August 2011 Archives

I teach.
I taught.
I will teach.

Not any more. As of today I lost two of those verb tenses. I'm down to I taught. School started yesterday and I'm not there. I am retired.

For the first time in twenty-three years, I did not carefully lay out my "back to school" outfit the night before. I did not double check the alarm clock--worried that I wouldn't get up on time. I did not have a knot in the pit of my stomach like an actor on opening night. I did not stand on the bus ramp helping students find their way to their homeroom. I did not try out how to pronounce names. I did not distribute the required course syllabus. I did not reassure any sixth graders that it's okay that they don't know how to read a schedule or open a locker. I did not monitor the back hall as the buses loaded at the end of the day. Today I did not teach. Tomorrow I will not teach. I taught for twenty-eight years. Past tense. Today was the first day that I really and truly realized that I am retired and that I teach and I will teach are no longer in my lexicon of common usage.

I'm not sorry. It was time to go. I wanted to leave while I still loved it and while students and colleagues still said, "Oh no, are you really going to retire?" I'm not through with education; there are still a lot of opportunities to work with teachers and on policy. But I am keenly aware of how much I will miss watching children evolve into young adults in my classroom and my role in cultivating their minds. I find I am asking myself, "Did it matter? Will anyone remember?"

John Steinbeck was in his 50's when,remembering his teacher, he wrote;

She left her signature upon us.
The literature of the teacher who writes on children's minds.
I've had many teachers who taught us soon forgotten things,
But only a few like her who created in me a new thing, a new attitude, a new hunger.
I suppose that to a large extent I am the unsigned manuscript of that teacher.
What deathless power lies in the hands of such a person.

From the first time I read those words, I knew that was the teacher I wanted to be. I want my former students to approach the everyday tasks of living as creative expressions rather than mundane chores. I want them to remember to appreciate the application of knowledge in living; to see food, shelter and clothing as expressions of beauty and statements of their individuality

In the grocery store, in the doctor's office, with their own children in tow, former students confront me asking

"Do you remember me?"

Yes, I do.

And I am affirmed--It mattered. I left my signature is on them in some way. But I've come to realized that while I was hoping to write myself into their lives, each of them has signed the manuscript of my career. They have done more than written their names, they have written the story of my life work.

I am no longer a classroom teacher; that chapter of my of my life is closing. But I will not linger in the past tense. There are new challenges and new opportunities. And who knows how the story will end?

Posted by Susan Graham at 9:38 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It's been a busy week here on our hill fifty miles south of the nation's capitol. Tuesday we had an earthquake. A bookcase overturned, some china was broken and some pictures fell off the wall. Thursday we had a tropical storm with 90 mile per hour winds, 1.3 inches of rain, and 40-something lightning strikes in two hours. The power went out, some good size branches came down, fire from the sky blasted the top out of one tree (which landed on the neighbor's house), and a big oak crashed down in the woods behind our house and toppled into the ravine. Friday we had to gather limbs and sticks and rake and mow up the leaves.

Yesterday Irene blew through with more rain and wind. My petunias are beat up, that nice urn on the back porch tipped over and cracked, and, for almost eight hours I went without power which meant I couldn't check my email or watch the weather channel to see if it there was still a storm outside. Thank goodness I had my iPhone, my flashlight, and a good book.

So much for disaster and hard times in my life.

But you know what? I didn't get much else done this week. It's true I had messes to clean up, but the biggest problem was my level of distraction. Of course there wasn't much we could have done about the earthquake. Who knew? One minute I was standing in a store and the next minute merchandise was rolling around and everyone was running for the parking lot where we watched out cars bouncing up and down. But the hurricane was another story. Everyone on the East Coast knew it was coming. An enormous amount of time, energy, and money was invested in preparing for disaster. After all, better to be safe than sorry and really, it was foolish not to prepare when the probability of disaster was so high. So shelters were set up, provisioned and opened, and public officials stood in front of the cameras promising safe harbor until the storm and danger had passed.

According to data released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in its annual report over the last decade there has been a significant decline in economic well-being for low income children and families. The official child poverty rate, which is a conservative measure of economic hardship, increased 18 percent between 2000 and 2009, essentially returning to the same level as the early 1990s. This increase means that 2.4 million more children are living below the federal poverty line. Data also reveals the impact of the job and foreclosure crisis on children. In 2010, 11 percent of children had at least one unemployed parent and 4 percent have been affected by foreclosure since 2007....In 2009, 42 percent of our nation's children, or 31 million, lived in families with incomes below twice the federal poverty line or $43,512/year for a family of four, a minimum needed for most families to make ends meet.

NEWS FLASH:

• When a family is struggling to put food on the table at the end of the month, there's not a lot of money laying around for uniforms, diorama or science project supplies, or AP tests.
• When a parent is trying desperately to find work or hold on to two part-time jobs to keep a family afloat, they don't have time to research multiple school options, jump through the hoops of getting their child enrolled in a "good school", provide transportation to that school or promise to volunteer at school.
• When kids don't know whether or not they'll have a home next week, they may have a hard time focusing on schoolwork - and it doesn't much matter whether a hurricane or foreclosure is the cause.

