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.

When does an "A" mean "the best of the best"?

Despite the misconceptions, belief or hope that grades are a trustworthy and reliable measure of success or knowledge, grades have always been subjective and, under the current educational environment, deeply varied. Considering this, how is success determined when the standard of success is actually variable?

Support in and out of the classroom

5/1/16
I was recently talking with a younger, TFA colleague about the struggles and woes of teachers, especially TFA teachers, and he asserted that his friends and TFA cohorts do not need more disparaging information about the LA educational system (that they get enough of that in their day to day struggles) but they need more structure. I asked him what that meant, and he felt that our new, young teachers could use more resources and more structure in the classroom. Despite the many observations by mentors, our youngest teachers still feel ill-prepared and ill-equipped to tackle the academic and emotional hurdles in teaching urban/suburban students.

I began to think of the things that were helpful to me over the years, especially as an English teacher. Some of the things that I developed in elementary and middle school are still effective for running a structured high school classroom. The two major components of this development came in the following areas: behavior management, my time management and academic resources that are appropriate for my students' levels of ability.

Behavior Management was best developed by having very few expectations- only ones that can easily be tracked or documented- a documentation sheet and procedures.
 The First Days of School by Harry Wong is a useful resource for developing these things; however, I found the videos of Chelonnda Seroyer to be more useful and realistic. Wong's work is, like Lemov, designed to be implemented in its entirety but much of it is not effective or is, honestly, a waste of time for our community of kids. I found the following chapters to be most useful:

• Unit C page 85,165- how to teach classroom procedures

Many people quote Wong and Lemov as gospel but my experience with schools who follow the entire book/directives are schools that subjugate its students rather than cultivate them. My current school does neither and the most effective teachers are those who use these elements in part.

Time management is incredibly important in a profession that requires at-home work.  I learned to manage my time on paper; a huge mistake was attempting to just remember all of the things that I had to do throughout the day. One major issue with doing this is that your tasks will change throughout the day (for instance, you may need to call student parents based upon incidences in class, or you decide to change components of your lessons or your weekly plans). I've found the following ways helpful to managing daily responsibilities:

• Keep a copy of your school's academic calendar. On your school's calendar you can also write bill due dates, social engagements, and deadlines. This way you are always aware of when things are due and it can help to prioritize your responsibilities. 
• Keep a "To Do" list in the same place as your calendar. As things pop up during the day, write them down as soon as possible. On your planning period, lunch or afterschool, go through the list and prioritize tasks by amount of time that they will take to complete and most important. 
• What items are a priority? Another colleague stated that she felt she had to prioritize tasks but what tasks she was prioritizing actually weren't pressing. I have found that grades are not a priority every day. This depends on your school's policies and expectations on grades-the more grades that they require, the more pressing the priority- however, if your lessons are not well structured, those grades that you are rushing to complete will not be good.  Pressing priority goes to lesson planning and behavior management follow through, such as phone calls to parents, managing consequences like checking to ensure students attend detentions, etc., and behavior/ participation grades are up to date. Students must know that what they do in class is of utmost importance.
•  

•  Pace your lessons and use a timer. As you are mastering your content area, it is hard to know exactly how long a particular task will take. Letting students linger on tasks that don't take long will suck up your class time and cause your lesson pacing to swell. Conversely, not giving enough time may frustrate students and cause them to lose motivation. Planning adequate independent work time can free you up to assist students and manage small tasks that might otherwise end up with you at home.
• Avoid social media on your down time! We all know that social media is a time suck and creates a wormhole in the space time continuum that will leave you wondering how your entire lunch period is gone or that worksheet that you planned to create isn't done but 30 minutes of your life have disappeared. It is best to power through the day and then have more relaxation and down time when you get home.

Academic resources are deeply lacking in many schools, especially urban schools. Why does this happen?  Many schools choose to cut costs by not purchasing textbooks or not use textbooks because the students are reading two to three grade levels behind. Instead, many schools choose to have teachers find or create their own resources. This is a benefit because it allows every teacher an opportunity to individualize the work for students as well as the ability to customize the work to exactly and only what they are teaching. Great for experienced teachers, not great for new teachers.  How do we find the right resources? Google them! However, you have to know what to look for before you look for it, so I have found the following to help me break down my content and look for appropriate work:

• Go through the standards and find the subskills that are required to complete the task. For English, that means that if we are learning how to edit sentences for fragments, students first need to know what are and how to identify independent and dependent clauses. I would search for middle school-level worksheets or assignments on clauses so that the work is accessible to students. Some great resources for English are: 
• http://www.ereadingworksheets.com/    A plethora of PDF worksheets and answers that are leveled by difficulty
• https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/    You can search by topic and filter by grade level. There are many FREE resources and even more pay resources, many by whole semesters and can be used for your entire course.
• https://laurarandazzo.com/       Teaching strategies and resources. She also has a TPT store with incredible resources.
• http://www.k12reader.com      A variety of resources for all subjects, leveled by grade level. 
• https://www.havefunteaching.com/    
• https://www.superteacherworksheets.com/

How is the loss of the neighborhood schools affecting children's social growth?

