Talk Priority Schools

By Nora Howley and Jerry Newberry, NEA Health Information Network

There’s no getting around it, stress is everywhere. And if you are an educator working in a priority school (or anywhere, actually) you can’t avoid feeling stressed. It may feel like everyone is against you or that no one really knows what it is like to have your job.  There may be too few hours in the day and you may feel like you are shortchanging your family, your students, and yourself.  You may find yourself getting sick for “no reason.”  What can you do?

First recognize that the way you are feeling is normal.  What we call “stress” is our body responding to threats.  And you may feel threatened.  Our problem is that our bodies respond the same way they did thousands of years ago, when the challenge was more likely to be physical (a saber tooth tiger maybe?).  When threatened the body goes into the “fight or flight” response and your body’s hormones cause:

• Increased energy production, heartbeat and respiration, and blood pressure so you can fight or run away more easily.
• Decreased intestinal movement and faster blood clotting so you don’t leave a trail as you are running.

Well, when you are running away from the tiger, the hormones dissipate because of the physical response.  But in the modern world, where the threats are more likely to be situational or other people, the hormones cause the same physical effects, but they don’t dissipate as quickly. This is why stress can contribute to hypertension and heart disease.

To combat these feelings and the physical response you need to tackle the problem from several directions.  First, find things to help manage how you feel. This can include exercise, relaxation, talking to a friend, taking time for yourself, or trying a new time management strategy.

Second, try to change the things that you can change either as part of a group or as an individual.  Working with your union, community group, or faith community can be an effective way to address the things that cause stress and help you feel better.   As educators we know a lot about how schools should work, try to put those things into practice.

Third, get the word out and celebrate classroom superheroes. We need to let the world know about the great educators out there and the difference you make.

It is also important to recognize that many common coping strategies, such as overeating, smoking, and alcohol or other substance use can cause serious health problems as well as exacerbating the problems of stress. Making some simple changes in diet, exercise, and sleep can help reduce that feeling of being overwhelmed. If you find yourself with unhealthy coping strategies, don’t be afraid to seek help.

For more information on managing stress, visit the National Education Association Health Information Network website.

By Dr. Gale Sookdeo, National Board Certified Teacher

How do you use data in selecting the appropriate instructional strategies to match your students’ needs?  Do you consider only test scores, assessments, or standardized tests?  Using data objectively to make the appropriate instructional decisions is to go beyond the walls of schools.

Far too often many educators spend a great deal of time gathering and analyzing data within buildings. An essential, yet often overlooked aspect in understanding the whole child is the data outside of buildings.

Dr. Gale Sookdeo is a full-time classroom teacher and part-time mentor at the The Susan B. Anthony Academy in New York City.

According to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, there are four major areas to consider in gathering data on the learner: cognitive, emotional, social, and physical. Similarly, the Dunn and Dunn Learning-Style Model recognizes 21 elements that impact on students’ environmental, emotional, sociological, physiological, and psychological characteristics.

An overemphasis on one type of data has implications for the instructional decision-making process. An equal emphasis on data within and beyond schools can provide more objectivity on the instructional process and in aligning students’ needs to the appropriate instructional strategies.

This post is part of a series from National Board Certified Teachers (NBCT) who have been invited to blog about their experiences working in a priority school.

Over on the Education Writer’s Association blog Ed Beat, education reporter Matt Franck (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) recently wrote a guest post about his experience at the EWA National Seminar.

Franck attended a conference session on union-led school reform, where Director of NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign Sheila Simmons was a panelist. At the session, Frank learned about NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign and the efforts teachers unions are undertaking to be leaders in school reform and innovation. With most stories about teachers unions focusing on contracts, the good work often gets overlooked by reporters and editors.

“This may strike no one but me as a significant point. But as I assign reporters to cover various school districts, it now strikes me that they would be doing an incomplete job if they did not also get to know the union leadership. And not just in the context of contract negotiations,” Franck wrote.

Read the full blog post here.

By Edneka Haynes

Focusing on teachers as the key to their students’ academic success, the NEA Foundation has partnered up with DonorsChoose.org for an exciting project.

