises are for Earthquakes and Nuclear Attacks, and that you do it under your desk, not out in the (interior) hallway!

What are they teaching our kids these days?

Tornadoes. Yeesh.

First day of it for Kitten, who seemed duly excited about the prospect. Much smaller class than her regular one. She’ll be going two full days a week, including “field trip” Thursday (starting off with a bang this week with a visit to the zoo).

The social contacts alone should be good for her, say I, as will the (informal) language training.

I’ll be doing more dropping off of her, I suspect, depending on how Margie’s in-the-office schedule works out. What’s interesting, of course, is how the Most Efficient Route from the office to the school at 4 p.m. is not necessarily the Most Efficient Route in reverse at 8:30 a.m.

Last day of school today for Kitten. Actually, yesterday was — she’s on a Monday/Wednesday schedule (two days a week are what’s paid for by her Special Ed situation), though her class is a Monday/Wednesday/Thursday one. The teacher, Miss Kim, let her attend today, since it was the last day of the school year, and they were having a party and a mini-petting zoo and the like.

Great fun. The classrooms at the Village are all color-coded (as opposed to numbered, and the hallways have big colored flags outside the doors to make it easy to find the rooms). Katherine’s in Orange Room, and Miss Kim got all the kids orange tie-dyed t-shirts.

Kitten also got to say good-bye (though she doesn’t realize it) to Miss Debbie, her speech therapist. She’s retiring this year, which is a real shame, because she was doing great with Katherine. Kitten still has significant speech glitches (and she knows it), but (I am told, since I’m too close to hear it) she’s improved quite a bit over the last several months.

Looking at this post, I wonder when teachers went to being addressed (even with titles) by first names. When I was in elementary school, the teachers who handed out our clay tablets and writing sticks were all addressed by last names — Mrs. Foth, Mrs. Mummy, Mrs. Sullivan, Mrs. Bogoshian, Mr. Clifton, Mr. Mays … Harumph. Kids these days …

(Of course, I referred to all of my parents’ friends by their last names, too, while Kitten is invited to call them all by first names — sometimes with “Uncle” or “Aunt” as the prefix. So it goes.)

She has next week off, then the following week her summer school schedule starts — two full days a week, I believe, Monday and Thursdays in the Rainbow Room. Then in the fall she goes in with a three-half-day schedule (with us ponying up for the third day, but it will be worth it). Slowly but surely our own schedule gets subsumed by hers …

Well, there’s good new … and irksome news.

Good news first. Parent-Teacher Conference this evening with both Katherine’s regular pre-school teacher (Ms. Kim) and her speech teacher (Ms. Debbie). Lots of praise for Katherine being a very clever and communicative girl. Great drawings. Excellent results on things like knowing her numbers and letters. Praise for being open and creative and polite and all those other things that parents want to hear.

Good news as well on the speech front. Katherine’s racked up some of her baseline goals, and is making progress on the others. It’s hard for Margie and I to see the improvement, sometimes, though it’s something that both family and friends have commented on. So all’s well there.

We have her enrolled in the summer school session there at the Village, which should be fun — interesting field trips and the like. The question (which is where we get into the irksome part) is what to do in the fall.

Currently she’s in school Monday and Wednesday 12:30-3:30, and in the “Rainbow Room” in-school day care for another hour until I pick her up. We both feel that she’d benefit being at school more — socially, as well as educationally. And, for consistency sake, we’re leaning toward having her be at pre-school M-F.

The problem is, that’s where we bump into our own work schedules. Margie’s only part-time, but she’s got definite meetings she needs to be in for during the month. Right now she can handle that by having Katherine in the on-site day care at her office for the day or two a week when she needs to be in all day. I can do some occasional telecommuting, but not much — an exception rather than a rule is the rule at my company.

So … if we have her in M-F in the afternoons, I can pick her up, but the dropping her off is problematic for Margie on some days. I can do that, if need be, but not necessarily all the time that’s needed. And taking her to Margie’s office in the mornings then swinging over to the preschool at Noon is a pain in the patootie.

Or we can do M-F in the morning, but that runs into most of Margie’s meetings, requiring her to drop Katherine off at the Rainbow Room earlier than she (Katherine) is wont to be awake.

Or we can do something like all-day Monday and Wednesday (or Tuesday and Thursday), with her in the Rainbow Room half day, in class the other half. Which is less predictable, a longer “day” for her, and no increase in the amount of actual classroom time.

No immediate answers were forthcoming, and we decided to sleep on it. An embarrassment of riches regarding options, to be sure, but we’re committed to finding a way of doing what we think best for Kitten, whatever that is.

Okay, I know that Shakespearean language and syntax can be kind of difficult. But I’m more than little leery of teaching him in translation to contemporary English.

On the one hand, yeah, the plot lines and characters are cool, cultural icons, important for kids to learn.

But there’s so much of the language, of contemporary phrases, that come from Shakespeare, even today, that losing that seems a crying shame.

I mean, “Beware of March 15” is perhaps clearer to understand, but as gripping prose, it seriously lacks something.

I’m glad, at least, that they are presenting it as parallel text (the original on one facing page, the updated on the other). My preference would be to focus on the former, using the latter as a back-up, but at least the original is there to be seen.

(via Mary)

I am all for sensitivity toward kids who are struggling with academics, providing them encouragement, and avoiding humliating them.

It seems to me there’s a world of difference between that and doing away with recognizing academic achievement.