 On a sunny, breezy afternoon at the neighborhood playground, my small son walked over to me, dejected, and expressed his sadness that he could not play with anyone because he didn't know their names. He is usually very good about playing with new kids, but on this day it was too much for him to try to befriend children that he would never meet again. Meeting new people is taxing but the only respite is moving into a comfortable relationship after multiple meetings-yet, for my son, that never happens.

My son goes to a Catholic school a few miles away from our home. With the Jefferson Parish and New Orleans schools a mess of failures, his early education could not be chanced. This is the case for all too many families, as New Orleans has the highest percentage of students in private schools in the U.S.; however, the relocation of students from their neighborhood schools isn't due to the mass move to private schools. The growth of the charter management organizations in New Orleans as well as the reinstatement of the Dandridge Order in Jefferson parish meant the dissolution of the neighborhood school in the New Orleans metro area.

In New Orleans there is no unified district in place. The Orleans Parish School Board manages only a small portion of the highest performing schools in the city; the rest are charter run. The majority of the charters, sprinkled around the city, are open enrollment, which means that any child in the parish can attend any school.  The purpose of this is to allow children the opportunities to attend the best schools even if the best schools aren't nearby.

In Jefferson parish the commute exists for a different reason: The Dandridge order. As district leaders noticed the racial imbalance in the schools, they decided to forcefully integrate them. For students this means that if you live in a primarily white neighborhood, you may not attend your neighborhood school because there's already too many white people so you will be bused to another school which needs more white diversity. To some, this sounded like a reasonable solution but in reality it began to destroy the neighborhood schools.
The playground where I bring my son is next to an elementary and middle school that is less than a mile from where we live- but if he went to a Jefferson parish school he would actually go to a school about three miles away. I began to think of how this impacted his ability to make and maintain friends with children he doesn't go to school with.

My wheels began to turn as I considered the bigger picture. How does this school commute affect the social development of children? How does it affect the social development of my high school students? It seemed quite obvious. Children have to work harder to develop relationships that may not last because of the distance.
Anyone who has maintained a long distance friendship or relationship can attest that it can be difficult to stay connected when you are living two different lives. You tell stories that involve different groups of friends; you recount mundane details of day to day life because the other person isn't witness or participant to them; conversations may drag out of desperation for something to talk about. For adults, we may prune away these relationships but for children these social connections are crucial to their growth.

Children spend anywhere from nine to ten hours a day at school (not accounting for after school activities) so they develop their strongest bonds with the children that they are with the most. Yet, they go home and may have friendships with the children in their neighborhood who do not attend the same school. With my high schoolers, this often causes problems. The neighborhood friends see the closeness to school friends as disloyal and rifts occur. It is especially significant for Freshman. Which friend wins out? How do children cope with these rifts? Can they learn to overcome them? It seems as though students frequently choose to cut ties with the neighborhood friends rather than overcome the conflict. Is this move affecting their conflict resolution? Does this commute affect teens need for social interaction via their phones?

In the younger children, are school friendships seen as valuable? If children are not interacting with their classmates outside of school, is there any value in the classroom interactions and if not, do children care less about their conflicts and relationships with their classmates?

Another dimension to this issue is the burden placed on parents in an attempt to maintain out of school relationships. Phone calls, text messages, scheduling outings and even driving across town now become a part of social development. Parents are also responsible for developing relationships with each other in order to do these things. We take on an extra responsibility to get to know people who are not around us; we don't shop at the same grocery stores or attend the same churches or play at the same playground-so parental socialization becomes another task all of its own. Do our children get appropriate socialization when it is the parent's responsibility to make it happen?

There is little discussion or information about this impact on children. The U.S. has been on a mad dash to charter and privatize the school entity without regard for the impact. Education reform has become a beast which feeds on children instead of the superhero who was supposed to save them. The social impact may be small; children will make friends one way or another-but it is worth questioning all of the ways that the destruction of neighborhood schools is adversely affecting children's lifelong success.

The fall of the old schoolhouse

 

It was recently in the news that ground was being broken on a new, $31 million school building for a newly opened KIPP elementary school, the Ray Abrams Elementary. This is a trend in New Orleans; while we are famous for our historic architecture, it has become the norm for the CMOs (charter management organizations- or as I call them, "school franchisers") to operate out of previously used, and, admittedly, old school buildings then build highly expensive new buildings in a very short amount of time. In 2012, one of the major charters was in the process of erecting a new school while their charter was under review because they had not met school performance expectations for three years, consecutively.  Despite this, at the time, the Louisiana Board of Secondary and Elementary schools (BESE) considered letting this organization take over two other schools whose charters would not be renewed. 

