What parents do May 30, 2008

I mentioned M. once before — it was her birthday and I forgot to check the calendar, and missed it.  And she is so non-verbal most of the time that she never mentioned it. 

M. is one of my special ed children, with developmental delays, speech difficulties, and possibly some sensory stuff going on.  Lately she seems to be worse than ever.  The special ed teacher, sp. ed. assistant teacher, and my assistant teacher and I have all noticed that she seems to be going backward.  This is unusual — I take pride in the fact that my special ed children thrive in my classroom and make huge strides.  Two of my students this year are moving into regular ed for kindergarten next year.  But somehow with M. we are not making progress.  Today we were doing insect math and she was unable to recognize the numbers 1, 2, and 3.  She could count to five, but if she counted to three and I asked, “what comes next?” she had no idea.

One problem is that maybe her needs are so great that my classroom is just too overstimulating for her.  My classroom might not be the right place for her at all.  Next year for K she’ll be in a small classroom with all developmentally-delayed children, and it should be perfect for her. 

The title of this post, though, is “what parents do,” and I wonder just what M.’s parents are doing for her.  Her parents are very young, and both M. and her baby brother were very premature.  Ali has been to the apartment and says that there have been many police calls there in the past year for drug dealing and other problems.  M.’s mom hasn’t come to any of her IEP meetings or her transition meeting, and she still hasn’t even registered her for kindergarten.  Usually when we call her the phone is disconnected, and when we send out the social worker, nobody answers the bell.

How would M.’s life be different if her parents were different?  If her mom had been able to carry her full-term?  If her parents talked to her more?  If they gave in to her less?  (M. cries a lot as her main method of problem-solving.  We are guessing that it gets her what she wants when she’s at home.)

Then I look at Miss L., who is perhaps our biggest challenge this year.  Miss. L.’s parents are older, college-educated professionals with financial stability.  They have an incredibly hard road to go down with their youngest, for whom every day is a struggle.  I cannot imagine what she’d be like if she had parents without resources, without parenting skills.

And I wonder what M. would be like if she DID.

a sad thing to see May 26, 2008

A few years ago, I was in the teacher’s lounge, feeling exhausted.  A middle school teacher (my school is preschool through 8th grade) asked how things were going, and I told her all about how difficult my kids were being.  I then asked her how she was doing, and she told me, “I’m really depressed.  My 8th graders are starting to have sex, and I can’t stop them from being so stupid.”

That silenced me.  Nothing on a bad day in preschool is quite like that.

This Friday started out inauspiciously, with a migraine at 5:30 am.  When the kids arrived off the buses I still felt pretty bad.  Then I saw something I’d never seen before at any school I’ve ever worked at:  a pregnant student.

I asked around, and she is in 8th grade, but is 16 and really should have moved on to the high school.  Still.  She’s in 8th grade and she’s pregnant.

I had a hollow feeling inside me all day.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom May 21, 2008

We’ve finished learning the alphabet, and some of my little friends actually know the whole damn thing, so we’ve been celebrating our accomplishments with some spirited readings of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. On Monday we made a mural, and each child did his or her own little chicka tree, using templates I found here.

Now the children keep going around muttering, “chicka chicka boom boom,” and they are fighting over it in the reading corner.

Miss Nelson is Missing May 21, 2008

Now that we’re in the home stretch, our theme is “Ready for Kindergarten,” and all the books on our shelf are about kindergarten and school.  Z. commented that some of them looked familiar, and I told her that we’d had a bunch of them out at the start of the year.  I was impressed, but not surprised, that she remembered.

Yesterday at storytime I didn’t have enough time to introduce our new “special story” (the repeated interactive read-aloud), so I grabbed Miss Nelson is Missing off the shelf. 

(For those of you who aren’t familiar with the book, Miss Nelson’s class is the worst behaved in school.  They never listen to their poor, sweet teacher.  One day she goes missing, and in her place is the substitute, Miss Viola Swamp.  She has an ugly black dress and is perhaps a real witch.  She is strict and mean and scary, and everyone buckles down.  Finally, when they are exhausted from working so hard, Miss Nelson comes back, and from then on the children all appreciate her, do their work, and behave beautifully.  No one ever knows that there is an ugly black dress in Miss Nelson’s closet….)

I had never read this book to any of my preschool classes, and I wasn’t sure how it would go.  However, with all their practice discussing books this year, they loved it and had a lot to say.  With a little guidance, they even figured out the true identity of Miss Viola Swamp at the end.

When I closed the book, I asked, “Why were the children so happy to see Miss Nelson at the end of the book?”

