the more I seem to forget...

I did my first round of tutoring last night. I'm working with three kids in a family of four(!) one night a week, basically helping them with their homework. It went fairly well, and I think will go better in the future now that I know the kids a little bit, and especially know what distracts them and what motivates them.

I did have two mortifying moments, though. One was that I had to give the two oldest their French spelling words. I haven't learned any French since about 9th grade. The pronunciations are totally different from English and German, and so the kids were constantly correcting me. That's a great way to impress!

The other was while doing math with the oldest (5th grade), when I completely mentally blanked on how to convert fractions into decimals. It's easy when the denomenator is divisible by 5 (thus easily made into 100), but what about 3/8? To make it worse, her Dad was in the room listening in at the exact moment I blanked. I covered nicely, though, by saying "Let's do these easier ones first to get our brains warmed up." And by the end, I remembered - divide the numerator by the denomenator. Thank god.

Math was never really my thing.

expectations are blown

So, I'm pretty sure that D. is the only one who actually made it through that entire post about my trip. I apologize that my delight in seeing my REPUBLIC IN ACTION made me so long-winded. The short version is that it was very cool to sit in the gallery of the Senate, and I got to see most of the Senators. And also that the Capitol building is very pretty inside, but that the people who work there like to make you wander around and get lost, then yell at you for being lost.

In other news, I just received the notice about my student teaching assignement for next Spring. Good news, it's in the school that I wanted - one that is a CPS magnet school and more importantly, 10 minutes from my house. The other news, it's kindergarten.

I don't say this is good news or bad news. It's just... different than what I planned on. I had been informally invited to student teach with a second grade teacher at this school, and was really jazzed about it. Kindergarten is a whole different ball game. I'd hoped for something more... I don't want to say challenging, but maybe more structured? advanced? Teaching kindergarten is, I think just very from teaching second/third, which is kind of where I wanted to focus. In our appliations, we had to chose either K-2, 3-5, or 6-8. I chose K-2 because of the above mentioned second grade chance. I didn't expect to end up in kindergarten. The entire focus of what you're teaching is different, and it will be a different kind of hands-on education.

I'm not disappointed, exactly. It's just going to be a different experience.

How many times can I use "different" in one post?

bringing light

As adults, it can be very, very tough to reach backwards and remember how difficult learning can be. Adults remember elementary school through a haze of nostaglia. When you're seven years old, second grade is work. It's hard, frustrating and confusing.

Yesterday, while observing in a second grade classroom, I got to spend some time working one-on-one with a little girl named Sara, who is having trouble undestanding the concept of place value. As adults who spend money and add three digit sums in our heads and do a multitude of other things, "place value" is something we understand in a way that seems almost instinctive - but it most assuredly is not. It's an abstract concept we had to learn. We forget the time we spent toiling to understand and apply the concept, label parts of a four digit number. We probably haven't used the phrase "tens place" in years.

When you stop and really think about the concept of place value in numbers, its a difficult, abstract concept to grasp. in the number 4,567, the "4" isn't a 4. It's 4000. the "6" isn't a 6 - it's 60. The location of the numbers changes what they mean, and based solely on location, they symbolize different numbers of zeroes that are left out.

Sara and I toiled for about a half hour. We wrote numbers, we counted blocks. Eventually I hit on this:

4,567 is the same as 4000 + 500 + 60 + 7 or:
4000
500
60
7

"But," I said, "that is so long to write, and would take forever, so we have a system to shorten it."

After Sara and I broke down a few more numbers this way, I could see a light starting to shine in her eyes. When I pointed to a number and said, "how many is this one", her pauses became shorter and shorter, and her answers more and more correct.

I'll check in with her tomorrow, and see if what we did stuck. I really hope so.

i'm sick. yes, me.

ugh. I'm sick. And so now I'm going to whine. I started feeling crappy last night during class. My throat hurt, and I developed a painful chest cough. I went to bed and barely slept all night (I emailed my boss at 5:30 am to say I was taking medicine and hopefully being knocked out, and thus was turning off my alarm). I've felt like total crap all day. The last few hours, I've started developing a fever. I'm sitting at my computer in thin cotton PJs and my shirt is wet from sweat. (ew, over sharing)

I'm not congested, so I don't think I have a cold. I think my sinuses are taking advantage of the sudden weather shift and draining. Very very fast. that doesn't really explain the fever. So I hope I don't have a sinus infection. 'cause that would be the suck.

and I have to get up tomorrow morning and teach a lesson to a bunch of apathetic 5th graders in the most depressing classroom in Chicago. I guess it'll be good practice for my future...

once again, i'm proven right

I've been saying this forever.

Report: Kids need more time for play

The American Academy of Pediatrics says what children really need for healthy development is more good, old-fashioned playtime.

Many parents load their children's schedules with get-smart videos, enrichment activities and lots of classes in a drive to help them excel. The efforts often begin as early as infancy.

Spontaneous, free play -- whether it's chasing butterflies, playing with "true toys" like blocks and dolls, or just romping on the floor with mom and dad -- often is sacrificed in the shuffle, a new academy report says.

Numerous studies have shown that unstructured play has many benefits. It can help children become creative, discover their own passions, develop problem-solving skills, relate to others and adjust to school settings, the academy report says.