Knowing this, I was surprised to hear that KIPP was building a new school. There are currently seven KIPP schools in New Orleans including the one who will move into the new building. What I found surprising was that the school had only been open this 2014-2015 school year and yet, they were getting a new building. 

If you are not familiar with KIPP schools, or at least, their role in the New Orleans charter reform movement, it would serve to mention that their school model, started in the New York City school system, is the most popular model for charters in New Orleans. It includes extended school days, longer class periods, weekly teacher development, school wide discipline plans and rigid curriculum. The schools are often successful in other cities, however, the model, nor KIPP schools, show true success in New Orleans. Their most recent SPS scores, as detailed here, are far from stellar.  Of the seven KIPP schools, including the new Ray Abrams school (listed under KIPP East Community Primary- but has no data because they just opened) two schools rank as "B", two as "C" and two as "D" quality schools. KIPP also touted a $1 million surplus this year.

Is this the model of success? 

The old, albeit decrepit, schoolhouses are being abandoned at an alarming rate, but it's not the abandonment of the buildings that is alarming. It is the abandonment of the children who believe, have hope, who fail, that is truly alarming. It is an example that money can't buy you smarts. The children who are shuffled through these charters of New Orleans, who often believe that they are receiving a quality education because they have a new, clean and sleek school building, move through the ranks without the knowledge that they truly need and deserve. 

Is this fair?

New Orleans is repeatedly the subject of discussions about education reform. Over and over we hear that New Orleans is a successful charter reform city, yet many of our schools are still performing at "C" rank, at best, and children are not truly learning in these schools. 

Will a new school building ensure success for these children?

 As we high school teachers continue to struggle with the choices that we have to make, quickly,  disapointedly, to serve our children's needs in the best way possible in only four years (while the elementaries have eight years), children and parents continue to have the wool pulled over their eyes and to have their hearts opened to a possibility that is often far out of reach.

The children of the New Orleans reform movement

A colleague pointed out in a meeting that this year's students are the students of the post Katrina educational reform. They are our first wave of young students who are age-appropriate for their grade level and have spent at least four years in a reformed and/or chartered school. Yet, we high school teachers have a lot of discussions about the quality of education and preparation that these students have gotten in the new system.
One of our largest struggles this year is the students who are called "T9s", or "transitional ninth graders". These are students who did not pass all of their eighth grade LEAP but were allowed to attend high school anyway. Across the board these students perform far below grade level and many have 504 accommodations. In addition to academic short comings, many of them are emotionally immature and not able to keep up with the amount of work and responsibility that is needed in high school. Their teachers meet constantly about their progress, accommodations, ability and behavior in non-stop attempts to make them successful despite already showing that they have not mastered the skills that they need for high school. In our previous generation, if you did not pass your classes and/or did not pass your LEAP test you simply did not move on to the next grade. Instead, now we have 4.5, 8.5 or as they are now called, T9's. Almost 7% of the entire freshman class is a T9. If the reform was working, would we really have so many students that are not mastering content?
Despite a myriad of deficiencies in students in previous years, this year's students have come in with even lower reading scores than the last group of students. Our school uses the STAR Reading assessment in July and a post assessment in December and the average range of reader is approximately fifth to sixth grade. Many students are even farther below, and to reach these students four remedial English classes are offered this year but student placement is based upon LEAP scores, not this reading assessment. This means that students are placed in the standard English classes despite performing at the same or similar level to the T9s or, generally, elementary aged students who are AT grade level.
There have been HUGE amounts of testing infidelity (a quick Google search shows examples here, here and here with many more available. My own experiences will not be documented here, but it has happened quite a lot) along with the high numbers of new teachers and high teacher turn over in New Orleans. While cities such as Dallas and Atlanta look to make similar changes as the ones that occurred in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, what can really be said about the abilities of the children in this system?
My colleagues and I make informal but necessary observations about our students. Algebra classes are remediating basic skills, not to mention the absolute need for students to use calculators for even basic calculations and there is a shocking lack of understanding about mathematical processes; students exhibit an inability to visualize intangible objects and thus have a hard time using maps and constructing models- one teacher jokingly commented, "did no one let these kids cut and paste in elementary school? They have no spatial reasoning!". My year in kindergarten left me shaking my head at that comment because I knew that they had not been allowed to be creative.
Creative? By the way, that is a word that my ninth graders do not understand.
In an attempt to teach essay writing I told the students that I wanted them to break out of the middle school essay writing format of "firstly, secondly and lastly" (they don't even know to use "finally" instead of "lastly") and I encouraged them to write creatively. I was met with confused looks and weird speculations as to what that meant.
My students don't know words. Basic words. I have heard, this year more than any other, "stop using all them big words". My students do not understand that I do not speak formally with them but correctly; their language ability is hugely limited despite many of the charter schools using 90 minute reading blocks regardless of the schedule for other classes. What is really happening?
I wish I had a dollar for every time that a high school teacher asked "what are the middle school teachers teaching?".
More concerning than what the elementary teachers are teaching (or not teaching) is how they may be treating the students. This year's students are incapable of independent work. For every dollar that I'd receive for a teacher asking "what are the middle school teachers teaching?", I'd lose two dollars for every time that a child has declared, "you're not helping me!". I've gone so far as to have students define the word "help" in a general context then an academic one, and despite the fact that they could say that teachers are supposed to give new information they still expect their teachers to do the work for them or to explain it so much that the only word left is the answer. The idea that they are supposed to absorb the information presented to them, digest it then practice it themselves is lost. I spent the month of August teaching the students about Bloom's taxonomy and fostering independence and it has not changed even a bit by now.
What I do see, however, is that students are incredibly grade driven and want to be successful, but their esteem is deeply tied to correctness. Students yell "See! I'm smart!" when they get answers correct-they have no idea that they thought and worked hard to get their answer. They have no real idea of their abilities, and giving students their reading scores resulted in statements of denial and complaint. Early in the school year, a student was transferred from my class to the remedial English class. Every time I see him he tells me that he has an "A" in that class; completely unaware that he is working at the sixth grade level. An attempt to tell children that they have shortcomings and that we can work to fix them ends in anger and tension between the teacher and student. Students have actually told me NOT to grade on correctness because their other teachers didn't. This is a real issue.
Will this be the way future students function? When I think of the franchisation (yes, I made that a word) of the New Orleans schools and the KIPP style, Doug Lemov methods spread throughout most of the schools, I fear that subsequent classes of students will follow in this path. I love teaching ninth grade. I love teaching literature and thinking and analyzing the world around us, but if children continue to walk the halls of local high schools with the idea that they do not need to learn anything, has the reform really increased student knowledge and ability or are these students doomed leave their high schools and walk into a world that they have not the skills nor attitude to face?