Issues have been identified and solutions applicable to every grade level have been created.  This partnership asks educators and supporters to choose one of two project options to model after.  The first option focuses on technology and literacy while the second option utilizes math.  Along with this amazing opportunity to be creative and get students excited about learning, the NEA Foundation has agreed to provide $1 for every $1 donated.  Teachers can also submit requests for up to $500 for materials for their classrooms.  The deadline for this opportunity is May 13th, so choose today!

Whether you’re a teacher who wants to adopt a new solution, or a supporter of public education who wants to help, click here.

By Lakisha Eason

A recent op-ed in the Boston Globe, titled “Visit Classrooms Early and Often, and Give New Tools To Principal,” examined the issue of teacher evaluations. The writer, Kim Marshall, believes that pay based on teacher evaluations could potentially be the solution to the nation’s achievement gap. However, Marshall points out that the system is flawed due to a lack of manpower to evaluate teachers, the difficulty in getting an accurate picture of day-to-day class instruction and the reality that teacher evaluations don’t reveal if students are actually learning what they are taught.

Marshall’s solution is that evaluations should be unannounced, teachers should be rated on a rubric scale in addition to their students’ gains on year-round assessments.

Many of the school improvement grants implemented in priority schools this year increase focus on teacher evaluations. What do you think about Marshall’s ideas?

By Jennifer Skellet, National Board Certified Teacher

I’ve been struggling professionally for the past few months, not with my students who are amazingly bright and have been working so hard in my class, but with the national system in place to judge me and my students’ accomplishments. Our district is in year three of Program Improvement under the ever looming NCLB legislation that says all students must meet their target growth or be proficient by the year 2014.

Jennifer Skellet is a 4th Grade teacher in Oceanside, California. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and active member of the California Teachers Association.

I believe that our students across the nation are learning so much every day. The little boy who couldn’t read fluently on Tuesday comes to class on Friday and has made a miraculous discovery—words. More importantly, he has discovered that words make sense and that he can gain important knowledge from these sacred words.

“Mrs. Skellett, did you know that Antarctica is the only continent without reptiles?” he asks.

He smiles and runs back to his desk to find more interesting facts from the book he has borrowed from the classroom library. How can the system in place measure this little boy’s progress? He is certainly not at grade level, yet has made vast improvement since his first day in fourth grade. High stakes assessments used in NCLB doesn’t measure this sort of daily improvement. At times, the efforts I make in lesson planning can feel futile. read more »

By Amy Buffenbarger

“Ok, let’s count 91 to 100 all together.”

“I want to count one to 100 by myself!”

Alex, a first-grader and Edmunds Elementary School in Des Moines, Iowa, is a refugee from the African country of Burundi. Eager to show off his knowledge, he is a perfect example of the progress English Language Learners can make in supportive environments.

English Language Learners (ELLs) are the fastest growing group of students in American public schools, with one in four students projected to be an ELL by 2020. While the largest group of ELLs is Spanish speaking, there are 460 languages represented in U.S. classrooms. A challenge facing many priority schools.

Edmunds Elementary has a large and unique ELL population. Half of the students are ELLs, and 85 percent of those students are refugees from Africa. The trauma of war at home, in addition to language barriers between teachers, students and families, is just part of the challenge in educating these students. Many of the students don’t have education records and their parents have never attended school.

With students from Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Vietnam, Mexico and more, the immense challenge doesn’t discourage Dustin Hockman, the ELL Instructor at Edmunds.

Hockman, who has been teaching at Edmunds for 2.5 years, puts in 12-hour days during the week and keeps teaching through the weekend. He has become a familiar face in Oakridge, a low-income community located next to the school where most of the students live. 
When he isn’t at school, Hockman can be found taking donated computers to his student’s homes, visiting families in the community, teaching adults about resources in Des Moines and lending a supportive ear to his students. His passion and dedication to the success of students at Edmunds is clear. read more »

By Jim Meadows, Ph.D., Washington Education Association

The Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), based at the University of Washington, recently released a paper encouraging questions about the state’s investment in National Board Certification – specifically for our most challenging schools. With state revenue forecasts down and K-12 education budget cuts looming, the CRPE report uses contradictory, limited, and flawed data to undermine one Washington State’s most successful ongoing education reform efforts.

The paper does its best to raise uncertainty about investing in accomplished teaching in high-poverty schools at a time when all things education are on the chopping block, but the attempt is built on a foundation of limited and incomplete research and there are fundamental flaws in the work when viewed alongside more comprehensive studies.