Z. said, “They missed her.”

I asked, “How do you know they missed her?  Why do you think that?”

Z. replied, “Well, when you are gone, we all miss you.  So I think Miss Nelson’s class missed her the same way.”

Zing!  My heart melted.  It is so nice to be appreciated, especially by four and five year olds.

On not being safe May 19, 2008

How’s this for a headline?  “Teacher tries to help preschoolers stay alive.”  I nearly spit out my coffee this morning when I saw that one.

Preschool teacher Marisol Sierra, who teaches in the Chicago neighborhood where schoolkids are getting shot, has incorporated gun- and gang-safety into her preschool curriculum.  That’s worlds away from the usual curriculum of colors, shapes, ABCs, friendship, storytime, and counting, but it makes perfect sense.  It’s just incredibly sad at the same time.

I remember my first year of teaching kindergarten, in one of my city’s worst neighborhoods, when the little girls in the house corner would play “call 911 — my boyfriend is coming over to kill me!”  I had a police cap in my dress up box, and would put it on and come over to reassure them and let them know that they were safe.

I also had to put on my police cap when I saw the children in the house corner doing the “duck and cover”, dodging bullets.

Literacy begins at home? May 15, 2008

Well, duh, yes of course it does.  But when I saw that that was the title of an op-ed piece in the LA Times, explaining why Reading First isn’t working, I rolled my eyes and figured it would be more moaning about how parents aren’t doing their jobs, so teachers can’t do theirs.  (I’ve heard that often enough this year from my coworkers; I’m not kindly disposed toward this way of thinking.)

However, I was wrong.  The author, Esther A. Jantzen, brings up one of my favorite books, the landmark study on language acquisition Meaningful Differences, by Hart and Risley.  Here’s what she has to say about what Hart and Risley found:

The most astonishing literacy-related information I’ve ever seen came out over 10 years ago, in Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley’s “Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children.” Their shocking news: There is a huge difference in the number of words and the prohibitive or affirmative tone of words heard by young children depending on whether their parents are on welfare, in the working class or professionals.

They found that by age 3 children of welfare parents heard 10 million words, those with working-class parents heard 20 million words, and those with professional parents heard 30 million words. In addition, with children 13-18 months old in welfare families, almost 80% of the feedback to the child was negative, in working-class families about 50% was negative, and in professional families more than 80% of feedback to the child was affirmative.

Anyone who has read that can’t forget it.  A 20 million word difference?  No wonder we have an achievement gap — the children in welfare families arrive at kindergarten already behind in vocabulary, and what the teacher talks about makes less sense to them than it does to the children in professional families, who keep adding to their store of knowledge and keeping pulling farther and farther ahead.

And the ratio of positive to negative feedback is just heartbreaking.  Plus, Hart and Risley found that the four-year-olds in the professional families had larger vocabularies than the mothers in the welfare families.

Anyway, Jantzen actually has a proposal on what we need to do next.  (Here I’ve been thinking about ways to improve vocabulary instruction.  Solid, but prosaic.)

Here are ideas: How about directing some Title I funds to educate and support parents in lower-wage workplaces–big-box stores, fast-food restaurants, factories, hotels, data-processing companies, government offices — places where many employees are young mothers and fathers. How about enrolling the goodwill of the Salvation Army, Red Cross, United Way and the huge nonprofits that attract lots of volunteers of all classes and education levels, and bring them on board to reach out and encourage parents?

How about harnessing the political campaign troops of all parties, the caring people who make calls to our homes? How about involving the direct sales industry and those who create those recorded sales calls? How about using the public service components of media in all its shapes, sizes and forms — radio, television, gaming and entertainment, newspapers and magazines?

How about providing workshops, materials and leadership for churches, hospitals, clinics and social welfare offices? How about setting up video-link programs in prisons so that parents in jail could talk and read to their children?

The simplest form of the message we need to get out is this: Parents, grandparents, caregivers, baby sitters, uncles and aunts — talk kindly to children a lot from birth on, using big words. Listen to them and read aloud to them in whatever language you want to use. And do these no-cost things often.

If the foundation for literacy is laid in the home, then schools can do their job. If foundation is not laid, even heroic amounts of intervention by the school won’t be sufficient.

It’s that straightforward. And yes, we can.

I’d vote for that.

Taking a test to teach reading May 14, 2008

New Connecticut teachers are going to have to take a test to prove that they know enough about teaching reading.  I’ve been following this with interest, and have read several angry comments from CT teachers. 

I’m for it, and would have no problem taking this test if I lived in CT.  Teaching reading is rocket science and it’s clear with our poor reading test scores that not enough teachers know how to do it.