Culture shock in the classroom

By now, everyone is familiar with the changes that have occurred in New Orleans in the last almost nine years. From Hurricane Katrina to a Superbowl win to several TV shows in our honor, the American citizen has developed an idea of what New Orleans is. However, it is a very different story once you are actually in the city.

Despite the romanticized view of this city that most of America has, it is a troubled and complex mangle of culture. When I started this blog my intention was to have a place where teachers new to New Orleans would have some resources for the classroom as well as support in teaching our uniquely demented children. There is a fairly large number of teachers who move to this city and for them, and anyone who has not lived here a while and learned what makes our culture exactly what it is, your experience with these children and their families is often a huge shock. For the young, new teachers this can be an absolute brick wall that divides them from their kids and makes teaching in these classrooms almost impossible.

With that, I have been thinking about some things to know that might help the onset of culture shock.

1. Set rules and expectations and never bend or break them.
Many children come from homes and families where there are few explicit rules and families often give in and bend them if there's enough whining, complaining or fighting about it, and worse, many teachers will be manipulated to bend as well. Students often end up feeling like their teachers aren't fair, are biased, or don't like them if they aren't able to get the rules broken. There's some saying that goes "children crave structure" and it's true. I have read many times that a classroom shouldn't have more than six or seven rules and that makes them easier for the teacher to manage. I have nine, which includes "do your best" (you'd be surprised how, when kids aren't working and wonder why they receive a consequence, saying "you weren't doing your best" is actually an adequate answer). There are also designated bathroom/pass times for every freshman classroom to avoid kids leaving the room during crucial teaching time. With that, kids always know what their teacher expects in the classroom. There will always be someone who will try to bend or break the rules but students truly know what is "fair", and often the students keep each other in check. My favorite is when someone asks to go to the bathroom outside of bathroom time (you may go in the first twenty minutes or last twenty minutes) and before I can even say "no", another student plainly replies ,"20/20 rule, man".

If a rule has to be bent or broken, make it explicitly known that the situation is an emergency or exception. This helps the children continue to feel like they are being treated fairly.

2. Behavior management is tricky.
Unless you are the kind of person who is able to be stone-faced and does not tell jokes to your students or have much of a personal relationship with them, even the best behavior management systems get tricky. A lot of students do not respond to consequences right away; some even do not respond until or unless you are yelling. A lot of parents give their child a direction but don't enforce it right away, then become annoyed and yell and/or whip the child and that's when the child knows where the limit is. If you are or plan to be particularly open with them, they may not take you, your rules or your consequences seriously. A visual behavior tracking system helps because they can see exactly how close to the "limit" they are.

