Articles in the Teachers category

Harnessing the power of technology

Presented by the Technology Learning Network and National Affiliate branches of NSBA, today’s session on harnessing the power of technology reflected the kind of learning environment schools must offer in the 21st century: collaborative, interactive, and relevant.

“What is innovation?” asked K. David Weidner, a former district administrator, teacher, and now education consultant who led the afternoon workshop, using questions to drive discussion among the group of mostly school board members.

New ground, great ideas, said a few audience members.

“Do we oftentimes think that innovative things are novel?” Weidner probed. “But does innovation have to be new?”

After receiving several nods from the audience, Weidner asked whether technology was working in their district, if it was new, and what made it exciting.

One board member from Fort Washington, Wis., talked about her district’s use of Project Lead the Way, which works with middle and high schools to boost student interest in STEM subjects by training teachers and providing curriculum to schools.

“It’s exciting to watch the students using technology, watching 21st century skills in action,” she said.

Another board member from Arkansas this time, talked about how her small, rural district had been able to secure grant monies to fund its one-to-one computing program.

“We’re changing from a traditional way of learning to a more problem-based learning model,” she said.

Yet another audience member talked about how his district’s high school English department used iPod Touches to teach Romeo in Juliet in high school.

“They download different narrative versions of it, taking exams on the iPod Touch,” he said. “The kids are excited about it, and it’s tough to get kids excited about Shakespeare.”

According to the Horizon Report 2010, which reports on education technology trends, Weidner says collaborative-learning environments and cloud computing like Google Docs will become widely used practices in schools, while mobile phones and educational gaming will be more prevalent in two to three years.

“Technology is increasingly a means for empowering students … and continues to profoundly affect the way we work, collaborate, communicate, and succeed,” Weidner said. “The way we think of learning environments is changing.”

Naomi Dillon|April 10th, 2010|Categories: Curriculum, Educational Technology, Mathematics Education, NSBA Annual Conference 2010, School Board News, School Boards, Student Achievement, Teachers|

Policy debates lack focus on real issues

The Hip Hop Generation views the world a lot differently than the old fogies who serve on school boards.

And maybe those youngsters have the right idea, says Marc Lamont Hill, an associate professor of English education and anthropology at Columbia University.

Offering a motivational message to the Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE) today, Hill, who sometimes is called one of America’s leading hip-hop generation intellectuals, told urban school leaders that policy debates today often are flawed by a skewed perspective. People simply don’t focus on the real issues.

To make his point, he noted a recent debate in New Jersey about black drivers being stopped by police at a disproportionate rate. He noted that discussions invariably focused on the victims, not those who were the real problem.

“My question is, why don’t we talk about police that patrol while racist?” Hill asked. “Why don’t we talk about the patrolling-white-racist problem, not the driving-while-black problem?”

That misdirected focus pops up regularly in his work, he noted. People talk about the racial achievement gap among students, making a distinction between minority and white students. The real issue, he said, should be on the “investment gap”—the disparities in funding available to different student populations.

When consulting in schools, Hill said, he often sees that teachers and administrators need to look a little differently at their work.

A common refrain, he said, is that it’s difficult to convince parents to come to school to fill out paperwork, meet with school officials, or participate in school activities.

“Let’s not talk about why parents don’t come to school,” he said. “Why don’t schools go to parents?”

Some people say parents won’t come to school unless schools have food at school activities, he notes. “So have food. Do what you have to do.”

It’s astonishing how often adults are the problem, Hill added. Visiting one school, he watched a fourth-grade teacher ask students what they wanted to be as adults.

“One little girl raised her hand and said she wanted to be an anesthetist. The teacher’s response, without any hesitation, was for her to pick something else . . . . ‘maybe, if you’re lucky, you can be a nurse’s aide.’ A small part of me died.”

A new perspective could go a long way in helping school leaders change the nation’s education system—and its success with students, Hill said.

“When they say it won’t happen, we say it must happen. When they say [a student] will go to the state pen, we say he’ll go to Penn State.”