Thousands of people stayed glued to their TVs this weekend wondering if, when, and how Hurricane Irene would create disaster. The vast majority of us survived the storm with little more than some inconvenience.

Yet, almost half of our nation's children are endangered by the crisis of family instability and lack of economic security. Now that is real disaster for now and the future. It's not a possibility, it's a certainty. And it's not a temporary situation, it's a permanent one. And it will be a disaster not only for these children, but for our government, our economy and for those of us who live quite comfortably removed from the point of impact. We will all be affected.

Some stakeholders have taken the position that our schools should serve as sort of emergency shelters, with the school staff cast the role of relief workers. But school as shelter from poverty and family disruption is a solution that is neither functional nor sustainable. While a shelter may help children survive, it is unlikely that most will thrive in such a setting. Nor is it realistic to assume that a school faculty can function in the dual role of full time relief workers and full time educators without burning out after a few years. Superman is a myth. He's not coming. Teachers are people with lives and families of their own. "Sheltering in place" at school doesn't address the reality that a shelter is usually a last resort. People are hesitant to come in because they must give up their independence and take on the role of supplicant.

Most of our schools are already serving as part time emergency shelters for too many children. We feed them. We deal with their health issues. We provide safe after-school environments. We quietly see to it that they have school supplies. We "find" coats for those who don't have one. We counsel parents who need help accessing social services.

Our schools are holding their own and making progress in helping children prepare for what lies ahead. One could argue that they are doing so against almost impossible odds.
Schools have been and will continue to be shelters and safe havens for children. But it is disingenuous to pretend that they can address their primary function of education while attempting to address the dual disaster of poverty and dysfunctional family circumstances.

Last night the President addressed the lingering effects of Hurricane Irene's passage, saying, "I want people to understand that this is not over. The impacts of this storm will be felt for some time, and the recovery effort will last for weeks or longer."

Hurricane Irene was a drop in the bucket compared to our current poverty rate among our children, and if we don't do something about it, we are headed into the eye of a storm from which we may never recover as a nation.

Posted by Susan Graham at 5:43 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The business page of Sunday's paper featured a full page story of two young entrepreneurs. One of them was James Adams. I teach with his mom, he lives in my neighborhood and I've known him since he was born. I couldn't wait to talk to him.

When I finally caught up with him today, James was on the road to Tennessee. He's at the cusp of one of life's big adventures—his freshman year of college. He'll be moving into his dorm at Sewanee: The University of the South. It's one of the highly selective Mid-Atlantic liberal arts universities affectionately known as part of the Kudzu Ivy League. The rich cultural and academically demanding climate of Sewanee's very traditional university community will suit James.

But today was a big day for James in another way. His business, Southern Ties, is about to go retail and he and his partner are launching their new fall product line. At eighteen, James is an entrepreneur as well as a college student. When James first told me about his foray into clothing production, I admit that I was surprised. I asked about the inspiration and motivation behind his entry into the men's accessory market and he explained that it was a school project.

James attended the Commonwealth Governor's School, a school-within-a-school program for academically talented and gifted students, which serves about 500 students, grades 9 through 12, at five sites in three counties. His four academic core classes were taught within the Governor's School with the other three periods in host neighborhood high school. The program overview states that the Governor's School is designed to allow students to

...[A]chieve a deep conceptual understanding of a discipline as well as its integration with other disciplines...through opportunities to experiment, analyze information critically, make conjectures and argue their validity, and solve real world problems both individually and in groups....and develop technology skills for effective communication, investigation, and presentation.

James explained that each year there was an independent culminating project that was a major component of student performance. He told me about how, as a freshman, he was expected to create a project proposal. With a strong interest in architecture, his proposal was for a visionary eco-friendly high school. As a sophomore, the expectation was that he would design a project plan. His plan for a West Coast version of the Epcot Center began to require theory to mesh with the pragmatism of functionalism and development. By the time he was a junior, the real world problem chosen required a business plan. James began to refine big dreams into feasible realities with his plan for a bookstore/bistro. As a senior, James was expected to turn proposals, designs, and business plans into a product and the result was Southern Ties. I asked him why he chose this project he told me he had a growing interest in business. I asked him, as a businessman, what he expected as return on his investment of creativity, knowledge, effort and time. His answer—"I wanted an A."

James had done his research, designed his product, built a business plan and created a website and half a dozen sample ties. He was surprised when a merchant in Tennessee contacted him and ask if he could deliver two dozen ties in less than a week. His project had taken on its own life. Now, three months later and his ties are available at two stores and on-line. He and his partner have contracted out production and are planning to expand the product line. His project has become a viable small business.

We talked about the sequence of these projects and how they had funneled from big ideas to achievable realities. We laughed about the fact that he didn't learn to sew in my class because he was a band kid and only got to stay in FACS class for three weeks. His partner's mom helped them with sewing. James told me that he had to teach himself how to create his website because he had never taken a computer technology course. He was in Governor's School and there really wasn't much time electives. We agreed that it was ironic that the success of his academic program project was dependent on teaching himself skills that were available in Career and Technical Education courses available in his school.