A Washington State Board of Education study from June of 2010 used a high-quality analysis of comprehensive data sets over three years (2007-8, 2008-9, & 2009-10), and included comparison groups. The study found:

• Retention rates of NBCTs working in challenging schools are the same or higher than NBCTs statewide and higher than the other teachers in challenging schools.
• NBCTs in challenging schools have stayed in their school from one year to the next at rates greater than other teachers in challenging schools, and greater than or equal to NBCTs statewide. The challenging schools bonus appears to be a significant factor in retaining NBCTs in challenging schools .
• When asked about factors contributing to staying at their school, more than three quarters (79 percent) indicated the challenging schools bonus significantly or moderately contributed to their decision to stay.
• In Year One, 89 percent of the NBCTs were already located in a challenging school, while 10 percent moved from a non-challenging school to a challenging school. In Years Two and Three, an even larger proportion of NBCTs in challenging schools stayed in the same challenging school from one year to the next (92 and 94 percent, respectively).
• The percentage of NBCTs from non-challenging schools who transferred into challenging schools in year 1, 2 and 3 was, respectively: 10.2%, 7.2% and 4.2%)

CRPE did not consider other important factors affecting teacher decisions about transferring to challenging schools, including the impact of the weakened economy, limited open teaching positions amidst massive budget cuts, and uncertainty tied to new federal and state school improvement initiatives. read more »

By Lara Searcy, National Board Certified Teacher

S p r i n g  B r e a k. There should be respite in that phrase… unless, of course, you are working on National Boards. The deadline is March 31st, and I can feel the weight of my four entry binders on my shoulders (or in the classic “teacher bag” I carry everywhere I go) and the carpal tunnel settling into my typing fingers. However, I am content knowing that I am not alone in this process.

There are thousands of other teachers working over the break to document and show how their teaching positively affects student learning. This is the purpose, the goal, and the accomplishment… and I have never been so challenged, affirmed, or mentally exhausted in my career! During this process, I have been so fortunate to have the support and help from so many teachers in my district who have already accomplished this feat; therefore, it is because of them that I can truly respect the process because they are accomplished teachers and mentors. When I put my “box” in the mail at the end of this month, I will do so with the biggest sense of accomplishment, knowing that hundreds of hours of my life are contained in it.

Lara Searcy is a high school English teacher in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. She participated in the National Board "Take One!" program in 2010, and is currently finishing full candidacy. She also adjunct teaches at Northeastern State University, specializing in Learning Styles and Technology.

But overall, in hindsight, I know it will be worth the time and effort because in showing how I impacted students, the process greatly impacted me.

So today, when my students asked me, “Mrs. Searcy, what are you doing for Spring Break?” I said “spending time with you” and laughed. Because students understand that teachers don’t go home “empty handed” at the end of the school day or before a break. They understand that the teacher will always be the student and that their homework eventually becomes my homework… and for that, my students give me respect, even when other professionals and politicians do not.

Teachers are their own unique brand and community. We immediately have empathy and stories to share. We wear our red pens like “red badges of courage.” You can spot us in a crowd by the books we carry, the hugs we receive, and the number of students who shyly approach us, asking, “Remember me?” five to twenty years later. Though I am still “young” in the profession (this is my fifth year teaching), I know that teaching is the “road less traveled,” but I like what I do and I do what I like, which has indeed “made all the difference.”

This post is part of a series from National Board Certified Teachers (NBCT) who have been invited to blog about their experiences working in a priority school.

By Greg Johnson, NEA Executive Committee

At the end of February, I visited several schools in Montgomery, Alabama, that all had one thing in common: All of the schools had received School Improvement Grants (SIG), which means they were identified as needing improvement, corrective action, or restructuring, as to enable them to make adequate yearly progress.

What struck me, however, was not one school was like another.

The schools were at various stages of transformation efforts, with varying degrees of success. Some school staff told me with pride about their efforts to collaborate with other stakeholders, while in other places, collaboration was not yet a shared value. Staff members at one school were facing the dreaded final step of school closure.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself….

My first school visit took me to a place where educators and parents were communicating well and parental involvement was up.  Prior to SIG, the Parent Teachers Association was all but dead – but now the PTA was back, and school leaders are seeing a high level of participation from parents.
read more »