I was very frustrated when I started teaching, with a newly-minted M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education.  While I had learned a lot of things about reading, I didn’t really learn how to teach it, and what I did learn was slanted strongly toward whole language.  I had to try to learn on my own, and wasted a lot of time.

Now I’m actually learning what teachers need to do, and am really grateful for the information and the professional development.  I hate to say it, but of the teachers who are protesting, how many of them are scared they won’t pass?

 

I totally need this backpack May 13, 2008

It’s available at Yottoy, and I saw mention of it at Mo Willems’s blog.

My turn under scrutiny May 13, 2008

I had a formal observation today.  What I mean is, I was the one being observed.  (Usually it’s the other way around.  I do 2-4 observations a quarter.)  Every one of us, even the master and mentor teachers, needs to be observed once each quarter, and this was my last observation of the year. 

The mentor teacher who observed me is a fifth grade teacher, who seemed delighted at the chance to observe someone who is outside her world of upper-primary and middle school (usually she works with the middle school teachers).  She also mentioned, somewhat wryly, that her last visit to a preschool was when her children were that age, and let’s just say, that was a loooong time ago.

The odd thing was, I was nervous.  I had a hard time concentrating on preparing for my lesson before school started, and during prep, Jan was laughing at me because it was so odd to see me so discombobulated.  I saw my master teacher in the office when I was getting something off the printer, and I told her, “I’m nervous about my observation!”  She just rolled her eyes at me and told me not to be ridiculous.

My master teacher was the one who did my most recent observation, and that lesson rocked.  She gave me awesome scores, and I was absolutely thrilled.  So I know I’m a good teacher, and I know that I know my stuff.  I’m also usually so confident….

Back to the room.  I finally got my head together and I carried off the lesson on ordering the numbers 1-6, with my audience of special ed teacher, parent volunteer, para, and the mentor, who was madly scribbling notes.  (Have I mentioned my trained monkey routine?  I am always being watched.  It is never just me and the kids.  I’m used to it, but some days….)

And it went okay.  I mean, it went well, but I can think of lots of things I could have done better.  I didn’t ask good enough questions.  And did they all get it?  Some of my kids don’t know all the number names to six; why was I asking them to put the numbers in order?  And the fact that Miss L. was falling apart the whole time didn’t really help. 

On the plus side, I had three kids (including Z., who had wonderful braids and ponytails all over her head in honor of Crazy Hair Day) order the numbers 0-19 with no sweat, and the stuff I did in the whole group was pretty cool.

This stuff can make you crazy, though.  I think I’ll go into my final observations of the year feeling more mellow and more forgiving than ever.  School is almost over, after all.

Early entrance to kindergarten May 12, 2008

Today we had a visitor.  It’s a common occurrence in my classroom, only today, our visitor was four years old.  We’ll call him Charley.  Charley’s dad brought him to school so that I could watch him play in my room for an hour, and evaluate whether or not he will be okay to enter kindergarten in the fall, even though he won’t be five by the cutoff date.

It’s a new system, instituted last year, that works better than the old system.  The old system was that parents begged the principal, and the principal said yes or no depending on their gut, or their mood.  It was very inconsistent and unfair, so the early childhood department came up with a procedure that all schools are supposed to follow. 

So now, in the spring, I have small visitors who come and work in my room with my students, and I observe them and fill out an observation form.  If they get enough points, they pass, and they can come to K in the fall.

I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, I’m glad that the early childhood dept. got involved, and that they came up with a consistent procedure.  On the other hand, I think it is still a bit too lenient.  I think many of the parents who want their child to get early admittance to K are really thinking about the full-day aspect, and not having to pay for daycare in the afternoon (if their kids are instead sent to a pre-K classroom like mine).

Also, it’s a grade skip.  Starting kindergarten a full year before you’re supposed to is a grade skip, and I think it should only be for the kids who are clearly advanced academically, socially, and emotionally.  Besides, don’t a lot of experts say that boys tend to mature more slowly at that age, and shouldn’t be pushed ahead?

Hoagie’s Gifted page has a bunch of articles on the topic, as does this article from the ERIC Clearinghouse.

Charley did fine.  He was quite reserved, but he separated from his dad readily, and did respond when spoken to.  He followed directions, paid attention to what was going on around him, and followed our routines.  He had fun playing in sand, and even got along with our Miss L. — that is, until she hit him and had to leave the sand table.  I talked to his dad, who said that they just moved here from another state, where the cutoff is different, and where, had he stayed, he’d be going to kindergarten in the fall automatically.  Also, he knows his letters and sounds and is starting to learn how to read.

I’d be interested in hearing what other people think.