The great language disparity

 As I grade my one-millionth SOAPSTone analysis of Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech, I am struck by my student's inability to read and analyze Dr. King's language. Even my advanced students. The sentence structure, length and use of figurative language makes this speech very difficult for students to read. 

I have also noticed this with standardized test passages which tend to be older stories that are available through public domain. Stories written in the late 19th and early 20th century. And students struggle.

And, of course, I have to ponder why.

I have long felt like culture has impacted students' vocabulary; their incessant obsession with Youtube and social media platforms has them with far less exposure to varied words than the children of the 20th century had access to.  I see now that it is more than that. They are disconnected from the language in general. They have virtually no concept of the use of language- how it is the way that we express ourselves and complex ideas-but rather they see it is simply as a thing that they do. They see it this way because there is no intentionality in their use of language, so they don't see intent in anyone else's use of language. They then become farther and farther removed from it.

My students work hard and I can see how it strains them to just not understand the words around them. New words that they've never seen or heard before. They feel lost oftentimes, as if they are in a foreign language class. And in front of them I stand, frustrated about the disparity that this system has caused. While legislation and politicians sought to close the "achievement" gap, they've effectively created a language gap between adults and children that affects everyone regardless of socioeconomic or ethnic background. 

How can parents help? 

My current students are middle class, in the least, and upper middle class at most. They are the children of doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, and business owners. Can their parents close this gap by talking to them more and in adult language? 

When I scroll my social media, I see person and after person adopting the newest 'net lingo- which is often some version of an AAVE phrase or saying- working tirelessly to become integrated into our new digital society. Where has our complex language gone? Are the adults leaving this language at work, and reducing their own children's exposure to it?

I fear that we, as parents, dropped the ball when we let Youtube and social media become our children's first line of entertainment. If our children are not watching shows and movies with plots and complex words, where can they learn it? And knowing that the educational system has absolutely fumbled the ball in teaching children new vocabulary and exposing them to varied writing styles (and structures), what do we do to fix it? 

Teachers and the need to entertain students

     A new part of my experience as a teacher in North Dallas is the culture that students bring to the school. In New Orleans, I never had students visit with me and talk informally with me at lunch or after school and say, "why isn't class like this?". They fully understood that class time was meant for their learning and that casual conversations had no place during that time. But here, lately, I have had several students make this comment. It seems endearing on the surface, but in reality, it is incredibly frustrating. What is really reveals is that students expect entertainment and engagement in a social way during their school day-and the reason they do is because that is what many teachers are giving them. 

    One of the greatest things about this profession is interacting with young people. My students make me laugh, warm and break my heart, teach me things and I teach them more than the content. But this all happens outside of our scheduled time together. My relationships with students are key to me being able to teach them and I can do that without crossing the lines of appropriate student/teacher interactions, such as not revealing too much about my personal life, or not letting them commandeer class for their own anecdotes. In fact, I just got a Facebook message from a person who I taught 7 years ago, before I was even particularly decent at this job, all because of the relationships that I built in those other hours of the day.

    But here, those relationships hinge upon the students feeling like their need for attention is being met by any and all adults at any and all times of the day. I must add that I do a lot of non-academic talking in class, even in these short 55 minute classes. We have some time where I tell anecdotes and I occasionally let them do the same (mostly because they have come with this expectation and I am compromising). Those expectations are being echoed by students that I don't even teach. Students truly come into classes expecting to socialize with their peers in the very least, and getting work done when they feel like it. Part of this has to do with the low quality of work they have been given over the years. When teachers hand out packets that they check for completion, the kids learn that they just need to turn in a finished assignment and they can do that thoughtlessly while at home watching snaps on Snapchat. Some teachers do provide students with meaningful work, but the classroom culture is still the same. Students talk and socialize and use their phones all period, to only then spend their hours at home making up the work. Students have told me that they have been up well past midnight finishing work. I find that absurd, but it is the autonomous choice that they are making. 

