KALEIDOSCOPE

For parents, kids, and teachers alike, the countdown to the first day of school is on.

For parents, it focuses on checking to see if those clothes from last spring still fit, or does the school uniform still fit or even be found, or is a grand shopping spree around the corner.  If your kids are like mine, we had the need for new clothes; my boys seemed to grow as if I put the Miracle Grow on them rather than the plants in my garden.  Every fall, the jeans looked like what they called “flood waters” pants.  If we bought them longer than necessary, they complained about having to roll them up.  Then, the never ending list of school supplies that the teacher, school, or school district deem necessary needs to be purchased, names written on the items, and the items put together in the backpack to get them to school for the first day.  I feel sorry for the parents with school supplies; at least my kids had few choices.  It seems to me that Crayola has a plot to make a parent pull every strand of hair out trying to appease the child about what pack of markers he can get.  Then, that task of writing the child’s name on each crayon, marker, and even marker cap drove me nuts.

For kids, it becomes an impatient not for classes, but to see friends that haven’t been seen for the whole summer, or even the next door neighbor.

For teachers it is a whole different countdown.   I spend the last few days of summer vacation deep cleaning my house and working with the beginning harvest of the garden.  Why?  Well, once the school year starts, I don’t have the time that I would like to get everything done.  I teach high school English and creative writing and most evenings are spent reading for class or grading.  I finish up the novels that have been started, and begin to look at planning what I will be teaching.  Yes, I’ve been teaching for better than 20 years, but I rarely do the same thing two times in a row; it gets too boring for me.

I also start looking at gathering school supplies and checking out the wardrobe.  I doubt the administration would look too favorably at me if I wore my cut off jean shorts and a t-shirt.  My concern, though, is not did I grow, but did I gain weight.

I numbered my days on my calendar today.  I have 22 days left of freedom till the routine of the school year attacks me again.

The end of the semester has come, and at the high school level, students are taking finals.  As I watch my students stress out over finals (They are worth 20% of the semester grade.), I wonder why we give finals.

Let me put the equation to you as it stands where I teach and have taught.  First, you teach the material and assess understanding with essays (I teach English / Language Arts), projects, and possibly a test.  Then, you move on to unit two.  Again, you teach the material and assess understanding.  Finally, the semester ends and the district expects students to take a final for each and every course that they are taking.  

The final, in one district where I taught, consisted of at least one question for each piece of literature covered in the course.  Yes, that means if you covered twenty poems, there must be at least one question for each of those poems.  In that district, everyone teaching the same course was expected to give the same final.  

In the second district, each teacher was left to develop a final for the courses that they taught independent of the other teachers who taught the same course.  Some teachers chose to compile all of the questions from all of the unit tests and call that a final; while others randomly selected numerous questions from prior tests.  Either way, the students were just taking the same test a second time.  

If teachers are going to be expected to give finals and students are going to be expected to take finals, the final exam should measure something more than can the student “regurgitate” the same answers to the multiple choice questions that have already been covered.

As a high school English / language arts  teacher, I think some revisions need to be made in the way we look at assessing a students gained knowledge for the semester.  If the above examples are how you address a final exam, I challenge you to try something different.  Look at the skills you are teaching and use a new literary piece or excerpts from literary pieces and ask the students to analyze these pieces.  In other words, expect the student use the skills that were presented with material that was not covered: teaching dynamic characters and reading a new short fiction piece to determine if the protagonist was dynamic, teaching meter in poetry and working to identify the meter in a new piece of poetry, or teaching subject / verb agreement and using different examples in the test.  Right now, for most of us, the semester final is a “regurgitation” of the same answers to the same questions.  Take the challenge! Expect your students to apply the skills you teach.

Yes!  I am a teacher.  Yes!  I write referrals for disruptive behaviors.  Yes!  My student’s sometimes receive an out of school suspension.  I do believe, however, that there are more productive, learning experiences to use as discipline than suspending a student.

Nowadays, a suspension gives a student a vacation.  In many cases, the parent of a suspended student is not home; thus, the student has no supervision and in many cases, spends the day sleeping in, playing video games, chatting on the computer, and texting friends who are actually in school.  Although the student misses school, he is still allowed to make up any and all missed work.  The real kicker, however, is the kid who has a job and the employer says something like the following: “Since you can’t go to school today, why don’t you come into work.”  Doesn’t sound like punishment to me. 

Thirty years ago, suspension meant that the student missed school AND the assignments and/or tests that happened that day, Mom and Dad had discipline “chores” they expected done for no pay, and no employer in his right mind would award the errant student with hours at work.

Discipline measures need to be revised.  Rather than remove the student from the school, I suggest that they be given work detail.  Rather than be allowed to make up work, I suggest that they forfeit the points for those assignments and tests.  Rather than being called in to work and earn money, I suggest that employers implement an eligibility check much like is expected for high school athletes: the student must be present in school, must behave in school, and must earn grades of at least a “C”. 

For many teens, the work place working hand in hand with the school would equal motivation since a job equals money for their car, insurance, and dates.