#9 Seventeen-Year-Old First Grader

As the day breaks, mother would tell him three times to get up and get dressed. It wasn't until the waterfall flowing down from the cup of motivation she held, did it dawn on him she meant business. After getting dressed and eating breakfast, she'd help him get his things together and see him off to school. The school day started with calendar and phonics. It would progress into story telling time and then math using apples and oranges the teacher brought. When it came to reading, he'd let his mind wander and hide any frustrations he had by staying quiet. When is first grade ever going to end?

Could this have been the story of Antonio Rocha's life? I don't know. But if tested by the Mythbusters, I'd say it'd be "plausible." The reason being, he was a 17-year-old young adult who could not read past a 1st grade level. That is until he sued New York City school to pay for tutoring. My guess is that it took the dawn of a new day, one with bleak job opportunities for an illiterate person, to light the fire in this boy and his family.

Have you ever been embarrassed as an educator that the system has let one slip through the cracks? What if you had taught him at some point and found out he couldn't read as a 17-year-old student? I could speak for anyone who taught him and say I'd be a tad embarrassed. But should we really be embarrassed? Why did he move from one New York school to another throughout his education? I know that new students who enter even the best schools do not get fully assessed immediately upon arrival and are assumed to be literate anywhere above 4th grade level, typically. This is especially the case when students, parents, or former schools do not update the new teachers and district of the progress or lack of progress this new student has had over the years. Sometimes those cumulative folders take three weeks to arrive at the student's new school if they ever do at all. By that time, people like Antonio are moving on to another school or district, only to avoid the truth if not anything else.

Fortunately, or maybe not so fortunate, Antonio works for the U.S. Postal Service currently and has the fundamentals of reading. Who's to blame in his lack of education? Well, if the New York City School District actually moved him around from 11 schools on purpose, for whatever reason, I'd say they are to blame. The advocacy group and Antonio's lawyers would agree with that probably. The story isn't told. However, if it was his family who moved him around and he didn't confront his teachers year-after-year about his illiteracy, I'd say the family is to blame. Who's responsibility is it really?

If I hadn't taken initiative and figured out exactly what I supposed to complete or what I was exempt from completing, I'd never have taught. Nobody helped me figure out how to teach in California after having my education in North Dakota and a certificate in Washington as well. When I once considered living in Connecticut, the same held true. I actually had to inform the Connecticut State credential department exactly how the "and/or" statement written into their requirements meant I didn't have to actually complete that 5th year of studies, which would have set me back over $85,000. It took my persistence and three phone calls to clear it up. Why don't more people take initiative and take responsibility for their own actions or inactions? Why did it take Antonio Rocha finally, after having the bleak prospect of unemployment lines or digging ditches, want what was granted to him for free, education? Do you think the school systems should be held liable for peoples' lack of will power, drive, and determination to be successful?

Even with all that considered, the embarrassment would come over me like a wave had I taught this boy at some point. What kind of teacher allows his student to slip through the cracks? Did the teachers Antonio have ever actually require him to perform anything in their classes? How does this sort of thing happen?

#8 Dough Shortfall- Free Lunch Anyone?

Bachelor life lends itself to loving the hot lunch program. I've eaten school lunch with my class everyday for the past 11 years without fail. Families across the nation have been feeding their kids via the school lunch program for years, as well. Some don't pay. Schools all over America are serving free and reduced lunches. The National School Lunch Program was taken another step further in a town only 17 miles away from my current district. In Visalia, CA, instead of serving children of families who haven't qualified for the program and don't pay a cheese sandwich, they give them a full lunch. They do so in order to combat stigmas that may come with not having the money to pay for lunch.

My district has been known to be one of the few programs in the county to make a profit on the lunch program under the direction of our former "Soup Nazi." She was wonderful in more ways than one, but the kids who didn't pay got celery and peanut butter. That's hardly a high class cheese sandwich. It definitely curbed people from sending their children to school unprepared or without money. We have nary a need to consider using a collections department like Visalia does. They even are considering using small-claims court to get back some of the losses. According to this USA Today article, Visalia schools have gone from a $5,000 shortfall from unpaid lunches to $24,000. That's a lot of dough. They'd probably be able to make a lot of bread with it don't you think?

Would you suppose that without that school lunch program, these kids would seriously never have any food to eat? Why is Visalia so worried about everyone fitting in at all costs? Obviously, for some kids starvation isn't far from the truth unfortunately. However, given the fact that it would be reason to have your child taken away from you for child abuse, I highly doubt people are starving their kids to the extent they cannot afford one meal a day. Meals at regular price are a mere $1.50 for a full hot-lunch program. Multiply that by the 180 days of school, and you're looking at $270 for 9 months of lunches. If you take the time to make lunches at home, even less money. I'm certain that the reason why schools lose so much on their lunch programs is because a hungry child pulls on the heartstrings of every person. How are you going to deny a child food? Or worse, how are you going to make it be known they didn't have money to pay for lunches? Isn't that as bad as kids not earning their way onto sports teams legitimately?