    It was maybe three years ago when this concept of "doing the work at home" was brought to me by a student. He told me that he has nothing to do at home. He's alone and bored so he'd rather do his work. But in class, he has 25+ classmates to interact with. It makes complete sense, and I respect it, but as their teacher, I can't support it. But none of those students at the time ever asked or complained for anything other than the teaching and learning that I gave them. These students now are complaining about it constantly. One student said to me, during tutoring this week, that he hasn't learned anything in my class. I retorted with the fact that he watches football reels and does other work while I'm teaching. Deep down, it infuriates me. But in real life, I must swallow it down because this is the mentality that most students have here. 

    Even on a good day, it feels impossible to feel successful in this environment. I want the students to leave my class knowing that they learned something, but for them, they leave my class miserable because I don't give them the free time that they want. And I wonder if their parents even realize that this is what's happening in these schools. 

Teaching in New Orleans no more

 I started this blog six years ago as a way to document things that I'd observed and even learned during my time as a teacher in the very complicated New Orleans charter school system (and a brief stint in Jefferson Parish). I wanted this blog to be a support resource for other teachers, especially those who were not from New Orleans and had no idea what they were jumping into. However, staying true to my profession meant not writing nor promoting the blog as much as I would have liked. Some of these posts are still relevant and worth reading, but I also suggest following Mercedes Schneider's blog, Deutsch 29, for the real scoop on the politics of the Louisiana system and other teaching topics.

I finally made the leap out of the N.O. Ed system. I moved to Texas at the end of the July and am teaching in the true suburbs- a full 45 minutes outside of Dallas. I made this change at the peak of the pandemic, amidst riots and political fervor, and did not look back. Taking on a new job, city, state, standards and life during a pandemic was an intense choice. The culture here is very different. The standards here are VERY different. And the pandemic has put a strain on teachers that is like nothing I have ever seen, heard of or experienced. But with this I am still grateful to be at the school that I am at. Administrative management is minimal; there are a LOT of administrative tasks that fall on teacher shoulders, but no one is watching and checking all of the time so I feel a little room to breathe as I adjust, and my academic dean has been an absolute Godsend and I would give her all of the dollars in the world for her amazing work and support.

This year, I am teaching two preps: Creative writing and English II online, and am facilitating a virtual Spanish I class. All told I have 213 students this semester (I will be getting new, and more, creative writing students next semester). I was absolutely thrilled to find that I would be teaching Creative Writing. It was a dream come true (and something that almost made me take another job that was offering me that and English I). But I am not teaching this class as fully as I would like, as having five online classes takes a lot of management. But, the students like it and I have brought them some fun lessons on occasions and that feels like good teaching.

In these seven weeks of teaching I have started to learn a lot of about the teaching and learning culture in this town. While I am no longer chronicling the hurdles in New Orleans, I will continue to write about the bigger picture of education in the United States as seen through this new lens.  

The Parts of speech and grammar instruction

A few months ago I came across a Pinterest post linking to an article about students not retaining the eight parts of speech. How many English teachers have lamented this fact? Time and again in meetings and breakrooms and even during dinner and drinks, we teachers vent about our students not retaining grammar concepts and especially the eight parts of speech. Why is it that even my high schoolers, juniors and seniors, could not describe what an adjective is or does? Why does the function of an adverb, which has its function in its name, elude them?

English language instruction has undergone many changes over the last century. We are still embroiled in the debate between phonics versus whole language approaches, and we love to debate the use of the Oxford comma. Many people tout themselves to be Grammar Nazis, boasting an above-average knowledge of English grammar, yet they are far from understanding the intense complexities of our mess of a language.

Students don't fail to learn basic grammatical concepts because they aren't taught or reinforced; there is a multi-pronged issue in the way that grammar is taught in schools that keeps them from making connections between the concepts and their bigger-picture function.

Grammar concepts are typically taught through rote memorization and identification. Students are taught what the eight parts of speech are and are then taught to identify them in use in various sentences. Many students can shoot off the names of various parts of speech but they can not recall their function. This is due to them being taught and recalled in isolation. While students must memorize the names and purpose, much like multiplication tables, they must also apply this knowledge meaningfully in the analysis of written language.