3. Fights are normal.
Fights are normal if not expected. They are not an expellable offense even if the school says so in writing. Parents raise children to hit back if they have been hit and to stand up for themselves if they have been wronged. Parents often fight when they face conflict. Some of my former colleagues once discussed all the fights that they'd been in from childhood to adulthood. I was the only one who hadn't any fights, even with siblings. I always have to be the exception. Even at my current school, which is supposed to be "a cut above the rest", parents have fights at football games and even come to the school ready to fight teachers. Fights are normal. Fights start when a piece of paper is thrown in play. Fights break out across campuses. Fights create chaos where mobs of students run to watch.
If a fight breaks out or is about to break out in your room, do your best to separate the students and call for help. Document as much as you can.

4. Respect is a truly subjective word.
Or rather, disrespect happens often and easily. Also, cursing in the presence of an adult is not considered disrespectful if the student is not cursing AT the adult.
A lot of behaviors are overlooked because children are not shown what respect and having good manners is. Most of the students at school say "please" and "thank you" and "God bless you" but don't see arguing with an adult as disrespect. Defining respect in your classroom is a must.

5. The children behave like and may think they are helpless but shouldn't be treated like they are.
Many teachers truly have the best intentions when it comes to their students and just want them to be successful and feel good about themselves. However, teachers may often be tempted to "help" their students too much. Many of the children of New Orleans are being raised in an environment of helplessness; they often believe that all Black people get food stamps and rightfully so; our poor job market leaves many people with few options for growth and citizens feel helpless to be successful and most of all, our streets are truly deadly for our teens in ways that no one can help. They walk into the classroom already defeated and need their teachers' help to show them exactly how to become independent and strong.
The lines become blurred with curriculum. If every teacher is teaching directly with an "I do, we do, you do" structure and adheres to the "you do" part, children will be less helpless. Many of our schools use centers for independent work but teachers are still present and assist; the students become persistent at getting teachers to give them answers, whether explicitly or through getting teachers to explain every angle of the problem until all that is left is the answer.
My very best freshman will still sit frozen in fear of getting an answer wrong because their previous teachers have "helped" them get the right answer before turning the assignment in. If the material has been explicitly taught and practiced, they should be able to do the work on their own. If the majority can not, ask the students what steps they missed and see how the lesson can be adjusted. Giving kids an answer never helps them.

6. Kids need honesty.
New Orleans' public schools are some of the worst in the state-a state which ranks as 48th in the nation. Our kids want to be and should be as successful as any other child but don't know how far they have to go or what they have to do to get there. Patting the children on the back for everything gives them a false sense of ability. It's a delicate bubble that will be burst at some point. We want our children to get better, so just like we do as adults, we should show them how to find their weaknesses and improve them rather than treating them like they have none.

It is also beneficial to teach them how to accept feedback. They exist in a world of negativity and exclusion and it would benefit them to learn that everyone who is honest with them is not being malicious.

7. Parent involvement is unpredictable.
Even the most well-intentioned parents have complex lives that can hinder their involvement. Many others don't know how important their involvement is. Phone numbers and addresses change very often. Parents may go on field trips and to spring cookouts but not to conferences.A plan for what to do if you can't have parent support is good, but don't let the difficulty of getting in contact stop you. For most kids, knowing that you will talk to their parent will alter their behavior.

8. Parents' priorities are often out of whack.
Kids often come to school without bookbags let alone classroom supplies. Girls are donned with $100 Brazilian weave but don't have a week's worth of clean uniforms. Parents may decide that an assignment you give is stupid and not make their child do it. They value sports over education despite how often they will tell their child that their education matters. Children miss countless days of school for no reason but may come to school with a fever months later. It is not a battle that truly can be fought, but awareness of it can help a teacher work around it.

9. Understand that their world view is nil.
Many children do not know the names of places on the other side of town. If they live on one side of the river they most likely don't cross to the other. Many do not know the name of our lake or the major colleges. Lessons should include a lot of context and background information and this is a great way to utilize nonfiction texts! They are very excited to learn these new things- even the older darlings.

10. Many schools do not have adequate special educators.
Classrooms are often filled to the legal capacity and many of the students may have IEPs, 504 accomodations or even be English language learners and the school may not have enough special education teachers or para-educators to help. Be proactive in getting help from special ed teachers and seeking resources that will help you differentiate for the high numbers of special need students.

11. Despite what the news may say about the success of the charter schools in New Orleans, the children are still about 3 grade levels behind.
Children in private schools and highly reputable public schools are still not reading and computing adequately and they and their parents don't know it.
However, you can't remediate everything. Careful choices have to be made about what skills to review/remediate, lessons need to include a lot of spiraled practice of key skills and support can be offered during tutoring time.