Enrichment tools and organized activities can be beneficial but should not be viewed as a requirement for creating successful children. Above all, they must be balanced with plenty of free play time, the report says.

Children overscheduled with structured activities "are missing the chance they have to dream, to fantasize, to make their own world work the way they want it. That to me is a very important part of childhood," Brazelton said.

shorties

Yesterday morning, I got to spend three hours in a kindergarten class, as part of my observation requirements.

Kindergarten is hilarious. I haven't been around a group of 23 5 year-olds since I was in kindergarten, and we'll figure my perspective was off back then.

Kindergarteners love to touch things. Everything. Telling them to keep their hands to themselves is like tossing a tiger into a cage full of three-legged antelope, and saying "look, but don't eat." They poke each other, they are constantly messing with crayons, picking at the rug, taking off and putting on their shoes (or others' shoes). When they walk somewhere, they're so busy looking around them, or bothering someone else, that they run into walls and doors. And they love to tattle. And since they can't keep their hands off anything (including each other), there are plenty of things to tattle about. "She touched my picture." "He pushed me!" "Her tree is blue, it isn't supposed to be blue." "She's using the markers!" "He isn't in line!"

I'd forgotten how tactile young children are. In the adult world, we've adapted to using our sense of touch much less than the others, but at 5, the world is like sensory overload. They become entranced by things, and it's like nothing else matters. Getting their attention can be tough, because sometimes when one sense becomes engaged, the others may not even exist. Their hands are constantly working, figuring out how things work by how the feel and move, how they can be taken apart and put back together.

Their innate sense of wonder can't be denied. They can be annoying, as getting the majority of them to do something can make you crazy, but just watching them as pieces of the world click into place for them in incredible.

The Fundamental Right to Education

For one of my education classes, I'm reading a book called Shame of the Nation, which details some of the many ways that high-poverty and inner-city schools (mostly black and Hispanic) are completely unequal to schools in suburban and wealthy (and usually white) areas.

The book is a good wake-up call. As someone in the education field, the areas it outlines were all problems I was already aware of, but not actively thinking about. It's an important topic to bring to the forefront, and the book is accessible and easy to read.

The basic concept is that we've reverted to a pre-Brown v. BoEd state, where many of our schools are almost complete separated by race (and class). But these schools are not even living up to the "separate but equal" clause of Plessey. The poorer schools have crumbling infastructure, over-crowded classes, young and inexperienced teachers, not enough books or desks. The curriculums assume these students are unable to achieve, and are geared more towards turning out factory workers and hotel maids than students who could go on to college.

Situations like this are common in the poorest schools, and yet if a suburban public school was like this, parents would be raising holy hell (or transferring their kids). States are not enforcing (or courts are overturning) legislation and statutes supporting busing. In many areas where poor (and usually minority) students are transfered to wealthier districts, the parents start pulling their kids and sending them elsewhere, and within a few years, the situations have reverted. The parents of these poor students (most of whom went to the same schools) are suffereing from the same lack in their schooling that faces their children. They either are unable, or do not know, that they can enroll their children elsewhere, or their are way too many children trying to get the few transfer spots in other schools. The children in these poorest districts are trapped.

The question the book asks that was so interesting to me is: how do we angle for change? Do we attempt to get the schools as they are now to a more "adequate" stance (say, textbooks for everyone and no rats in the lunchroom), and work towards slowly making these segregated schools better? Do we fight for more integration of schools, in the hope that mixing with children of other classes and races will give inner-city kids a better chance, as well as the fact that middle-class whites will be more likely to fight (to know they can fight) for better schools? Does money make a difference? Are we looking for Plessey or Brown?

As a teacher-in-training, I can only ask what I can do. Do I look for a job in one of these poor districts and try to help the kids as best I can (and very possibly get burned out in the process)? Do I go for a safe suburban job and do my best to fight from the other side?

No Child Left Behind has had a huge impact on how these districts are being run and funded. NCLB sets standards for schools and tests kids to see if their meeting those standards, but gives no funding or aid to schools to help them. And then when students don't pass, schools are shut down or given strict oversight where teachers are given scripts to follow and recess is taken away and replaced with test prep and drilling. The worst part is how the testing results are compared. The teachers are expected to show that the students are making gains - however each year the test results are compared against the results of the current students in each grade. So rather than compare the scores of last year's third grade to this year's fourth grade to look for gains, last year's third grade is compared to this year's third grade. There's really no comparison there, especially in a short-term. What you're asking is that every year, the students at each level gain more than the students the previous year gained, rather than watching to see if individual groups made gains. Without any federal support to help build up these schools (infastructure, materials, good teachers), NCLB is doomed to fail.

It leaves me feeling helpless. As one person, what can I do? Well, next year NCLB is up for reauthorization. So, starting now, I am beginning a letter-writing campaign to senators and congressmen, urging them not to reauthorize the program unless there are major overhauls in the support offered to schools to meet the standards. This is unlikely, considering the following quote from a column in the Washington Post.

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said recently that she is happy with the law as it is. "I talk about No Child Left Behind like Ivory soap: it's 99 percent pure or something," Spellings told reporters. "There's not much needed in the way of change."

Please, start your own campaign. Let your congressmen and senators know that NCLB is doing much more damage than good, that reauthorization would be disasterious for poor and inner-city schools, and urging them to create legislation to make education a fundamental right of all Americans.