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If, with each generation, the bar that’s set for a child’s welfare is raised just a bit higher, today’s parents may have nowhere to put it—at least in the Atlanta region. “We are living in a society where the parents want to create a perfect world for their children,” says one public school principal there. Hard to argue when you consider the Jacksons, who moved to a specific neighborhood so that 6-year-old Will could attend the same elementary school his mother, Alicia, did. The Jacksons then went teacher-shopping at Sarah Smith Elementary, looking for someone like Mom—firm yet loving. “He is just one of those that you just have to calmly correct,” Alicia Jackson explained. “If you yell or get frustrated it hurts his feelings.” Picky? Yes. But Craig Barlow, principal of Riverside Elementary School, said he’s actually been asked to assure some parents that their kids’ teachers won’t get pregnant. They’re the exception, because Barlow’s come up with a system that, last year, resulted in just five complaints among 1,000-plus parents. He has them fill out forms indicating kids’ strengths and weaknesses. Those forms are fed into a computer that suggests likely student-teacher matches, which are further tweaked by parent and educator comments. If a parent names a specific teacher, that teacher is eliminated from the list. But Barlow’s system isn’t foolproof. “Sometimes,” he explained, “we will have people who really don’t want ‘Miss Smith,’ so they will write her name.”

Posted by Rich Shea, Teacher Magazine at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Education officials in Pinellas County, Florida and across Virginia have been trying to answer some very difficult questions: At what point in an avian flu pandemic would they close schools? Should schools be used as temporary health clinics, or even as orphanages? What about morgues? Could the districts offer online learning in the meantime? And how would schools communicate with parents? The prospect of a pandemic—which experts say could occur in the near future—is a topic few people enjoy discussing, especially on a clear summer day. But a particularly virulent strain of bird flu, known as H5N1, has infected humans in at least 10 countries since 2003, and federal officials have published checklists to help school districts across the country prepare for an outbreak. If symptoms appear in Pinellas County, teachers will instruct students to cough and sneeze into their elbows instead of their hands when there’s no tissue nearby, and students and school employees will be required to wash their hands three times each day. In Virginia, the state superintendent asked school officials in May to coordinate emergency plans with local health departments. “It’s coming,” said one Virginia emergency planner. “It’s just a question of when.”

Posted by Denise Kersten Wills at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Want to help your students remember tough concepts? Have you tried bustin’ some rhymes, professor? Alex Kajitani, an 8th grade algebra teacher at Grant Middle School, in Escondido, California, swears it works—at least for him. Donning a pair of sunglasses and an oversized necklace, Kajitani performs math-infused rap songs in class. His piece on the decimal point, for example, gets started like this:

“Now what in the world is that itty-bitty dot? Yo, I just can't remember, and it's making me distraught. I saw it in the price of the item I just bought. It's the decimal point, yeah, now you're gettin' hot!”

Kajitani says the idea began as a kind of lark, but then he noticed his students were actually singing his songs. “Sure enough, their tests scores started improving, and they seemed to start understanding the material I’d covered,” he said. Inspired by his success in class, Kajitani recently recorded a CD called “The Rappin’ Mathematician, Volume 1,” which has apparently found its way into other schools and some students’ homes (and at least one mom’s car). Unorthodox as it may sound, Kajitani’s method makes perfect sense to some, building on a rich tradition of classroom mnemonic tricks. “A lot of math is memorization,” said one of Kajitani colleagues. “Those kind of little catchy phrases, they stick, and that’s the first step.”

Posted by at 6:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Anyone game for a longer school year? An op-ed published on washingtonpost.com argues that, for many children, summer vacation doesn’t make a whole lot of sense anymore. Author Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, says the extended summer break is a relic of the 19th century—“when academic achievement mattered less, an absence of air conditioning or modern hygiene turned crowded schools into health risks, and children had moms who were home every day.” Fast forward 100-plus years: Students must now be prepared to compete for “brain-based” jobs in the global economy, and most don’t have a stay-at-home parent to look after them during the lazy days of summer. (Not to mention that schools now have running water and air conditioning—at least in theory.) Hess says that the summer break is most detrimental to low-income kids, pointing to “scores of studies” showing that “these students lose significant academic ground in the summertime.” His solution: More schools should be encouraged to operate through the summer in communities that need it. The change, he says, would have the added benefit of increasing teachers’ salaries. What it would do to their career longevity is another question.

Posted by at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (34)

Next time you’re giving an exam, just to be safe, you may want to check whether any of your students’ hairstyles look … different. Police in Hanoi, Vietnam, have uncovered a scheme in which more than 20 students wore intricately wired wigs and shirts to cheat on their college entrance exams. The students were allegedly supported by a cheating “ring” to which they paid as much as 50 million dong ($3,125) for equipment, a training course, and, ultimately, wired-in answers. A weekend raid on the ring, according to police, netted a bounty of cell phones, earphones, and smart cards, as well as eight shirts and five wigs. A police officer noted that the wigs were only used in cases where the students’ hair was too short to cover the earphone. If it sounds like the students were acting out of desperation, that’s because they probably were: Only about 10 percent of students in Vietnam are admitted into universities.

Posted by at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It’s hard not to think that Robb Hedges is somehow emblematic of the kind of extreme but quiet dedication exhibited by many teachers. Hedges, a middle school science teacher, is the 2006 Teacher of Year in Carmel, Indiana—and he wakes up at 2 a.m. every day to deliver newspapers. Hedges says taking a second job was the only way he could continue teaching and support his family, which includes two sets of twins, ages 6 and 8. After the younger twins were born, Hedges gave in and took a job in finance for a couple of years. (“My first thought was that I’m going to end up sending four kids through college and paying for three weddings,” he recalls.) When he found out his sister-in-law had cancer, however, he had a realization that life was too short to ignore his true calling. Perhaps not surprisingly, he has a reputation as an engaging and passionate educator whom kids love. “He makes everything relevant to kids and makes science so interesting that kids who may not have had a propensity for science leave his room saying that was their favorite class,” said Steve Stephanoff, the human resources director for the Carmel district. True to form, Hedges said that winning teacher of the year was “humbling.” But he also acknowledged, “It makes getting up at 2 a.m. a lot easier.”

Posted by at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

English is not an easy language to learn. Linguists say there are more than 40 distinct sounds in English that can be spelled out in 400 different ways. It's no wonder that shorthand spellings like "thru," "U" and "thanx" are becoming standard in e-mails and text messages. And that kind of spontaneous language degeneration is why a small but persistent group of simplified-spelling advocates wants to create a new, mostly phonetic, system of written English. They argue that both children learning English as their native tongue and second-language learners would have fewer linguistic headaches and could master the language more quickly if we got rid of the maddening unreliabilities that, for example, make "tomb," "bomb" and "comb" all sound different. The idea isn't new. One hundred years ago, President Teddy Roosevelt used simplified spellings in his presidential correspondence, and Andrew Carnegie created the Simplified Spelling Board to encourage more logical spelling. The Chicago Tribune even used some phonetic spellings in its published articles for 40 years. But experts like education professor Donald Bear argue that phonetic spelling strips words of their roots, and therefore much of their historical meaning. "Students come to understand how meaning is preserved in the way words are spelled," he said. And aside from meaning, the public just doesn't seem to like strange-looking phonetic spellings. "I think that the average person simply did not see this as a needed change," one librarian said. Stoodents, bak to thoez speling bookz.

Posted by at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)