12. They are prejudiced.
Not always in a bad way. The younger children tend to find their White teachers novel and interesting and take a liking to them but older children carry some weird prejudices and stereotypes. The older students tend to set out to "run out" young, white teachers and mark them as weak and incapable. Sticking to the rules and not treating the students as if they are "poor, helpless Black kids" is very important as well as constantly offering examples of equality as well as breaking down stereotypes that students will stick blindly to.

13. They need love.
Most of the things the kids will say and do are because they are trying to get your attention. They want and need positive feedback, kind words, compliments and even hugs. Some of the most terribly behaved kids are simply acting that way because they want someone to love them.

I know a lot of these don't seem unique to this city as many of the situations are the same in other places, but the culminations of all of these things can create a very complex and difficult school environment.

Professional development opportunities

I don't know about many others, but my development as a teacher has been exclusively of my own volition. My mailbox gets full with ads and fliers for companies selling uniforms and school gear and book sets but we never get information about trainings and developments. Our school PDs tend to center around online systems and programs that are being implemented school-wide. Because of this I spent my last summer reading InformEd and watching videos on Teaching Channel. Most of the best resources that I've had have come from here or from my certification courses. Last night during my class we had a guest professor come in to talk about technology in the classroom. Thanks to her, we all got new ipads yay! While she told us about some useful apps to use, she also told us about free professional development that is offered through or linked to by the state. Using the District and School Support Toolbox, there is a link to CourseWhere at the bottom of the page. Here there are lists of development opportunities both online and throughout the state (you can link directly to it here). You can search by month or course. There's not a whole lot going on now, and apparently there are fewer courses in December but there may be a lot of choices for things to learn.

Is teaching reading with audio effective?

In classrooms all over the country, teachers are searching for ways to increase student success. Many students struggle with reading, whether it is a lack of desire to do it or missing skills that make it more difficult. Reading teachers are practically doing flips in the classroom to keep children engaged, especially as more schools have block schedules and fewer schools separate the broad scope of literacy into separate classes (the once traditional reading, writing and ELA classes) but some of these tricks may not truly be helping children become more literate.

Literacy is defined simply as the ability to read and write. As the educational systems shift and change, many shortcuts are being made in an effort to show success within that very broad definition while ignoring the smaller implications of literacy. If we look at American students at the first grade level, one could say that they are literate. They can write and read sight words and comprehend short books using many sight words and basic decoding skills. Yet, by the fourth grade, many student's literacy skills stagnate. The gap continues, in most cases, and yet many teachers do little to remedy this. We are often busy with our bells and whistles, just getting children to behave in class and prepare for more standardized tests.

Many teachers' favorite reading aid is the use of audio books. They are used in a variety of ways. Some teachers use them exclusively for children with exceptionalities, while other teachers use them with the whole class on a regular basis. This second use has not ever sat well with me and it wasn't until this past year that I realized why.

I had the conversation with my students on more than one occasion this past year. They want to either be read to or listen to audio. The other three English teachers use audio and I would not. I cited the reason that there are two separate parts of the brain that process auditory information and visual information, and I could not continue to reinforce the short-cut of relying on audio to get them to understand a text. As an English teacher in a society that is decreasingly interested in reading, I am constantly considering what the purpose is of my teaching. Am I teaching literature to familiarize students with classic books? Am I teaching literature to teach students how to analyze written text? Am I teaching literature to teach students the art of writing? Am I teaching literature to teach them how to think critically about words on a page?

Consider which of these is a good reason to teach English.

I do not believe that every child is going or should go to college. I do, however, believe that it is very hard to be successful at anything if you can not think critically. Therefore, my focus is on understanding words on a page. Not many bosses are going to give audio recordings of reports or files, nor will many professors. Even if we are using our phones, tablets or even using Netspeak, we are dependent upon understanding written language far more than verbal communication.

How can we understand words on a page if we are listening to them? Several people have told me that their students are required to follow along while reading, and some do checks to ensure that students are accurately following along. To me, that is tantamount to listening to a movie while looking at a series of still photos of the movie. There is no continuum and there is no whole.

Consider the large-scale goal for students. Small scale, educators want them to pass their standardized tests. Large scale, we want them to be successful in life. If I want my students to compete in the workforce, they need to have real skills instead of a grab-bag of short-cuts.

Children develop their auditory processing before they are born. Do we really need to give them more practice at that? Conversely, their vision is highly undeveloped even by their sixth month of age. When children finally learn to read, the first thing that they must learn is how to recognize the visual symbols that make up the alphabet. A child's ability to recite the alphabet has no relationship with their ability to identify the 26 letters that compose it. When I was a child, my sister used to always say "facetious". I knew the meaning of the word and the correct context to use it. Yet, I never saw it written until I was about 20. Could I have effectively used the word in writing if I had never seen it? Remember, literacy is the ability to read AND write.