In economics, a program will not be able to sustain itself if it doesn't generate a profit as Forbes details in this story. How far should we be taking the funding of schools and feeding the nation? Is the system getting taken advantage of in Visalia?

#7 T.M.I.- Information Overload

The human brain is said to be capable of holding more than 200 gigabytes of information. Have you ever felt like it's too much? File cabinets overflowing, shelves and closets spilling out once opened, and computers, media, and internet invading our lives and minds are endless. How about cars in the driveway because the pack rat has won and the garage is full? Can you keep all the information straight that you learned as recently as a week ago? How about yesterday's meal, can you remember what it was? If you're like me, you've found your limit on more than one occasion. After years of always wanting the next best thing, or know more information than the average person, I've come to realize there is such a thing as T.M.I. or even too many things. Am I suffering from academic overload? Are my students falling prey to T.M.I. as well?

First of all, let me say I appreciate educational resources and having such a "problem" as we have at my current school district. We have video boards running announcements all day. Our school subscribes to things like Edline.net, Edusoft.com, Unitedstreaming.com, Accelerated Reader and Math. Soon, we'll have distance learning with N.A.S.A. and any other programs available for two way distance learning. We have to manage more information than I've ever dealt with as a human being. If you understand California schools, even affluent districts might legitimately complain about having few resources. The first year of teaching taught me how to evaluate my needs and learn how to conserve. We actually did not have math text books and literally didn't have desks for every student in our classrooms. Teachers were allotted 9,000 copies per year at that school, while others were given 3,000. Ditto machines were the norm and we could make as many copies with that beast as our little hearts desired. Resources at the "best school" in the district were vastly limited at HESD.

That first year experience really fed the pack rat in me. Teaching twelve years of various subject matter, I've been known to keep things I may only use once. As a teacher, do you repeat lessons often? The lessons I teach are similar, but rarely are they identical. Whether you're still working for the same district, school, or boss, you might find yourself changing grade levels and subject matter every few years. Since the beginning of my career, I've taught 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. Throw 7th and 8th in the past few years, and I've taught every subject imaginable and even have an Early Childhood Education background. When did I decide that too much information was too much? This past year is when I let it all go. I figured out a few years ago that the belongings I stored in a storage unit for $80/month was not worth much more than $400 in total. Should we do the same with educational resources? Do computers and internet breed mutant pack rats within us all? Have I posed so many questions, your head is swimming?

If you feel like you're swimming in too much information, you're not alone. With the internet holding endless tidbits, useful and not, we can be overwhelmed. After collecting information for years, I personally hold more than 2,000 gigabytes of information on various hard drives. Granted, I have also been involved with video and music editing, I do have more than 50 gigabytes of information related to school. My tech department loathes my academic overload. I might be one of few. Looking on our network, I see that other teachers may have a mere 600 MB! That means I have more than 50 times the documents, files and pictures than some colleagues.

Does lack of information limit our ability to learn? Do you suppose too much information limits our ability to learn?

#6 The "New Old School"- AIM High...Brute force?

Punishment for chewing gum, Saturday school for missing regular days, students must complete all homework and classwork given by teacher, no cell phones... are these descriptors of an old school from the 50's? Or is this a new school of the 21st century? In California, it's what I would call the "New Old School." Where is this school you might ask? It's in Oakland, CA, one of the toughest school districts in the nation. Sure, it's not East L.A., but it's not a walk in the park either.

The name of the school is AIM High, American Indian Model. The setting is a school in the heart of Oakland, CA. The demographics, 95% Free and Reduced Lunch, 99% minorities, and 85% speak English as a second language. The story includes schools preparing for elimination. Instead of being bulldozed, AIM improved their API scores from 436 to 967 in eight years. It's a story that should be destined for Hollywood. Will it? Blackboard Jungle, Freedom Writers, and Lean On Me are all great movies. Will Crazy Like a Fox- One Principal's Triumph in the Inner City by Dr. Chavis and Carey Blakely make it to a theatre near you?

What's so "crazy" about students, parents, teachers, and administration actually holding each other accountable for progress? If you've just stepped out the the time machine and you're in the 50's, nothing. If you're in an environment rich in gangs, or affirmative action, everything. I haven't gotten an opportunity to read the book, but after viewing this school's website, I've found that their common sense, mission, and model are all positive developments and the direct reason for such dramatic success and the salvation of their school for future generations.

