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School nurses have been hit by layoffs as hard as anyone working in education, but the quick-thinking and arguably heroic actions of one nurse may end up saving a few others their jobs.

Mary Pappas, the nurse at the 2,700-student St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens, New York, is credited with detecting the first case of swine flu in New York State, according to The New York Times. Early Thursday morning, a handful of students came by her office with flu symptoms, and by 10 a.m. dozens were streaming in with sore throats and fevers. She recalls thinking, "Wow, we have something going on here."

Pappas called Dr. Gary Krigsman, a supervising doctor at the New York City Health Department, on his cell phone to report that students were falling ill. The call prompted the health department to send samples from sick students to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta for testing. By Sunday night, New York State had confirmed eight swine flu cases.

In the last few days, Pappas has been interviewed on the radio and praised by the National Association of School Nurses. She’s quickly gaining fame among nurses nationwide.

"I don’t feel like I’m a hero,” said Pappas, “But I feel like I have very good instincts, based on my experience, and that’s why I’m here."

Despite her close encounters with the virus, Pappas has remained in good health.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 3:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While New Hampshire Teacher of the Year candidate Christina Hamilton may have dodged layoffs (despite a very close call), the Teacher of the Year award recipient at a California high school is not likely to be as lucky, according to the Orange County Register.

The 56-year-old veteran English teacher Phil Hohensee, known for his engaging yet tough teaching style, was beckoned out of his 45-day-old retirement in 2007 to rejoin the staff at Cypress High School in Anaheim, Calif. "The guy is just a phenomenal teacher," said Cypress High principal Ben Carpenter. "He teaches from bell to bell."

"He'll push you until you get it," senior Chelsey Crofts said. "He was my favorite teacher right off the bat." Heeding his call to “Work first. Play, maybe!" Hohensee’s students consistently scored among the highest in the school on standardized tests, Carpenter reported.

The school’s Parent-Teacher-Association awarded Hohensee the Teacher of the Year honor last week, after weighing votes from students. Yet having returned to the school two years prior, Hohensee was targeted in layoffs affecting teachers who’d been in the district for fewer than three years.

The students and staff at Cypress Hill agree that letting go of the renowned teacher would be a mistake, but Hohensee is looking for the bright side of his impending dismissal. "It makes leaving a little easier," he noted.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

In an attempt to motivate students for standardized testing, administrators at Laguna Creek High School in Sacramento, Calif. held racially segregated pep rallies, reports the Sacramento Bee.

The "Heritage Assemblies" were designed to aid teachers in talking about test scores, which are measured in racial subsets, without making any one group feel singled out. Students could attend any of the five rallies but the rooms were allocated by race: African Americans in the gym, Latinos in the multipurpose room, Pacific Islanders in the theater, and so on.

"Is it racist? I don't believe it is," said Laguna Creek principal Doug Craig.

However, the school-wide segregation was troubling for many parents and students. Tracy and Herbert Houston, a mixed-race couple, were angry that their child was asked to choose. "My son texted me and asked me which one to go to. He didn't know where to go because I've never raised him to be black or white. …I tell my children they are part of the human race."

Laguna Creek 9th grader Kevion Claiborne said, "We should all go together. It doesn't matter if you are black, white, or any race."

Race-based assemblies are becoming more common in California schools, according to Sharroky Hollie, a professor of teacher education at California State University, Dominguez Hills. "I think schools are trying really hard, but not having success," Hollie said. "...they are not addressing the students' culture instructionally, instead waiting until two weeks before the test and doing heritage rallies."

Update 4/28/09: California educator Anthony Cody, in reaction to this story, warns of "stereotype threat."

Posted by Liana Heitin at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

A 10-year-old Pennsylvania boy who wanted to play school managed to order a batch of the state’s standardized assessment tests, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. State education officials were apparently in disbelief. “Only the school district’s test coordinator can order tests,” said the State Education Department’s spokesperson. “It’s a very secure system.”

Well, maybe not: By reports, the boy simply faxed an order to the test-production company from his house, using two special codes he got from the education department’s Web site. The tests, however, were mailed to his school district’s warehouse rather than to the boy’s home—a measure that officials say validates the system’s safeguards.

Officials in the boy’s district are confident that he was simply exercising his imagination and not attempting to cheat. “He purposely requested the tests to come on the last day [of testing] because he didn’t want to see the test before he took it,” said Rebecca Costello, director of pupil services for the Hempfield School District. “He wants to be a teacher. He wanted to play school.”

In any case, Costello added, the education department has indicated “they will look at [their] Web site because they may have an issue.”

Meanwhile, we are left to wonder: Does it say something about schools today that a kid who wants to play teacher thinks he needs to have authentic standardized tests on hand?