Del Stover|April 9th, 2010|Categories: Diversity, NSBA Annual Conference 2010, School Board News, School Boards, Student Achievement, Teachers, Urban Schools|

Respecting our elders

While many schools around the country are off this week for spring break, and others were off last, we thought we’d share this feel-good story to kick off spring. 

Students in Baltimore, MD and 22 other cities are getting some help from a group of people that is often overlooked in education circles, mostly because they are not teachers, principals, or education experts, even though they have tons of experience to share.  These helpers are often more than 60 years old and are part of a nationwide “Experience Corps” that is giving a boost to students academically and socially.  What’s even better than providing academic help is the fact that the Corps members are helping students in many ways their classroom teachers can’t.  And the elder statesmen and stateswomen get a lot out of the program as well.  According to the article:

There has been extensive research in recent years suggesting that mental exercises such as crossword puzzles could help elderly people slow the deterioration of their brain. But Carlson said it’s possible that tutoring children might be even more effective by integrating cognitive, physical and social activity.

“How many crossword puzzles can you do before you get bored with them?” she asked. “This tutoring gets people engaged in doing what the brain is supposed to do — the brain is a social organ.”

“The message to them is to take all their accumulated wisdom of a lifetime and give it back to help other people,” Carlson said. “They get out of bed in the morning, even when they don’t feel great, because they have a social contract with the kids at school. They know a child is waiting for them.”

So take a look, and if your city isn’t on the list of 22, think about how you can use the resources in your community to help everyone work toward bettering education.

Kevin Scott|April 5th, 2010|Categories: Governance, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement, Teachers|

Webinar helps educators understand autism

The rising number of students with autism is impacting schools across the country, but new resources are available to help school boards and school staff members work with these children to help them cope with educational and social challenges.

NSBA’s National Affiliate program held a webinar, “The Key is Leadership: Success in School for Students with Autism,” cosponsored by Autism Speaks and the National Association of Elementary School Principals, to help school officials understand the disability.

The rates of autism have risen exponentially in the past 20 years, and now one in 110 children, and one in 70 boys, have been diagnosed with the neurological disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Part of the reason for the increase is that pediatricians and school staff have become much more aware of the symptoms, which include social difficulties, communication challenges, and repetitive or odd behaviors.

The condition presents itself differently in each person, and each person acts and learns in different ways, noted Lisa Goring, the director of family services with Autism Speaks, an advocacy and educational group. “It’s often said if you’ve seen one person with autism, you’ve seen one person with autism,” she said.

The condition impacts a students’ schoolwork through their processing of concepts and behavioral disabilities. The challenge for schools is figuring out ways to work with their learning patterns. One example shown was a child who was offered pretzels, an apple, or graham crackers for a snack. The teacher always presented the options in that order and the boy always chose graham crackers, but he was usually unhappy and threw out his snack. A developmental specialist realized that the boy could not remember the choices and always chose the one that was presented last—so instead she showed pictures of each snack and the boy learned to choose the pretzels.

Like other disabilities, early detection and intervention is crucial to success—educators need to have a student evaluated if they suspect a developmental delay or specific sign of autism.

Another important factor for school officials to consider is the acceptance of the student with autism among their peers, said Peter Faustino, the school psychologist at Fox Lane Middle School in Bedford, N.Y. His school has set up a peer-buddy system to help students with autism better integrate into regular classes and socialize with their nondisabled peers. The program has also helped the other students empathize and accept the students with autism.

The Bedford school district also integrates information about autism into its professional development for teachers and administrators, who have been very receptive to the training, Faustino said.

“Autism can be looked at as another culture that we are trying to integrate into the school,” he said.

Autism Speaks offers a free kit to educators and advice on working with parents to provide a better educational experience, including a video, which can be downloaded at www.autismspeaks.org/whatisit/talking_to_parents_action_kit.php.

This webinar, including the video, PowerPoint presentations, and additional resources, will be archived at www.nsba.org/webchannelNA.