There is an enormous amount of talk about college and career readiness in public education. I look at James and see a success story of a conceptual academic learner who has grounded his abstract understandings with concrete applications. He distilled big ideas into real life solutions. But there are other students who process learning the other way around. Only after they acquire and concrete skill are they interested in exploring the academic background that increase their expertise. Maybe, for these students, success lies in using practical skills as the foundation for expanding learning.

In the discussion of college and career readiness, education stakeholders sometimes get caught up in determining which ought to come first, preparation for college or preparation for career. That's a chicken or the egg argument. James found success by distilling his big picture knowledge into a small business action plan. Another student might expand his knowledge of physics and math to enhance his mechanical drafting skills. Both are viable paths can to college and career readiness, both are valuable and both should be offered as equally desirable options to all students.

Posted by Susan Graham at 2:14 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

As a Family and Consumer Science teacher in a public middle school, I'm not sure whether to be mad, sad, or glad. It seems that in The Education Review edition of The Washington Post Magazine my content area is one of the three feature stories. In Learning for Life, I read that

Sewing. Woodworking. Etiquette. Personal finance. Cooking. All are valuable life skills.

Yes they are! That's why they are all, except for the woodworking, part of my middle school Family and Consumer Science curriculum.
curriculum.

We sew. Not because these kids will be whipping up their own wardrobes, but so they can participate in a workplace simulation where they are expected to demonstrate and assess their management of time, resources, equipment, and interpersonal workplace skills. We sew so that they can apply math skills, read and interpret instructions, develop spatial concepts critical to engineering and see how simple machines (gears, levers, wedges, pulleys) have been employed to produce results. Oh, and we also talk about the economic benefits and drawbacks related to the outsourcing clothing manufacturing

strong>We learn etiquette; which is primarily about the mores which allow some people to move easily through society and the world of work and creates barriers for others. As assistant manager for the day, my students learn to answer the phone with "Good afternoon, this is Mrs. Graham's classroom." But we also learn manners, which is a more complex idea of how we related to our classmates, our families, and our larger community. Etiquette is about the rules. Etiquette is about knowing the appropriate responses under specific conditions. Manners is about the mindset of thinking about the comfort and convenience of those around us. It may very well be one of life's most important lessons.

We learn personal finance. My sixth graders can write a check and balance their checkbooks and give a clear explanation of the difference between debit and credit. My seventh graders can comparison shop balancing quality against price to make informed decisions within a limited budget. My eighth graders set up ratios to determine unit prices.

We cook. And while my students love to cook and eat, that's not enough. In addition to technical writing skills and applied math skills, we explore the connection of science to everyday life; baking bread products using physical, chemical and biological processes and analyzing heat energy transfer on the range and wave theory with the microwave. We learn about nutrition as we interpret food labels. We explore the Columbian Exchange that introduced potatoes, tomatoes and peppers to Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Sewing. Woodworking. Etiquette. Personal finance. Cooking. All are valuable life skills. Few are taught in school....But there is an alternative industry of classes for these non-academic skills that kids are expected to pick up by the time they finish high school.

Could the idea that academic knowledge is separate and apart from application to real life problems be a pretty obvious explanation of why we have trouble engaging all students? Wouldn't it make sense to conceptual knowledge and application together seamlessly?

And, since these are >"skills that kids are expected to pick up by the time the finish high school" aren't they just as important as maybe that fourth year of higher math or the third year of foreign language? Those matter, but which is more critical--calculus or cooking dinner?

The classes come in the form of after-school lessons and summer camps and provide much peace of mind to parents....

But if this is "an alternative industry" doesn't that indicate that it is going to be accessible only to those children whose parents can afford the luxury of after-school classes and summer camps? Since we know that poor nutrition and obesity, lack of soft workplace skills, and the constraints of surviving on a low income in home situations where parents are unable to provide learning support impede the progress of children of poverty, wouldn't it make sense to teach these basic life skills to all of our children? By isolating this learning in the industry of after-school and summer camp, haven't we also limited enrollment to those children whose parents have the resources to identify options, transport kids, and pick up the bill? As a society, wouldn't we all have a little more "peace of mind" if we new that all our children had the "non-academic skills that kids are expected to pick up by the time they finish high school"?

The classes come in the form of after-school lessons and summer camps, and provide much peace of mind to parents who wonder why home economics and shop classes have been phased out of so many school systems.

The truth is that we all know children and their parents want these learning opportunities and that we ought to be teaching skills for living well. But the harder truth is that this kind of learning experience just isn't as cost effective as traditional classroom instruction. Building and equipping a food preparation lab demands more resources than an empty classroom with 30 student desks and a whiteboard. Class size matters when fire, knives and scissors are in use. You can't teach cooking without a budget for consumables.

We can't give our own children every educational opportunity we'd like. Right or wrong, if we can't do that for our own family, we're not going to do it for other people's children. So we are faced with tough consumer decisions. We will have to determine what is essential for a life well lived and what is enrichment for personal and professional advancement.

I would argue that those life skills that prepare us for daily living are more than just icing on the cake.

Posted by Susan Graham at 4:55 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend