Ode to the Elementary Teacher

Okay, so it's not really an ode. More like some post of appreciation- to some of the best teachers I know. The ones who helped me raise my son. I have a deep appreciation for the content specialists of secondary school. I work in one now with some very special people, and I hold dear some of the most amazing women who I write and share with, who are high school and middle school teachers. But the very reasons I was ready to say goodbye to teaching in elementary, are the very reasons that make elementary teachers so special.

I spent some time tonight reading a book about teaching. I have a meeting with a PLC (professional learning community) tomorrow where we'll be discussing the latest chapter. The chapter is about building character and trust, and it made me think back on some of my best and worst teaching moments. As I reflected on my teaching experiences, I got to thinking about all of the amazing teachers my son has had over the years, and the lessons we learned from them as a family. Not discounting the impact of his middle and high school teachers- some of them incredible, others not so much- his elementary school teachers were special. There's just something about the elementary school teacher. Having been one for almost 10 of my teaching years, I can see the wonder from both perspectives. A mom away from home, a caretaker for most of a young child's waking hours, the elementary teacher spends more time with the children in her class than any other person in their lives during those years. And those kiddos... it often feels like they are your own, and when my son was with these women, I never worried about his well-being.

Teachers today face criticism and cynicism, people shame them in one breath and praise them in another. They are beat down, worn out, and they still come back for more everyday. Today, I'd like to pay homage to the ones who helped shape my kid. Here they are and the lessons we've taken from our time with them.

Angie Calvacca, known lovingly to her pre-schoolers as Miss Angie, was my son's Pre-k and Jr. K teacher. Angie worked as a pre-school teacher while she finished her teaching degree/certification, and she was lucky enough to have my blabber mouth Jacob for two years! When he and several of his peers finished pre-k and did not make the age cut-off for kindergarten, our private school decided to group them together for a Jr. K class. They were in-betweeners, and since Angie did so great with them for pre-k, they could have easily hung with the "big boys" in kindergarten. No complaints here, because we all know boys can use a little extra time to mature. By the time Jacob had spent the first year with Angie, he was practically reading already. Another year with her and it made kindergarten a snap! Angie laughed with my kid so much, he just loved spending the day with her. She was the first one outside our family to point out to me that Jacob's sense of humor at such an early age was a sign of high intelligence. She wasn't kidding! I was lucky enough to have Angie work for me later on when I became a principal. She's still teaching elementary school in Broward County, and I bet she is as beloved there as she was when Jacob had her. Thank you for a great beginning Angie.

Mrs. Catena at Citrus Cove Elementary was the first of Jacob's two kindergarten teachers. We relocated twice within a year because of some things that went on in our jobs and with extended family, so Jacob started there in Boynton Beach. It was his first experience with public school, and I remember hearing at open house that Palm Beach County was the largest growing per capita district in the state. It made me a little nervous, but Jacob took to Mrs. Catena right away (I don't remember her 1st name but she's still at Citrus Cove!). He only attended school there for the first half of the year, but I remember two things about her. The first is that she insisted Jacob be referred for gifted screening (Angie was right). The second is that she taught me to talk to Jacob about tact. She approached me in the carpool line sometime late in November to inform me that Jacob, a Jewish kid who happened to also be pretty intelligent and insightful, was insisting to one of his classmates that there was no such thing as Santa Claus. I was so embarrassed! Imagine, the Jewish kid in class, spoiling Christmas for all his friends. In the car on the way home he insisted, "Mommy, I think that parents are trying to trick their kids and that they are really the ones buying the presents." That was a tough lesson for me and for him, and Mrs. Catena handled it with such grace.