Joetta Sack-Min|March 24th, 2010|Categories: Curriculum, School Board News, School Boards, Special Education, Student Achievement, Teachers|

Sex between teacher, student clearly crosses line, depending on district, state

296-1247241526wes9There are some things that should be so obvious when left up to a simple test of common sense that no formal law should be required to regulate them. One would assume that teachers having a sexual relationship with their students would fall under this category, but apparently some educators need a little more guidance to see the difference between right and wrong.

In the District of Columbia, the only thing that bars a teacher from sleeping with one of his or her students is the age of consent, which is 16 in the District.  That’s right, by current law, as long the student is 16 years or older, a teacher would not be committing a crime if they had sex with that student. Whether this seems like a gross ethical blunder by the teacher or a huge legal oversight by lawmakers, the problem is certainly not unique to D.C. schools.

Georgia state law also holds that those students over 16 are at the age of consent, and therefore a teacher cannot be arrested for being intimate with those students. A unanimous ruling last year in the state of Washington allowed for teachers to have a sexual relationship with students as long as they were over the age of 18.

D.C. Council member Kwame Brown is taking a step in the right direction by sponsoring emergency legislation that would require the firing of any teacher convicted of sleeping with a student, regardless of that student’s age. The bill would not yet allow the District to bring criminal charges against the teacher, but “Brown (D-At Large) and his legislative staff determined…he needed more time to draft that proposal. He instead decided to push for emergency legislation requiring that such teachers be fired, the Washington Post reported Monday.
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Naomi Dillon|March 16th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance, Policy Formation, Teachers|Tags: , |

The week in blogs

Photo courtesy of Stockvault,com-

Photo courtesy of Stockvault,com-

Stocks and consumer spending may be rising, but the economic recession is still ravaging school districts, as budget woes and school closures dominated the news this week.

In Kansas City, Mo., the school board narrowly voted to close nearly half of its schools for budget reasons.

Commenting on the dismal budget situation nationally, NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant told MSNBC that school boards will likely face deeper cuts in the fall and that their funding problems show no sign of abating anytime soon.

“There is no silver lining, at least in the next 18 months,” she said.

Meanwhile, teachers across the nation were incensed at the firings of all 93 teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island — and President Obama’s apparent endorsement of the move.

“I ripped the Obama sticker off my truck,” a Houston Federation of Teachers official said in a New York Times story. The quote was highlighted by Alexander Russo in his This Week in Education blog.

Employment prospects also weren’t looking up for New York’s embattled Gov. David Paterson, who announced recently that he will not seek re-election amid a series of investigations into his administration.

“Hubris is terminal,” Timothy G. Kremer, executive director of the New York State School Boards Association, said in his blog this week, quoting someone who should know: former Gov. Eliot Spitzer. After assessing Paterson’s chances of survival, Kremer turned to a more immediate concern: a state budget that cuts $1.1 billion out of the schools. For more on the possible impact of these cuts, and NYSSBA’s response, go to “Be the Change for Kids.”
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Lawrence Hardy|March 12th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Assessment, Curriculum, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Teachers, Wellness|

Generation Y kids harder to reach, teach

1-1232525847nXGsIn his annual address to secondary school heads, John Dunford, the general secretary of the U.K.’s Association Of School and College Leaders, acknowledged yesterday that a culture of instant gratification has made the job of teaching today’s youth harder than its ever been.

“Success appears to come instantly and without any real effort,” Dunford told the conference audience. “It is difficult for teachers to compete. Success in learning just doesn’t come fast enough.” 

Well said, Mr. Dunford, but hardly revolutionary.

For years now, I’ve heard from teacher friends and seen from site visits how much teaching has become by necessity almost entertainment like; we must engage the students by making lessons fun and relevant.

One teacher told me recently that she has to convince high school students that learning basic math concepts like multiplication and  division are necessarily skills in life, even employing popular rap stars and their lyrics about money making within her arsenal.

That’s sad … but is it inevitable given how prolific and accessible technology and media are and make everything seem? Not only do we have 24/7 media, we have an endless supply of fame-seekers willing to broadcast their lives 24/7.
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Naomi Dillon|March 8th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Educational Research, Governance, Student Achievement, Teachers|Tags: , , |

Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds

In her recent TED talk, Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, tells us how her mind works. She gives an overview of how people on the autism spectrum think and makes the case that the world needs those people: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids. She describes autism as “a continuum of traits. When does a nerd turn into Asperger’s, which is just mild autism? I mean Einstein and Mozart and Tesla, would all be probably diagnosed as autistic spectrum today.”