Students have an amazing ability to expand their receptive vocabulary but struggle to reuse the words on their own. It may seem like they understand what is in a text but they are relying on their auditory processing to figure out context and meaning, which is the basis of early communication.

A functional knowledge of neuroscience, child development and educational psychology are almost as important as content knowledge when it comes to teaching. Many times, our expectations or practices don't match what is actually reasonable in a developing child's brain.

In this article, The Reading Brain, the importance of understanding the complexities of literacy in English and the parts of the brain that must work together are discussed.

This second article Reading the brain jumps right into the mechanics of reading and includes photos of PET scans showing each area that is used for different tasks. There are even more resources included in the pdf that could be very helpful for teachers.

This article looks at the adaptations that humans have made to accomodate written language.

The Science of Reading research simply addresses how scientific research can and should be used in improving reading outcomes.

Next year, my students will work more on developing decoding skills, morpheme knowledge, critical thinking tasks and syntax as well as focusing on more skills-appropriate readings in order to facilitate more academic and, hopefully, life-long success.

John White and summer interns

For many collegiate and post-collegiate people, internships are the salary-free way into the job you want. Some interns are paid, many, many more are not. Some interns work during the summer and off time from college, some work for years. That's not news. What is news, however, is that John White may be spending $2.5 billion on invisible interns in the DOE. The DOE is supposedly broke; many parishes have not had raises in years and teachers, para-professionals, admins and whole schools have been shut down because of lack of funds. Hence, the idea that money is being spent on interns could boggle the mind. http://crazycrawfish.wordpress.com/2014/06/29/did-ldoe-hire-100-summer-interns-at-25000-a-piece/ When people ask why the schools in Louisiana perform so poorly, or why the schools in the most prosperous cities perform so poorly, or why so many people feel so hopeless, this is why. Corruption is the name of the game, folks.

Making history or making mistakes?

It has recently been publicized, first through The Washington Post, that The Recovery School District has officially closed the last of its schools, making New Orleans the first city in the country to be completely charter (with the small exception of a few open enrollment schools in Orleans parish, mention in the Times Pic article here). Many people are proponents of the charter system. To the average outsider, charter schools in New Orleans seem to have improved the performance of it students, at least improving school SPS scores above a failing rank; however, few people, know much about the differences between charters, charter management organizations and district run schools. In New Orleans, the conversations are quickly becoming moot.

Many eyes have turned to our city as an example of the charter done right but are we really making history or making mistakes that the children of the city will have to pay for? Charter schools were supposed to open up school choice by allowing families to send their children to any school in the district, not just the one closest to them. What has happened is the school have since been franchised to owners who have few people to answer to. Some people might say that absolute power corrupts absolutely; can this happen to the charters and their boards? Jessica Williams wrote an interesting article on the topic at "The Lens. New Orleanians might want to take a closer look.

Home to the state's top high schools

My friend's mom, a long time educator in Mississippi, sent me this link to a NOLA.com article naming Thomas Jefferson High School as Louisiana's top ranked high school. The article is news from the recent U.S. News and World Report article. Thom Jeff is a selective-enrollment, gifted school in Jeferson Parish. Great school, with a nice, new campus at the old site of Archbishop Blenk high school. I wondered about the ranking, though, knowing that Thom Jeff was chosen over Benjamin Franklin High which is actually a national competitor, and so many other parishes whose schools out rank the New Orleans metro area. Everything you need to know is always in the data. For a person who hates mathematics, I trust in data and statistics wholeheartedly (it was the only math course that I ever got an "A" in-EVERYONE should know how to read and analyze data). In the complete pdf report, U.S. News details the methods used in ranking the schools.

In the methodology I found that these rankings hinge upon the number of disadvantaged students in a school and how much better those students performed on state tests than expected. There seems to be no determinant for what is the "expected" performance for "disadvantaged groups", which includes minorities and low-socioeconomic families. The last stage of factors is if the school carries AP or IB courses, which are considered college preparatory. This aspect makes sense in considering the effectiveness of a high school, however, it just isn't enough data to print national rankings based on diversity.

My own school was recognized, as it is still an "A" school by Louisiana's standards but does not meet U.S. News' standards because we are not diverse. The student body is primarily Black and we are 84% free or reduced lunch. While I know that our AP scores are less than stellar, falling below the radar as compared to a more diverse and selective enrollment school (which my school was when I attended) feels like a cheat when such standards seem like they're in place to assist in benefiting the minority and poor children. My school consists of those very children!