My school district, the new school, has 30% Free and Reduced Lunch, 61% white, and 12% students who speak English as a second language. Our API score dropped below 800 this past year and we're considering program improvement within the next two years if we cannot increase our district scores 25%, which is nearly impossible according to our latest administration. What do you suppose our last four administrations in the past ten years have in common? Homework policies, discipline issues, and educational focus are all elements they have had in common- namely, less and less homework, fewer and fewer detentions, lenient referrals and discipline, and elimination of the importance of music, art, P.E., social studies, and science.

At the AIM schools, the new old school, students have consequences for poor choices. They may have detention, Saturday School, embarrassment, cleaning, etc. I know, the "embarrassment" probably caught your eye the most. Why? Because it works, or because it works? Will they do it again? I would guess not. If a 6th grade student acts up, he is sent to a 7th or 8th grade classroom and told to sit on the floor. They also are given a minimum of 2 hours of homework a night. The teachers must include 90 minutes of both math and language arts homework. Part of their "Ten Commandments" includes "...'affirmative action' for minorities is the most blatant form of racism in the United States... be aware that affirmative action and diversity specialists have made a professional career based on people's color and sex. These individuals are committed to human inequality to ensure they are employed." They also include all subject matter and excel in P.E.

Why do you think more schools aren't being successful like AIM schools? I submit, it is as simple as the difference between the "New Old School" and the new age idealists and doctrines of today's educational system and politics. In what district would you rather work? Your current district, AIM, or another model district? Can America's schools follow The American Indian Model of Education, or are we slated to be overrun and taken over?

I would love to be a part of such a great program, no matter how controversial it may be. Who is the source of controversy anyway? Is it Dr. Chavis and his AIM schools, or the crazy people who don't agree with their reason for success?

#5 Indoctrination or Education?

"Change the world in five minutes - every day at school"? That's a noble idea. I agree, we can all do our part to help the world. Would those minutes best be spent speaking to kids and families our own opinions of what helps the world, or giving them tools to understand for themselves what may help?

As educators, the last thing we want to be found guilty of is indoctrination. At least if you were to ask me, that's how I feel as an educator. Obviously, I have my own opinion on many issues. Some issues are more difficult than others to actually hide from impressionable kids than others. Ultimately, I want them to be responsible for making their own decisions and reaping the benefits or consequences of those choices. Ultimately, a student has been given the tools to think, create, and share their own experiences in life. Ultimately, it's a positive and successful outcome from which they can have a library of life events to draw from in future decisions.

My questions are these: Would we provide students a disservice by pushing fringe ideas and obvious opinion based information? Should we scrap informational ideas such as global warming, origins of life, or other theories forgotten to be theories and turned into fact? When does our system, so influenced by fringe media, become realistically truthful based upon factual evidence? Who's to say evidence points toward fact if it can be interpreted differently and brought forth in a believable fashion? Orson Welles, a genius when he broadcast War of the Worlds? What about Shane Fitzgerald potentially changing history with his false Wikipedia information? Do publishers, media, and journalism have a moral code to follow as teachers must follow?

Most of what we learn in textbooks, we take for granted and fact, not fiction. Once it's been published, it takes a team of research, evidence, and political lobbying to remove it from what has been determined by default as fact. I wonder who is responsible as an educational body to disseminate such information to the students. Any age student can be influenced and thereby corrupted by false information, especially if it's repeated information and they aren't given the opportunity to think beyond the punctuation. Even though a person can bang their heads against a concrete wall numerous times, over and over again, it doesn't make the wall softer, but our minds will be transformed. Eventually, that person's ability to be sensitive to the wall will diminish to the point of being completely numb to the wall. I honestly believe our education system has been banging it's head against the concrete walls of political agendas, personal agendas, and financial agendas for years. Our society and our youth are becoming numb to the effects of false information and simply find published material to be fact. Even information created by some dummy with a dot com is considered fact to the average 6th, 7th, and 8th grade student. Ask them what a trusted source really is and they would probably refer to a textbook, if not their friends' blog or dot com. Most will consider Google to be a source, even though it's nothing more than a tool to find sources. Worse than that, they will compile a report researched solely from Wikipedia.

What is the line between indoctrination and education in the classroom today? Who is responsible to police against indoctrination and how do they go about doing so? I know it happens, and even more often in a college classroom than any other place, but what about student rights and choices? In my opinion, student's rights are violated daily in reading information that even the very best educated consider fact, yet haven't had time to personally research themselves. Who has time to check if the media has provided truth or fiction, indoctrination or education?

#4 Triacontakaiheptad...That Which Is My Class

We've all seen them. They are the fear of every parent, student, and teacher. Like a New Yorker walking down the street, you could go unnoticed in them. If you've been to the front of a mosh-pit during a Green Day concert, you may know how we could feel. Claustrophobia is not only limited to elevators any longer. Classrooms are the location. Numbers are the debate. Not 2 + 2, but triacontakaiheptad, that which is my class size, is not an unusual thing in California for grades above 3rd. When dealing with class sizes number greater than 28, teachers, students, and parents all feel like we're in the situations I mentioned, not environments suitable for learning.