Many students can identify a noun in a sentence, and even tell you that a noun is a person, place or thing, but they can not tell you what that noun's function is. In language, this is called "case". Grammatical case denotes what a noun's function is in a sentence. Although English borrowed many grammatical structures from German, it also abandoned many parts of those structures that made them make sense. In English, we only use cases for pronouns: we identify the difference between a subject pronoun, an object pronoun and a possessive pronoun. But we do not teach this in school. This leaves students knowing the name for a word, i.e. that "run" is a verb, but they can not tell you what its function is within the sentence. This is why the names of parts of speech are easily forgotten. It is not meaningful for a student to know that, in the sentence "Johhny threw the ball to Michael", "Johnny", "ball" and "Michael" are nouns, "threw" is a verb and even that "to" is a preposition. A student really needs to know that Johnny is the subject, the actor in the sentence, and this will tie into bigger concepts like identifying key details, main idea and even writing a summary.

 Herein lies the real issue: students' ability to write effectively and to analyze written texts effectively.

Research on the effectiveness of explicit, isolated grammar instruction focuses on either the ability to recall information or overall writing ability (which has more to do with the ability to structure your thoughts than grammatical use).   However, curricular standards, standardized tests and workforce needs dictate that citizens be able to do more with written language. Ultimately, teachers are trying to get students to be able to analyze an author's meaning when reading a text, something that all of my students have struggled with because their knowledge of language is limited, and to be able to write concisely and with clarity. We can not clearly express information if we do not understand that the placement of a prepositional phrase clarifies the meaning of the sentence.

So, while many articles call for the removal of explicit grammar instruction, it is not the explicit instruction that is the problem; it is how it is being done.

Much like with arithmetic, students simply must memorize certain facts, like the multiplication table. They then use these facts and their understanding of them (multiplication means adding groups of quantities together) to apply to math concepts (algebra, calculus, geometry, etc). Rather than having English teachers teach the same concepts over and over from elementary on through high school, the vertical scale should move from introduction and memorization of concepts to application. A sixth grader should not still be identifying nouns and adjectives in a sentence; they should be analyzing how an author uses words to make meaning to the reader, and how they, as writers, use these words to express their own ideas.

What's a way this can be done? 

While many people abhor sentence diagramming, it should be an important rung in the ladder of language development.

Many resources support that sentence diagramming is the bridge between explicit grammar instruction and reading and writing.

"Diagramming isn’t an arcane assignment designed to torture the student. It forces students to clarify their thinking, fix their sentences, and put grammar to use in the service of writing—which is, after all, what grammar is for."

https://welltrainedmind.com/a/why-diagramming-matters/?v=7516fd43adaa

"Burns Florey and other experts trace the origin of diagramming sentences back to 1877 and two professors at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. In their book, Higher Lessons in English, Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg made the case that students would learn better how to structure sentences if they could see them drawn as graphic structures."

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/08/22/341898975/a-picture-of-language-the-fading-art-of-diagramming-sentences


"...diagramming sentences requires students to use critical thinking, a skill the Common Core prioritizes. In that respect, the practice is in line with CCSS goals."

Do sentence diagrams have a place in the Common Core?

https://brighted.funeducation.com/News/Common-Core-State-Standards-News/do-sentence-diagrams-have-a-place-in-the-common-core

Common Core and many state standards have encouraged curriculum writers to change their approach to instruction in ways that develop deeper understanding and build stronger critical thinking. Where elementary math curriculum includes instructional strategies such as using number lines to give a visual to numeracy, arrays for deepening understanding of multiplication, and drawing to create visual representations, English curriculum stands to make similar adjustments if we want our next generation to have the skills necessary for the high cognitive demands of our tech driven world. 

Louisiana Parish Superintendent Salaries

There has been quite a bit of buzz lately regarding the salaries of New Orleans CMO leaders. Attention has been turned to the profit that can be made off the heads of children in New Orleans and other cities who are making the move to having more charter schools. However, it turns out that education leadership in Louisiana is where it's at, not just New Orleans. Our state superintendent, John White, makes $275k- more than the average state superintendent in the U.S., despite Louisiana hanging steady at 48th in the nation in education. So it is no surprise that his parish superintendents are worth as much.