Update 4/27/09: Nancy Flanagan, who has taught hundreds of 5th grade boys over the course of her career, explains that there are other possible ways to interpret this story.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Last week, New Hampshire 8th grade teacher Christina Hamilton was nominated for state Teacher of the Year. Unfortunately, she was also laid off by her school.

Hamilton was notified on April 10th that her position, along with six others at Hampton Academy, would be eliminated due to the school’s proposed change from the middle school to junior high model, reports Seacoastonline.com. On Monday, she was one of 35 nominees honored at a Teacher of the Year ceremony held by the New Hampshire Department of Education.

Hamilton was actually not on the initial list of cuts at Hampton. However, after further review, the school board voted to rehire another teacher who had been in the district longer and informed Hamilton she would be dismissed.

"[The initial layoff choice] was an oversight by the decision makers," said Kevin Fleming, chairman of the teachers’ union. "Even though [Hamilton] is recognized as a candidate for Teacher of the Year, they have to go on seniority."

"I think the mistake underscores and highlights how hastily the decisions were made," remarked the president of the teachers’ union, Andy Gushee.

The union plans to challenge Hamilton’s layoff and several others, claiming that the district cannot justify the need for a reduction in force. School officials declined to comment, according to Seacoastonline.

Meanwhile, Hamilton is still in the running for the 2010 Teacher of the Year.

4/24/09 UPDATE: Following protests from hundreds of parents and teachers, the school board voted to recall the layoffs of five teachers at Hampton Academy, including Christina Hamilton, reports Seacoastonline.com.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

A heart-wrenching piece in the New York Times tells the story of 18-year-old Tiffany Clay from Newark, Ohio, a straight-A student and gifted violinist whose ambitions are being stymied by the dreary economy.

As Clay’s high school music teacher explains in the article’s accompanying video, "Tiffany is very, very talented, incredibly smart. If I could uproot her and put her somewhere else, she’d probably be going to Harvard or Yale on a full scholarship."

As it is, Clay, who moved out of the house at age 16 due to family conflicts and now shares an apartment with her unemployed boyfriend, is focused on a need for financial security. Currently, she works 30 to 40 hours a week making minimum wage as a Sonic Drive-Thru carhop to pay her $345 monthly rent and expenses. "I’ve struggled my whole life,” she says on camera. “And I don’t want to have to do that anymore."

She dreams of becoming an orchestra director, much like the teacher who inspires her, but has been discouraged by the fact that the music program at her high school—despite recently tying for runner-up in a prestigious competition at the Lincoln Center in New York City—may be slashed from the budget next year. "I understand that if I choose to work in a school . . . and something happens, the music teachers are the first to go."

Instead, Clay has decided to pursue a more stable career path: nursing. "Everybody gets sick," she explains.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here’s an interesting class project: Rebecca Chapman’s 4th grade students in Texas recently sent letters of support that brought tears to the eyes of AIG employees in Connecticut and London, according to The Washington Post. Yup, the same AIG that incurred global scorn recently for dolling out millions in bonuses after receiving a government bailout.

Chapman gives her students daily economics lessons. Last month, she used the populist outrage over the AIG bonuses as a teachable moment. First she asked her students to pretend they were the tax payers funding the bailouts. They got riled up.

Then she posed a question from another side of the issue. "What if you were an AIG employee?,” she asked. “Imagine if you had not been involved in the deals that ruined the company but were left to clean up the mess … What if your family had received death threats?”

A boy in the class suggested that they write letters to let AIG know “it will be okay.”

According to the Post, the students “adorned their messages with peace symbols and smiley faces, rainbows and vivid red hearts.” They included messages like "Hi AIG. Not all of USA hates you," "We know you're not villains," and "Keep working hard, dudes!”

Chapman mailed the cards to AIG, where they were well received.

AIG Employee Patrick O'Neill wrote back saying, "To have reached out to us in such a heartfelt way is really a testament to your individual and collective humanity."

Posted by Josh Cohen at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A new Vanderbilt University study, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, finds that students learn best when taught the concepts behind math problems rather than specific procedures on how to solve them, reports ScienceDaily.

"When you just show [students] how to do the problem they can solve it, but not necessarily understand what it is about. With conceptual instruction, they are able to come up with the procedure on their own," said Percival Matthews, Peabody doctoral candidate and co-author of the study.

In math classes now, many teachers demonstrate solving a problem and then have students practice similar problems—without ever providing a big picture explanation of the mathematical theory.