The second half of the year, I became principal at a private school and we gave Jacob the choice to stay or move with me. He stayed for a little while and then decided to move with me to Chesterbrook Academy, where he had his second kindergarten teacher, Donna Persner. Two very important things stand out to me about Mrs. Persner. She was a huge self-esteem builder. She referred to her classroom as a community of friends and personally greeted every child at the door, with "Good morning, Beautiful," or "Good morning, Handsome." She has a very strong sense of classroom citizenship and community. The second, and very important thing, was she taught Jacob it was okay to make mistakes. He was quite the perfectionist (still is in many ways), right down to getting angry if one of his shoes was untied. But where it really surfaced was in the classroom. He would erase and erase so hard that he would tear his papers and then pitch a fit. What did Mrs. Persner do? She took all the erasers off his pencils! He was only allowed to use pencils with no eraser, and she told him, "If you make a mistake, just put a single line through it a move on." That was a tough adjustment, but eventually it worked! Something so simple, but so important for an intelligent 6 year old who could not stand imperfection.

First grade brought the beloved, Ms. Gary Owens. Ms. Owens was all about bringing out the creativity in the busy little children in her care. She played the guitar in class, sang with the kids, did tons of hands-on projects, and seemed to have a true love for young children. They would make up silly songs, have creative ways to remember important aspects of a lesson. I remember she taught them to call bananas, ba-nay-nays so they would always remember how to spell it. They would sing that song, Apples and Bananas and all the kids would say ba-nay-nays. For months and months, Jacob would say things like, "Ms. Owens said..." or "Ms. Owens has a song about that." First grade was F-U-N!

TIMELINE INTERUPTION:
Oh boy, second grade started off rough. We pulled Jacob out of the private school because we were getting ready to move and I was no longer working there. Knowing we would be leaving Labor Day weekend, we didn't want to start him in the school and then pull him out 2 weeks later. But, legally we had to have him enrolled in school so we registered him at the local elementary school a few blocks from the house we were living in prior to moving. Not getting into details, we went to open house, Jacob started school, and in the first week we pulled him out and just kept him home with us until the move. His teacher was going to be out the entire first week because she was taking her son to college. There was a sub, and we were far from impressed with the school. I'll leave it at that.

Labor Day weekend came quickly and we moved to Lehigh Acres where out realtor told us, "You just have to try to get into Mirror Lakes. Don't be surprised if you don't get in because my daughter is on a waiting list." For readers who don't know, our school district is a school choice district, which means you select your choices by rank and cross your fingers you get the school you want. Where you live has only a minor impact on where you're placed. Lucky us, he got in. MLE was a top choice school in our zone when we moved here, and we were pleased it all worked out.

Second grade at Mirror Lakes was interesting. Classes were grouped based on abilities and levels- it was the time when the standardized testing movement was gaining major ground. Having been in a private school the two years prior, I never realized the intensity of it. But, they did placement testing with Jacob and he was put in the "high class," with none other than Mrs. Kimberly Schmidt. New to the area, and commuting out of county for work, I was not particularly involved in the school community. Jacob was doing well academically, and struggling with little boy behaviors like staying in his seat and not talking. Why I say little boy behaviors I don't know, because I had the same problems as a kid! He was refusing to do handwriting papers and pulling apart erasers into itty bitty pieces. I found this all out on a phone call with Mrs. Schmidt one night, when I was home alone with Jacob because my husband was working back on the east coast. We were talking through the issues when I heard a blood curdling scream from the bathroom! Jacob had slipped in the shower and busted his chin on the bathtub. There was blood everywhere and I was freaking out. We were barely there a couple of months and I had no idea where the closest hospital was. Mrs. Schmidt tried to help but wasn't sure where to send me so we hung up and I dealt with it. She knew he likely would not be in school the next day, or would at least be late.

Strangely, that night opened up communication between Kim and me. Soon after, she found out I was an educator. We talked more- about Jacob and about school. We are still friends today. But two major things stand out with me about Kim. She was(still is) an excellent teacher. She takes her work very seriously and holds very close to her the responsibility for teaching the kids in her care. I've said this many times before to Kim and to others, Jacob learned from her that a teacher can be strict and consistent with expectations, and still be nice and caring to her students. She struck the perfect balance in my eyes. He understood from her that she loved him and could laugh and have fun with him, without lowering her expectations for his academics or his behavior. The second important thing she did for him was make him feel included. Since we moved to the west coast of Florida, Jacob has almost always been the only Jewish kid in his class. Often, he is the only Jewish kid in his school. Mrs. Schmidt's husband is Jewish and she was always sensitive to the various holidays, and once even invited her husband in during a craft day to do a Chanukah activity with Jacob while the others were doing something Christmas. I don't expect all of his teachers to do that kind of thing, but for an 8 year old new to the community, it was a really nice gesture.