Grandin advocates that people on the autism spectrum need to be encouraged in school. The standardized testing scheme of the No Child Left Behind Act simply doesn’t work for neuroatypicals as she calls them. This is just one reason why the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is important to our education system. One-size-fits-all is not an educational policy that will work for neuroatypicals. Individualized Education Programs (IEP) can do wonders for such students. 

More importantly, Grandin is not arguing that autistic students need such flexibility for their own interests alone; she contends that we as a society need these kids. The wonders to be found in the neuroatypical mind could be key to solving future problems.

Grandin also speaks her mind on certain education reforms. She advocates the need for classroom teachers who can teach a subject well, but who don’t necessarily have education degrees:

 And this brings up mentors. You know, my science teacher was not an accredited teacher. He was a NASA space scientist. Now, some states now are getting it to where if you have a degree in biology, or a degree in chemistry, you can come into the school and teach biology or chemistry. We need to be doing that. Because what I’m observing is the good teachers, for a lot of these kids, are out in the community colleges.

Mentorship is certainly an idea BoardBuzz can get behind. There are undoubtedly many bright young minds that just need the right mentor to help them find their talent and develop that potential. Grandin called on the TED audience to think about mentoring and hiring those kids.

She also joked that Silicon Valley would not exist today if it weren’t for those geeky neuroatypical minds, which drew a big laugh from the techie crowd. And she suggested that this next generation of kids with autism, properly mentored and motivated, could solve the world’s energy problems.

“The world needs different kinds of minds to work together,” she said. Check out the Ted Talk below or at the link above.

Andrew Paulson|March 5th, 2010|Categories: Educational Legislation, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Special Education, Student Achievement, Teachers|

What do teachers think? Survey asks them

Photo courtesy Gates Foundation

Photo courtesy Gates Foundation

Want to hold onto your best teachers? Put good principals in your schools.

For years, teachers have been telling me that a good principal—someone who is supportive, focuses on improving instruction, and creates a healthy school climate—is the single most important factor in their choice of schools to work in.

Now a national survey of 40,000 teachers confirms my anecdotal-based opinion.

The survey, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, found that 68 percent of teachers said  “supportive leadership” is essential for retaining good teachers, as opposed to only 45 percent who rated higher salaries as important.

That comes as no surprise to me. Without a good principal or an enlightened central office, a school can become a lousy place to work. No teacher is going to sit in a classroom every day if the principal won’t intervene against student misbehavior in hallways or classrooms—or can’t inspire a sense of meaning and progress to the work teachers do.

Conducted in conjunction with Scholastic Inc., the survey findings, Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on America’s Schools, offers some other insights into the minds of teachers:
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Naomi Dillon|March 4th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Educational Research, Governance, Teachers|Tags: , , |

Do business methods work in education reform?

Do charter schools pose a threat to public education, or can they play a part in improving it? What about giving financial rewards to districts that demonstrate they are willing to implement reforms?

These topics are being debated across the country these days, as Arne Duncan and the Obama administration promote their ideas for public school reform. Education historian and former federal education official, Diane Ravitch tackles these ideas head on in her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

A recent article in The Washington Post examines Ravitch’s new book, and points out that many of its ideas are not in line with those of the current administration.

Ravitch believes the new methods rely too much on business principles, such as pay for performance, and standardized testing. Instead, Ravitch believes public schools need to adopt a national curriculum that covers a full range of arts and sciences. She is also a strong defender of teachers’ unions, which puts her at odds with the proposed move toward more charter schools.

Diane Ravitch is one of the featured speakers at NSBA‘s 2010 Annual Conference in Chicago, April 10-12, 2010, and she will also be signing copies of her new book at the Conference bookstore on Saturday, April 10.

Barbara Moody|March 2nd, 2010|Categories: NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Privatization, School Boards, Student Achievement, Teachers|
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