The researchers also found that having students explain their work offers no discernible improvement in learning. The study suggests that the benefits of self-explanation, as determined in previous studies, are due to giving students additional time to think.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It’s getting harder and harder to fail in Texas. According to The Dallas Morning News, a growing number of Texas school districts are prohibiting teachers from giving grades lower than a 50, 60, and sometimes even a 70. This prompted state legislators to create a bill that, if passed, would prohibit the practice of giving minimum grades to failing students.

Republican Senator Jane Nelson, a former teacher who introduced the bill, said the practice of putting a minimum on student grades encourages students to “game” the system.

"Kids are smart and can figure it out," she said. "A student in one of these districts with a minimum grade of 70 can sit in class and say, 'I don't have to do any homework, I don't have to answer any questions on tests, and they still have to give me a 70 no matter what.'"

According to the Morning News, Senate Education Committee Chairman Florence Shapiro supports the legislation along with all of the state’s major teacher organizations.

Critics of the bill say it would both infringe on local control of schools and do away with a built-in safety net for struggling students.

"There are students who make mistakes and wind up with poor grades in one grading period during the semester,” said Leslie James, assistant superintendent for policy and planning in the Fort Worth school district. “If they are not allowed to turn it around, it can become hopeless for the student. They need an opportunity to bounce back.”

Posted by Josh Cohen at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Schools across the country have stepped up campaigns against violence and bullying by incorporating lessons about empathy into their curricula, reports the New York Times.

In Scarsdale, an affluent and high-achieving school district in New York, for example, students discuss qualities of empathy in the relationships among Shakespearean characters and assess local wheelchair access to relate to people with physical disabilities. "As a school, we’ve done a lot of work with human rights," said Michael McDermott, the principal at Scarsdale Middle School. "But you can’t have kids saving Darfur and isolating a peer in the lunchroom. It all has to go together." This year, the school has spent $10,000 on empathy workshops and has seen a significant drop in incidents of bullying and harassment on buses.

However, some question whether empathy can—or should—be taught in schools. Michael Petrilli, vice president for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, noted that although teaching empathy sounds uncontroversial, "there’s a laundry list of seemingly important activities that, when added together, crowd out the academic mission of our schools."

Deborah Kasak, executive director of the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, said that although the empathy lessons may seem "artificial or hokey" at first, they can create a more positive school culture over time. "I don’t know if you can teach everybody to be empathetic," she acknowledged, "but you can raise awareness."

Posted by Liana Heitin at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Teach for America is coming to Beantown—and the Boston Teachers Union isn’t happy about it, reports The Boston Globe.

With layoffs of current teachers pending, the union is objecting to the placement of 20 new teachers from the esteemed recruitment program, which puts high-achieving recent college graduates into public school classrooms after five weeks of intensive training.

The union's president, Richard Stutman, sent a letter to TFA saying, "We already have hundreds of good, 'surplus' teachers . . . By coming here, you will only make matters worse."

However, school officials claim they will put the recruits into high-needs slots that laid- off teachers cannot fill for lack of proper state certification. "We absolutely do not plan to bring recruits into program areas where we would have layoffs," said William Horwath, Boston’s assistant superintendent for human resources. TFA corps members, though not fully certified themselves, often enter with a bachelor’s degree in their assigned subject and having passed a state content exam.

Union members would rather see teachers who are losing their jobs re-trained and certified to fill the open placements. "We are not disturbed but furious that the department would lay off teachers with excellent credentials and bring in people with no experience," Stutman said. He added the caveat that his objections to the program were only a result of the economic climate.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Dallas Independent School District is trying desperately to get its best teachers into its worst classrooms, according to The Dallas Morning News. In 2007, the district offered teachers $6,000 to make the move. The incentive only culled about 65 teachers, so this year they’re offering $10,000. There is no official count of how many teachers have taken the money this year, but the Morning News reports that “a review of district staffing records shows that the number probably was not significantly higher.”

According to Dallas teachers’ union representative Dale Kaiser, teachers’ reluctance to move isn’t necessarily an issue of money. Issues of campus discipline and “chaotic learning environments” coupled with teachers’ fear of getting fired for poor test performance, is keeping teachers away.

"The district is putting teachers' heads on the chopping block," said Kaiser, president of the NEA-Dallas teacher's group, in the Morning News. "Once discipline breaks down [on a campus], it's over. Teachers who are in good working situations now look at that and ask themselves, 'Why would I risk it?'"

District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa has acknowledged those fears and hopes to address them by offering teachers who switch a two-year contract that guarantees they can’t be fired for low test scores during that time.

If financial incentives don’t work out, the district is considering simply reassigning teachers as needed, something that’s seen as unpopular on all sides. “Forced placement [of teachers into low-performing schools] is tough, but I'm not going to rule it out," Hinojosa said. "We need to get a whole lot more great applicants" at those campuses.

Posted by Josh Cohen at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)