3rd grade was different. Jacob switched schools to go into a full time gifted program, and his teacher was lovely. However, she confided in me she was sort of forced to teach gifted because she had the endorsement and the principal asked her to do it. She was having a rough year personally, as her husband had suddenly died. Jacob didn't really like the school, and I wasn't happy either. Nothing personal, but nothing really stands out as special. I felt badly to hear a year or two ago that she passed as well.

Then there was 4th grade. Who would have known at the time that Mrs. Lisa Van Houten would later become my teammate! After getting over the giggles for his teacher having the same name as Millhouse, Jacob had an exciting year in Mrs. Van Houten's class! I have got to hand it to her. She had a class of, I think it was 27 or 28 of the highest performing 4th graders in the school. At least 25% of them were in the gifted program, and holy moly, was that class full. When you walked into the room the brains and personalities were larger than life. I don't know how she did it. But she taught all those kids to write, even Jacob who hated to write passed his state writing exam. What I remember most about Jacob's time in her class? She accepted him for who he was and embraced his personality, never trying to tame him into something he wasn't. I think she was even more forgiving than I was. I could go on about Lisa as a colleague because two years after Jacob was in her class, I joined the 4th grade team at MLE. Lisa is somewhat quiet and unassuming, but she strives for excellence and takes to heart her charge of turning 4th graders into authors.

Finally, there was 5th grade. The last year of elementary school, of the self-contained classroom in which students have a home away from home. This was when I would need someone to carry the torch Kimberly Schmidt lit. I needed Jacob to be held to high standards and strict guidelines, because middle school was going to be tough, and boy was it! Jacob had two teachers, one for math and science, the other for language arts and social studies. Ms. Alexis Androsko, who the next year got married and became Mrs. Gobel, was the math and science teacher. New to teaching and quite young, Jacob related to her sense of wonder about science, and her interest in his music and movie interests. This would later become a huge part of how Jacob related (and still does) to teachers. Language arts and social studies was Mrs. Michelle Joyce. Michelle loved out of the box teaching, and she had a reputation for being allowed to try things because the principal trusted her. Parents often requested to have their kids put in her class, and I was no exception. Michelle could banter with kids and hug on them one minute and back them into line with a death stare the next. Like Kim, she had a skillful way of balancing the fun and the serious. She did Colonial America simulation activities, but also celebrated National Cookie Day. Admittedly, we would hear around school from kids who said she was really strict, and I asked Jacob after the first week of 5th grade what he thought. He reported back that those kids must behave badly in class because he didn't see it. Tuche, Jacob. Michelle was good at reworking seating arrangements to prevent over-socialization but also to teach kids who didn't get along how to tolerate each other. Though he wasn't always an angel, Michelle appreciated Jacob's wit and allowed him to be funny until he crossed the line. Then, she'd just back his little butt up!

All of these women, truly amazing. All of them, still teaching. Never once did any of them over-do the his mom is a teacher card. Even when I worked in the same school, I would tell them I'm not the mom who will stop by 100 times a day because I work in the same building. You'll only hear from me if it's a necessity or because you've asked for something. I held true to that, I was hands off. they were all fair and professional and never treated Jacob differently because his mom was a teacher or the principal.

Elementary teachers are surrogate mommies. They know what bus their students ride, what allergies they have, whether they bring lunch or buy lunch. They often know what their students' favorite colors are, what their favorite singers or bands are, and who their favorite authors are. They know whether they dance or play soccer and how to comfort them when they're not feeling well. Sometimes they're knocked for not being content specialists, and I only have one response to that. They are content specialists, they are childhood specialists. They balance caring with academic learning. They balance behavior expectations with academic expectations. They balance child development with academic achievement.  There is nothing elementary about it.

What's in a grade? (Repost from my other blog)

I am in the process of closing out another blog I used to write. This has led to my revisiting of several old posts and deciding which ones I want to archive or save elsewhere, and which ones had their time and can just cease to exist. I feel as strongly about the sentiments in this post now as I ever did. With third quarter report cards on their way, and the onset of the standardized testing season, I present this post from last year with some minor edits.