The CSR, or class size reduction, in California has been the debate for years. Our classrooms are overflowing with students. Students who have fewer resources than ever. Classrooms that have more behavioral issues than ever are becoming more prominent. What are we doing in the face of is issue? For my district, we are firing staff and increasing the class size. We hire more instructional aides and increase the class size. What justification do we have for losing teachers and other support staff in exchange for higher class sizes? Budget crunch all over the nation, but more profoundly in California. Do you think the administration cares? If they did, they would not permit class sizes to increase toward an environment of mere crowd control would they? The lure of money per child is often too great for them to deny admission to even inter-district transfers.

Many people in the state of California have become teachers since 1996. The demand increased and the standards for making the cut decreased. With the 2-year technical degrees, or Walmart employees finding a One-Year-Non-Renewable Teaching Certificate came the influx of people who think they can teach. Why wouldn't they want to? California teachers' salaries ranked the highest in the nation. Here, you can find a district, work 187 days a year, and get paid more than someone who holds three jobs and has no health care benefits. Here in California, you can enjoy descent weather year round and have every leisure entertainment known to man at your fingertips. Do you have to really like kids or consider what's best for them to teach here? Can you have 8 more children after already having 6, without a husband or even a boyfriend? Here in California you can.

Do you suppose that morals and values people possess have anything to do with not responding to overcrowded classrooms? When you have become just a statistic and you're teacher can hardly remember who your parents are when they come to that once-a-year parent/teacher conference, if they are the rare parent to attend, do you just grow up not caring? I think they do. Growing up in a class of less than 10 in a public school that had more resources than 10 schools here in California tells me that there is something wrong with the local politics and management. Why did they let it balloon out of control in the early 90's? California seems to be doing a game of catch-up and have forgotten about everything else. Money talks, and the students are all about those dollars. Even so, those dollars aren't going toward school improvement.

It's been said numerous times at our district. I personally agree, even though I have no kids of my own. I would not allow my child to attend a school where the teachers, students, and parents are nothing more than a number. We've become warm bodies to fill the pockets of administrators who make the decisions to make twice as much money, if not three times as much as the educators who deal with mess they create. I work at a small country school outside of a town that is 65,000 large. If my little country district is making people feel this way, how are the city folk feeling with more than 40 students per classroom? I know they don't even have enough text books, desks, permanent classrooms, and even allocate low numbers of copies per teacher. Being at one of the most affluent districts in the county, we have great technology resources and tend to have the highest test scores around. Will that stick after the latest administration decided to increase class sizes beyond any in the history of our district?

Teachers, parents, and students all over California would agree, class sizes do need to stay reduced. Is the rest of the country dealing with numbers like California? Have you had triacontakaiheptad or more in your classroom?

Material World... Material Girl

Gender bias materials may not be something you've ever considered in the classroom. Why is that? Here, you can find an article about the topic. I think the difference in gender is definitely a clear issue. What person wants a difference in treatment for people who are different? When it comes to education, there should be non. I find it ironic, however, that our education system has overwhelmingly included female teachers since the beginning of time, yet there is debate on such an issue. The writer of this article says, "Gender bias in education is an insidious problem that causes very few people to stand up and take notice. The victims of this bias have been trained through years of schooling to be silent and passive, and are therefore unwilling to stand up and make noise about the unfair treatment they are receiving." If that is the case, why do we see an large group of boys not finding success in the public school system? How could an overwhelming majority of female teachers allow such a thing to take place in so many classrooms in America generation after generation?

The reason why this hasn't been an issue is because it's not enough of an issue to really invest valuable time. So we have a few extra sentences awarded to men and hunting as opposed to traditional women's activities? It's history. Seriously, it's history. If we want to rewrite history books, that would be great. Every minority group and political group will want a hand in rewriting books that many do not even subscribe to already. Isn't it just a waste of time?

What about moving forward and being clear to change history books when there is evidence and proof to do so with facts. Shouldn't education leaders move forward and ensure that all literature is written fair and balanced with no bias information? Can we realize that part of world history and even current events include injustices? Women have made great strides in America to be in the positions they are today. I applaud that. Women today are writing their history books for the future. I would be surprised to find any literature currently in print today that wouldn't include equal if not more female representation. I hope that our books we use could use unbiased information in many areas not only gender.

I agree that there needs to be unbiased materials available to students. My question is, at what expense do we include information? Does that mean we have to erase and decide what history or discovery is not valued enough to go to print as opposed to a woman's historical discovery? Will our textbooks just include the information and expand upon themselves, or delete? My thought is that they will save cost and delete. One bias they tend to have no problem saving ink about is the "theory" of evolution. It's printed as a fact more often than not. I don't have a problem with facts, but I do have a problem with a small group deciding what will be included in textbooks.