I can appreciate the rankings, whether I agree with the standards or not. I wonder how other people feel about their own school and district rankings and if other districts, especially teachers who have taught in multiple districts, feel that New Orleans is really doing it better than the rest.

Utilizing direct instruction

A former coworker shared this short article about keeping instruction direct.

I found it and the comments interesting when considering my own teaching and teacher training. One of the commenters agreed that scripting your lessons can help you say just what you want to say in the amount of time that you want to say it. Another commenter disagreed that if you don't know your content well enough to teach exactly what you need to in that moment, then maybe you shouldn't be teaching. The original commenter replied that he often asks his new teachers to script their lessons. The second continued to disagree.

Is scripting a lesson helpful? Should all teachers do this? What IS direct instruction, anyway?

I was trained to teach a lesson in the "I do, we do, you do" format. However, this format doesn't always apply to English class, especially the higher up in grade level that you go. This method is essentially "direct instruction". You teach, uninterrupted, for some amount of time and THEN you check for understanding,students are invited to ask questions and do work with teacher assistance. This was taught to me at a charter school with a very high number of new teachers. Doing this also helped me to learn how to break broad skills into smaller skills. However, scripting my lesson, which I no longer do, did not make me any better of a teacher nor any more able to anticipate student misunderstandings. I hate lesson scripting. I think it is another way to manipulate teachers into devoting every possible second to work rather than having any down time. One colleague of mine wrote a 19 page lesson plan for one week of teaching. ABSURD.

Despite the fact that this is a very common way to structure lessons, my students HATE to follow this. Just yesterday they were in an uproar because I asked them to listen only so I could clarify their misconceptions about a skill (character archetypes). I couldn't get a sentence in edgewise without arms shooting up and students yelling questions. Despite doing exactly what is mentioned in the article, my students can not follow that format, even at this point in the school year. My opinion, though, is that it is the best way to teach new skills. It is the best way to keep pacing on track. It is the best way to ensure that you teach only what you mean to and not muddle the lesson with unnecessary details.

School districts

A lot of new teachers and even families have questions about or are confused about the school districts in the city. It is a complicated mess of politics that has left the very small city of New Orleans with a splintered group of schools that it is not always easy to learn about. The city's schools are divided into schools run by the Recovery School District, Orleans Parish School board, charter and private schools. Unlike most cities and even our suburban counterparts, there is no unified district that handles all students within New Orleans/Orleans parish.

This can be troublesome for parents looking for schools and teachers looking for places to work. There is a very large difference in the two types of public schools. Charter schools are completely autonomous, save for the requirement to take the same state-mandated standardized tests. This means that everything from teacher salary to amount of funds available to the school can vary. Charters are being touted as the solution to the education gap, however, being a charter school is a very vague description of what the school does. It is as vague as saying "fast food restaurant"; it only means that they are self-governed and it does not give any information about what systems are being used within the school. This alone means that statistics about charter schools are inaccurate; the methods used within each type are not considered when collecting data. For instance, Audubon Montessori uses very different teaching methods than Kipp Central City but they are both charter schools.

Within the heading of "charter school" are two more types: Charter management organizations and Independently run charters. The CMOs are basically franchise organizations. It is one organization that runs multiple schools. These charters are eligible for more and different types of funding and have a different set of requirements to keep their charters. These are organizations like Crescent City Schools, ReNew Schools, KIPP Schools, Firstline Schools , New Beginnings Schools , ARISE Schools and Algiers Charter School Association. Aside from the Algiers CSA, and New Beginnings, they all use the KIPP school model.

Then there are the independently run charters. These schools are governed by either the Orleans Parish School Board , which was the city's original school district, or the Recovery School District . These schools are autonomous, however. Some are montessori, some follow traditional school models, some are new and some are old. The Orleans Parish Schools are the highest performing and most prestigious schools in the city. The politics behind why that happened would have to be saved for another day.

That leaves everything else. The Recovery School District came about as a means to "recover" the failing and damaged schools in 2003. The plan was for them to take them over (leaving the passing schools to stay with Orleans Parish), improve their SPS Score then charter them out. Why the schools wouldn't be returned to Orleans Parish is more politics that will be saved for another day. What actually happened, however, is that the RSD was mismanaged; run by people who did not know why the schools were failing and did little to actually improve the schools. They quickly ran out of money and had outstanding bills all over town. The ultimate solution was, by the end of the 2013 school year, to close or charter out the bulk of their schools. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. This district now only runs five schools in the city.

Despite all of this, children are eligible to go to any public school regardless of which district governs it or where it is. The only restrictions ever fall under the selective enrollment schools which require a testing process to be considered for entry.

Teachers entering Teach for America or Teach Nola are eligible to work at any public school regardless of which district governs it.

Knowing how the school districts work, which schools are governed by which organization, and how to find their SPS scores is very important in navigating the New Orleans educational system.