In the spreadsheet below, the yearly salary is listed for every parish superintendent in the state. I  sorted it by school performance and highlighted superintendents who make over $120k by score. There are 11 superintendents making over $120k and running "A" districts, but 7 of them are serving fewer than 10k students.
I had to ask why is the superintendent of City of Baker, who services fewer than 2k students and has a "D" rating, make more than the superintendent of Richland who services twice as many? Why is the superintendent of Orleans, who does not actually direct run ANY schools, make almost $200k? THREE of the SEVEN superintendents making over $200k (not counting Orleans at $193k)are running C districts. In a state that performs below nearly every other state in the country.

It's about time to demand better from ed leaders for the sake of the children.

Louisiana Parish Superintendent Salary sorted

What's the difference between an "A" and "B" School?

Culture Shock and the myth of School Performance Scores

Through conversations with parents and teachers in the New Orleans metro school districts I have found, time and again, that we find ourselves referencing School Performance Scores, or Louisiana SPS. It seems like a sensible reference point; standardizing the way that schools are graded, like students, across the state. It is a Grade that parents refer to when selecting schools in New Orleans, searching out the "A" schools or attempting to determine how well their familiar and neighborhood schools are achieving. But there is a lot hidden behind the SPS.

The L.A. SPS Score scale has changed in recent years, having gone from a 200 point scale to a 150 point scale. However, many people do not know this, or that it was even at 200 points. Many parents, especially, conceptualize the scale like they would a school scale- out of 100 points.  Because of this, perception about what an "A" and "B" school is may be skewed in the school's favor.

What are the scales? Louisiana has them and information about how they are calculated here. An "A" School is 100-150 points; a whopping fifty point scale. A "B" school, however, is only 85-99 points- a mere 14 points. The range for an "A" and an "F" school have the largest range- leaving the scores for "B-D" schools wide open. Opening the range at the "A" end allows for more "B" schools despite the fact that they are a full 60 points below the top possible score.

What does this mean for "A" and "B" schools?

There is a vast difference between what "A" and "B" schools actually are.
For people in New Orleans, consider that Ben Franklin High school is a 141.3 scoring "A" school- and Edna Karr High is a 104.3 scoring "A" school. What similarities exist between these schools, making them both "A" schools? What differences exist?

Ben Franklin's average ACT score is a 29- well above college readiness and in the realm of entrance for many of the nation's best colleges.

Edna Karr's average ACT Score is a 20- exactly seated at the level of college readiness and below even the entrance requirement of our flagship school, Louisiana State University.

However, they are both "A" schools in this state.

Where do we observe the difference?

In the culture and demographics of the schools.

Many parents are pleased to send their children to "B" schools, since New Orleans is lacking in "A" schools (but not as many "B" schools, since the scoring scale is tipped at the upper and lower ends). But is a "B" school really just as good?

In New Orleans, an SPS of "B" seems to suggest that some teaching and learning is occurring but it is not the overall culture of the school. Many of the city's "B" schools have issues with drug use, police incident, high suspension rates and, generally, just difficulty in managing students on the campus.

There's definitely some difference in culture.

A friend and former colleague was shocked when I described my experience at a "B" school BEFORE I was employed there. Students walked the halls, skipped classes, left campus, frequently fought, had sex and and drugs on campus. But, by all measures, they were "achieving" just fine.

The students bragged.
Eleventh graders bragged about their 13 ACT Composite scores. They vowed wealth and richness without any skills or business standing to gain it. They said "I've always been on the honor roll!"

Teachers struggled.
The most well meaning teachers attempted to deliver lessons, day after day, to rude, disrespectful and disengaged students.  Students who talked during lessons. Students who copied ever assignment given. Students who Googled quiz questions. Students who refused to turn over cell phones even during ACT testing. Students who cursed out and threatened to fight teachers. Students who refuse to work on anything independently (well, forget that cute little Madeline Hunter lesson plan format and the quaint "I/WE/YOU do lesson format. They would not work alone even when the assignment was modeled for them.). Students who sincerely did not care about and did not want to (and often didn't) attend school.

There is a deep misbelief that Louisiana's schools are improving when they are continually receiving funding and revamping the curriculum to hide the lack of gains and maintain the appearance that strides are being taken to improve the state's success. But where is that money going, when New Orleans "head of schools" have been under fire for making high salaries at low performing schools?