This will not be a very popular statement. In fact, I am not sure who will lash out at me more, my teacher friends, or my fellow moms (and dads). But here it is: I do not care about grades. If they did not have implications for his acceptance and admission to college, I really would not give a crap what my son's grades were, are, will be. I really do not care much about my students' grades either. Do not mistakenly believe I am not concerned about their progress or their learning. I just do not care what their report cards say. There, I said it. 

I assure you my perspective has nothing to do with the softening of young people. I still believe in healthy competition. I do not think all players should get trophies and ribbons just for showing up, or even just for playing hard. I believe some children are smarter than others, some work harder than others, and some perform better than others, but these characteristics are not always in tandem. I think teachers and parents should always expect the best from their children, but they should also know that the result of one person's best may look quite different from another's.

As a parent and teacher I have come to understand how meaningless grades are. Grades do not indicate true learning has taken place. They tell us which students are good at school. And let's face it, just because a child can play the school game does not mean he or she has learned anything other than how to conform and fall in line. I am not suggesting they have learned nothing else, but it is quite possible for kids to do well in school without much in the way of substantial learning. Sure these students learn a powerful lesson about giving people what they want, and there are times in life where we do need to fall in line. But there are far more times when we should stand up and rock the boat. The world needs more boat rockers, but I digress.

Students who are motivated by good grades, usually because of the reactions they get from others (I always loved hearing my parents praise my excellent report cards, and even bragged about my son's straight A's to other family members and friends), can find lots of ways to earn A's. Many of them cram and memorize in order to perform well on tests, they cater to their teachers' biases when they complete assignments, some even cheat. It is possible because of sheer intelligence that some of them do not even give that much effort. But I wonder how many of them have actually learned something, and can we do a better job finding out if they have?

One thing has become painfully clear to me as a teacher (and really as a parent too). Kids do not do anything they do not want to do. If they are not motivated to do something, we need to give them a reason to want to do it. For some kids, grades work as a motivator, but for others it does not. So if I do not care about grades, how do I make my son care about grades? Thus far, I have been relatively unsuccessful. In elementary school, my son was the kid who knew half the curriculum before he walked in. He was a good student in that he liked attending school, participated in class discussions and activities, and did well on tests. He even did homework with little argument (except for essay writing). Truth be told, he earned straight A's during those years pretty effortlessly, and we commended him for it with praise and pride. My mom, despite my insistence not to, even gave him a $5.00 bill each time he brought home one of those stellar report cards. Nevermind how little he did to earn it.

Middle school was a different story, because he not only had to show up and participate, he was saddled with minutia such as reading logs (liked to read and good at it, hated keeping a log), homework (sorry folks, but except for math, largely meaningless assignments), and computerized reading tasks in programs in which he pre-tested as a college level reader. His grades, not so hot. At times, they were even alarming. But, here is where I make my point. He was learning. How do I know? All I had to do was eat dinner with him each night, watch a TV program with him, listen to him apply what he learned to things he was reading and doing. He can talk about scientific concepts, techological applications, important moments in history. He memorized a world map for geography class (got 87% on the final), has impeccable grammar, and has an awesome working vocabulary. He reads online incessantly about things that interest him, and teaches himself things by reading and watching YouTube videos. He is one of those kids who drives other kids nuts because he loves standardized test days, because he gets to finish up quickly and take a nap. And of course the added bonus that there is a moratorium on homework and other assignments during testing week thrills him. He has scored near perfect in every subject on them every grade since 3rd. So what do his grades mean? They mean he is a nonconformist. They mean, he understands that he is learning and taking what he wants and needs from school. Through his mom's mom eye, he is a dream, a self-motivated learner. But through his mom's teacher eye, and his own teachers' eyes, he is a challenge, because we know how important those stupid grades are for him to get into college.

High school has been different, clearly he is motivated by how his grades will impact his ability to attend a university with a program of study that interests him. Grades have improved, but it is still a constant struggle for him to show his learning in the way the school system demands. Must he conform? Do I want him to?