The school honor roll, a time-honored system for rewarding A-students, has become an apparent source of embarrassment for some underachievers.
As a result, all Nashville schools have stopped posting honor rolls, and some are also considering a ban on hanging good work in the hallways on the advice of school lawyers.
After a few parents complained their children might be ridiculed for not making the list, Nashville school system lawyers warned that state privacy laws forbid releasing any academic information, good or bad, without permission.
Some schools have since put a stop to academic pep rallies. Others think they may have to cancel spelling bees. And now schools across the state may follow Nashville’s lead.

I mean, what’s next — disbanding the football team because it humiliates the physically handicapped (not to mention pencil-necked geeks like I was)? Doing away with theater programs because kids with reading problems or speech impediments are less likely to get roles?

Others think it might be a good idea to get rid of the honor roll altogether, as Principal Steven Baum did at Julia Green Elementary in Nashville.
“The rationale was, if there are some children that always make it and others that always don’t make it, there is a very subtle message that was sent,” he said.

Yes. It is that some kids are consistently doing well, achieving, succeeding. And that some kids need additional help from the school to figure things out.

Modeling is a very powerful tool. So is rewarding achievement. The idea that not being recognized = humiliation = personal disrespect by the school strikes me as a wildly dangerous one.

(via SoA)

Katherine started in her new pre-school yesterday. Margie dropped her off, and I picked her up.

Coming in mid-year isn’t a big deal for the kids (there’s a certain amount of churn, especially in pre-school, and they’re all young enough that the cliques haven’t formed as yet), but it’s a big deal for the parents. We not only have all the classroom procs to learn from scratch (snack days, etc.), but we’re inundated with the first semester’s materials from the speech therapist. Lots of good stuff there (and an inventation as to how much more we want to get each week), so we can start doing some stuff at home to work on Katherine’s issues.

(The speech therapist was really impressed by how good her counting skills were for her age, which, she said, is great, because there’s lots of games and stuff that use counting for repetition of sounds.)

Anyway, Katherine seemed to have a great time, and the teacher and TA said she had done really well integrating into the class. She was really tired, though, and crashed that evening without any difficulty.

So, is there still a need to teach cursive handwriting?

Based on this story, the question is up in the air. Kids today are more fluent on keyboards, and national penmanship skills continue to decline. Couple that with the increased emphasis on academics in schools, and handwriting lessons seem doomed.

Boy. I hate to see an artistic skill dropped by thw wayside. Just like arguments about calculators, there remain — and, I daresay, will always remain — instances where technical goodies like computers and calculators are either not available, or else are far less convenient to use.

On the other hand, as someone who almost never writes in cursive — I returned to “block lettering” as my default as soon as I was allowed to, and thus, paradoxically, can still handwrite beautifully — I’m not sure I have much standing in the debate. Certainly 99% of the words I write are keyed in, and the remaining 1% are written longhand, not in cursive.

This would be an interesting one to flash-forward fifty years out to see where things are. Will cursive handwriting largely die out? Will it become a sign of culture and class? Or will a good reason to continue to teach it be discovered.

It’s odd thinking that Katherine might not be taught something in school that I was taught.

(via Sake of Argument)

We went this afternoon for the concluding session of the screening for Katherine’s speech problem.

The Good:

Most of the screening went swimmingly. In Educational stuff, “there are no concerns regarding her concept development and she is performing above age expectations.” In Social/Emotional/Adaptive Behavior, she’s doing great, with strong play skills and deemed “friendly, happy and cooperative.” No Physical problems, and her vision and hearing are both fine, with age-appropriate motor skills. Cognitive-wise, she has strong memory and attending skills, and strong concept development (again).

The Bad:

On the Arizona Articulation Proficiency Scales (3rd Edition!), she scored a 76; mean score is 100, SD=15. That puts her in the 5th percentile, and classes her speech intelligibility as “difficult.”

On the understanding side of things, to be sure, we have the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test 3, which tests listening comprehension and vocabulary, she scored a 120 (average range is 85-115). So she understands what she’s hearing, in an above average way — she’s just not articulating what she says back well.

In particular, her articulation has omissions (dropping sounds out) and substitutions (replacing one sound with another).

Analysis of her fluency showed moderate stuttering, compared to other preschool children.

The Ugly:

So, we’re signing Katherine up for preschool there, starting when we get back in January. The class she’ll be in will have both general ed and some (other) special ed kids. There’s an “Integrated Educational Plan” (IEP) being put together for her, with various goals and strategies to work on her “artic and disfluency” problems. and she’ll both do some in-class work and some pulled work with a speech therapist.

“Ugly” Part 1: We have to refill out all those damnable forms and slips and profiles and records for her new preschool. Annoying. If there’s one thing that will drive us into a world bereft of privacy, where every single one of our records is in some single, massive computer bank, it will be the constant need to keep filling out repetitious forms …

“Ugly” Part 2: We’re going to try to keep Katherine in her current preschool, since she’s enjoying it so much. Which means, since she’ll be in a Monday/Wednesday afternoon class, that our weekly schedule is going to look like a checkerboard, with Katherine spending part of Monday-Thursday somewhere else, courtesy of Mom & Dad Taxi Service.

On the other hand, since she’s in it as a special ed kid, it’s Your Tax Dollars At Work paying for her preschool tuition. And it’s right near my comic book store, so I can at least pick her up on Wednesday afternoons and then swing by and pick up my comics.

She may need to bid a fond farewell to her Tuesday/Thursday morning preschool class. Which would be a shame, but might be gthe only way for us to keep our sanity and/or jobs.

I’m definitely glad we’re doing this. She’s clearly got a lot to say. She deserves a chance to say it clearly to everyone.