Louisiana calls the SPS calculation system "Accountability" but there's a lot hiding under her skirt. A quick scan of the state's 2017 SPS scores shows low performance, even by our standards, across the board.
Louisiana is not achieving.
Our children in our "high performing" schools are not, either.

The culture of "why can't you just...?!"

Over the years I have observed a phenomena that I didn't understand at first. I observed teachers yelling at students and I didn't understand why. My first teaching year was in kindergarten and it seemed harsh to hear teachers yelling at those oh-so-adorable five year olds, but as I progressed through the years and grade levels, I not only heard it more and more often but occasionally found myself doing it. It wasn't until recently, however, that I realized the tone, frustration and meaning behind the yelling; it's undertones pleaded "why can't you just...?!". It begged of the students, "why can't you just sit still?" or "why can't you just stop making noise?" or "why can't you just do the work?". The yelling wasn't just out of anger or annoyance, many times, but of a deeper frustration that teachers weren't running the classroom that they'd desired. I suspect that this frustration stemmed from culture shock on the teacher's part (something I've written about before) but even veteran teachers and those born, raised and educated in this city have fallen into the pit of yelling at their students.


A recent article by The Cult of Pedagogy explores those moments of breakdown that we all experience and gives some great suggestions to how to manage them.

The article  doesn't, however, address the frustration that comes with the "why can't you just" yell. It is a feeling of despair and momentary hopelessness; it is a feeling of loss of control; it is a feeling of 'maybe I'm not cut out to do this' or even a feeling of not understanding the current experience of the student (s).

The first stage is to know and understand the backgrounds of your students. This isn't something that is often expressed to new teachers or even veteran teachers who transfer to new schools, districts or states. A very good friend of mine had a solid seven years of teaching English in another state under her belt and still experienced this culture shock when she moved to New Orleans. She astutely observed a difference: "In Wisconsin, you have the students' trust the minute that you walk into the room and have to really work hard and screw up to lose it but here, you have to earn the students trust and work hard to get it and keep it".  Many students in this area have unstable home AND school lives, sometimes moving from place to place to stay with various family members and also having a revolving door of teachers over the years, some of whom care and some don't and some who are knowledgeable and some who aren't.  Many time this leads students to push teachers in an attempt to test them and determine if they can trust them. For the teacher, this looks like defiance and disrespect.

Knowing the big picture background is very helpful in developing patience when students are testing limits. Knowing students' individual backgrounds is even more helpful for knowing how to manage the behaviors. A student who is testing their trust in you will need a different approach than a child who may be defiant because his home life is in chaos and he needs to feel like he has some autonomy.
It is super helpful when feeling that "why can't you just" bubbling up to finish the sentence. Give a second to think "why can't you just keep your hands to yourself? Because your brother moved out to live with his father and you are lonely and want someone to engage with." "Why can't you just do the work? Because you didn't understand the directions or the modeling and you're lost and would rather talk to someone than sit alone, unable to work".  It can also help to ask the student these questions and help them be self aware and luckily, the younger they are, the easier it is to help them adjust.

The second stage is for you to be self aware. Much like the article from Cult of Pedagogy, being in tune with out own feelings makes a big difference not only in our work but in our personal lives as well. It is helpful to notice that you are more likely to yell out when you're hungry, or the student has done it four times, or you might be insecure about how a new lesson might go, or if you feel an illness coming on. Occasionally we are triggered more easily at these times and can send a confusing and upsetting message to kids: 'this behavior was acceptable yesterday or last week but now it's not, so I need to work to figure out where the limit of acceptable behavior is'. This can cause even more trouble in the long run.

I have come to know when I am more prone to being easily frustrated and am getting much better at heading it off by telling students how I feel (and this works because of the relationships that I develop with students and the empathy that we have for each other) and they tend to manage themselves even more strictly than I typically do. I have also learned to distinguish between loud voice and yelling.  Sometimes students need to hear a loud, stern voice- this is a voice that asserts your expectations. A yell, however, is loud and asserts that you are frustrated and maxed out and, for some students, that they've won the battle of control over the classroom. We never want the students to win control. Even on our worst days.

Finding ways to keep our patience in tact and still manage students is a tiring but important task that, thankfully, many of us have support in doing.