This brings me back to my own students. My experience as a mother constantly feeds my decisions as a classroom teacher. I reflect and ask myself questions like, do I really need to collect and grade that? What will it tell me about my students' learning? Is it measuring learning, or is it just a tool for measurement (aka something to put in the gradebook). The problem leads right back to the faults in today's school system. What exactly are we measuring? This obsession with data as a means for holding people accountable feels contrived. When will decision makers understand that real learning, true "real world" learning, means that we can apply learning principles, study habits, literacy skills to learn about the things that are important to us, and use them in our daily lives for work and for pleasure? School collected data and grades will never be able to measure this, and to me this is what will make my students, and my son successful. 

As a student of curriculum and instruction, I am a believer that the purpose of education (something I was asked to consider, read about, write about, and reconsider iteratively in grad school) is to enlighten, educate, and develop our youth to become citizens in a democratic society. Whether I agree with the choices and the beliefs of these citizens when they are grown is irrelevant. Our purpose is to help them learn to think and become independent in their views, their search for livelihood and happiness, fulfillment. It is not to prepare them for specific jobs, or to choose their paths, or to grade them on how well they play school.

  

Kids Today... Maybe They're Not So Bad

A couple of months back, early December it must have been, my son and I went over to visit with some friends. It was a Saturday night and we had a casual dinner and hung out for a few hours. My husband was away, and so was my best friend’s son who also happens to be one of my son’s best friends. Christine’s husband was home, but after dinner he hit the couch to watch a football game or something. We sat out on the patio and shot the breeze, as we often do. Work, the kids, we’re never short on conversation. But as we looked through the glass doors into her kitchen, we began to marvel at an unfamiliar phenomenon. My son and Christine’s daughter, who insist they “can’t stand each other” were happily constructing a gingerbread house. In her kitchen. On a Saturday night. I even have photos that we took as we giggled watching them, but I was later sworn to not post on Facebook.

Forget the fact these two bicker like brother and sister. After all, they are the same age and have known each other since second grade. But Christine and I got to talking. 

“I can’t believe they’re content to be home with us on Saturday night,” I suddenly said first.

“I know, right?” Christine responded.

We continued to talk about what we would have been doing at their age, years ago on a Saturday night. We agreed, neither of us would be home eating dinner and hanging out with our parents. First we marveled, then we analyzed. Why were they so different from us? We thought about the fact that we both grew up in the North, she in Pennsylvania, me in New York. Maybe it’s where we live. It is kind of remote out in the unincorporated part of the county. A good 30-40 minutes from the closest movie theater or mall. We wondered if it had anything to do with our parents- both of us had divorced parents at their age and she and I are still in happy marriages that lasted longer than our parents. But we just couldn’t put a finger on it.

We resigned ourselves to no real answer but felt pleased that we have “such good kids.” Each of us does tons of stuff with our families. We go as families to our kids’ activities, take our kids with us when we go out to dinner, and see movies as a family with our kids. We rarely get hassle about doing stuff with them. That’s not to say they don’t have friends and that they don’t go out to do things with their peers. But we agreed that our kids spend more time with us on weekends than we did with our parents.

Fast forward to a couple of days ago when I was flipping casually through Facebook and a title from GoodNewsNetwork caught my eye. Teens Today Are Actually Good. It provided 7 trends they say are proof that this is true. When I look at my son and his friends through these seven lenses, I feel pretty confident that this article has some merit.

• Smoking. According to this article smoking has become uncool. I think this might be true. My son hounded my husband to quit smoking more than 10 years ago. My husband wasn’t that much older than my son is now, when he started smoking. I remember sneaking to smoke my first cigarette with a friend when I was even younger. I can say with 99% confidence, I don’t think my son has ever puffed off a cigarette and I’m pretty sure he never will. That’s more than I can say for me, my husband, and many of our friends who smoked through college.

• Drunk Driving. Driving drunk is less common according to self reports by teens. Asked whether they ever got behind a wheel after drinking, half as many said yes in 2011 than did in 1991. I know this is soft data because it relies on the asked to be truthful, but that would stand true for both surveys. Not only has my son never driven drunk, he doesn’t drink. He also doesn’t go to parties where there is alcohol, like we did when we were teenagers. I’m not sure how old I was when I had my first drink, but I do know there were plenty of parties where kids were drinking when I was in high school. But my son doesn’t drink, and neither do his friends. Heck, he wasn’t even eligible for his license on his first legal day of being 16 because he goofed off and was in no rush to get his permit. He waited about 4 months after his birthday to go through the steps and get the permit. Now he’s 16 and doesn’t have a license quite yet. He doesn’t drink and he doesn’t drive.

• Drugs, Pregnancy, and Abortion. Rates for drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, and abortion are all down amongst teenagers, according to the article. My son doesn’t do drugs and hasn’t gotten anyone pregnant. Mind you, we never did these things either. My husband and I have dated since I was 16 and he was 18, and our son was our only pregnancy. He was planned, almost 3 years after we were married.

• Diplomas. High school graduation rates have gone up according to this article. I’m not sure about the purity of the data. It came from the National Center for Educational Statistics, but schools and districts are doing all sorts of things to eliminate students and data that negatively impact the graduation rates. That’s a post for another day perhaps. But NCES reports a 7% drop out rate in 2012, down from 12% in 1990. My son is being raised in a family that will not accept dropping out of high school as an option, so much so that I don’t think the notion of not graduating high school has ever entered his mind. Various things are being done to keep kids in high school, like not permitting them to get drivers licenses unless they are enrolled in school. Also, the GED is getting harder, and policymakers are pushing all students to go to some post secondary education. This makes a diploma a necessity. 

• Volunteer. The author of this article also reports that today’s teenagers are volunteering more. It may be because they are “better kids” or it may be because they need the hours to graduate or obtain certain scholarships. I know my kid volunteers his time quite a bit through scouts. I did too when I was his age, through Key Club and Student Council. But he has stuck with Boy Scouts longer than many and plans to obtain the rank of Eagle Scout. Volunteer hours for school will be a cinch to document, I just hope the spirit of volunteerism will remain with him.

I know this post is largely a summary of another article, which can be read in its entirety at the link provided below. But my point is similar. “Kids today” aren’t as bad as we often think they are. People like to complain they act entitled and they don’t play outside enough, they are glued to their electronics and don’t read anymore. But I don’t agree. I think today’s lessons are pretty much the same as any generation’s. They just look different. Okay, advances in technology may provide some new challenges, but they also bring an awareness and an unfiltered world to our kids from which we were essentially sheltered. They know not just of the local kid with a terminal illness, but the suffering all over the world. They see diversity not just in their communities but across the continents.

Yes, some kids still try cigarettes, experiment with drugs, and drink underage. But I do think these activities are on the decline. The surgeon general’s warning has been around long enough that smoking cigarettes just seems dumb, and it's uncool as the article suggested. Even drugs seem more dangerous. Combinations of home-cooked synthetic substances made from who knows what and sold in skeevy gas stations.There will always be those who stray from what’s right, those who may lack guidance in their lives or deal with trauma in negative ways. But I think today’s kids aren’t so bad.

And they may not play outside as much as we did, and ultimately that may not be so good. But they still play sports, go to dances, and hang out at the beach. My sister and I watch a ton of TV as kids, and my son watches almost none. We still rode our bikes, played soccer, and softball, field hockey and gymnastics. Our kids may spend a little too much time on their phones and computers, but they're also learning and doing great things on them. And if I'm to be honest, my son's cell phone allows me to communicate with him way more when he's not with me than I did when I was away from my parents at his age. They had to have blind faith- we have GPS, text messaging, and stalking apps to know where our kids are at all times. Some of the problems they have as kids and teens are created by our unwillingness to let them be independent and to learn how to take healthy risks without the proverbial bubble wrap. Things today aren't that much different.

Today's kids are doing just fine. The way grown-ups handle them and react to them, well that may be another story. After all, I’m pretty sure over-the-hill adults in every generation have always said, “These kids today…”

Teens Today Are Actually Good by Kristy Cooper http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/teenstodayareactuallygood/