(Vol. 2, No. 2 - Spring 1998)
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School Buzz!
What some Long Beach educators
are saying about the middle grades
and high standards for all kids
Hold the kids-and the system-accountable
"I think that when teachers start saying 'this is the standard,' and
the teacher, the administrator, the student, and the parent all know the
kid has to meet the standard or something's going to happen-once you hold
them all accountable, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised when a huge
percentage of the kids meet that standard.
Now, what you have to do is you have to set things in place that make it
possible for the kids at (inner city schools) to meet that standard-things
like the district's3rd grade (reading) initiative, because if you send kids
to middle school who can't read, that standard becomes impossible.
But if you're placing standards all along the line, then you're holding
everyone accountable. And you may find that kids in the inner city need
seven hours of instruction while kids at other schools only need six. You
may find that you have to become much more proactive, you may find that
you need much smaller classes in those inner-city schools. But the answer
is not to remove the standard because the kid can't meet it. The answer
is to give the kid and the teacher and the administrator the tools necessary
to meet that standard.
So if teachers in a school say 'our kids can't meet that standard,' they
might be right, but they should be saying: 'Our kids can't meet that standard
unless we all do the things we need to help kids get there, and here's what
they are.' "
-- Paul Jenkins
8th grade history chair
Rogers Middle School
'What does it mean to teach to standards?'
"The message needs to be repeated over and over: 'What does it mean
to teach to standards?' It means you have a clear goal. You have ways of
measuring whether kids are reaching that goal. And you have teachers who
are learning how teach in ways that help kids achieve the goal. Teachers
have to be able to assess students' work and figure out what to do next.
Teachers have to be able to do that, because if they can't do it, they can't
plan their teaching right. It is the heart of staff development. The important
focus is what teachers see that kids can do, not what the district or the
state says your kids can do."
Lynn Winters
LBUSD assistant superintendent for assessment
"I thought teaching was all planned out for you."
"Teaching is not what I expected. I thought it was all planned out
for you, but you find out it takes a lot of preparation time. I'm nervous
a lot. I thought it would be easy, that I could instill fear in the kids.
I was wrong. Standards are helping me because they create a sequence of
learning. Teachers moan and groan about standards but when they start to
see how they tie things together and keep us from wasting time, they soften
up."
LBUSD teacher intern
Middle grades mathematics
What good teaching looks like
"A teacher who is really supervising student learning takes a different
approach to teaching. When a kid comes to turn in a project, the teacher
and the student look at the scoring guide or list of what's expected, and
the teacher may say, "I don't see this or I don't see that. What do
you need to do next?" And then the teacher starts pulling groups of
kids (together) to teach them how to do the next step, because she's not
going to accept incomplete work. That's a hugely different way of thinking
about teaching and how to spend your time.... We still have too many teachers
teaching from the textbooks-too many who still take the attitude that I
do it and the kids get it or they don't. That's still out there."
Area superintendent
LBUSD
What's the most important thing
you've learned about teaching?
"I think it's flexibility. Not only learning flexibility in working
with students, but in working with staff, other teachers, the district.
Being flexible about how I teach, being open to new ideas, changes, open
to whatever could happen with these 35 children in this classroom on one
particular day. Because one day is different from the next. Being able to
realize that this lesson did not work-and being willing to ask myself what
I need to do to go back and fix it. Really looking at myself and what I
do."
Third-year teacher
6th grade English and history
Academic standards and college
"I have seen (academic) standards have an effect on teachers and students.
Standards force teachers and students to do more. The bottom line is that
kids are not going to college if they don't learn it. No one has been honest
enough to tell them that before now."
Teacher
6th grade mathematics
A standards-based epiphany
"I've created a chart that helps me and the kids make the connection
between theory and practice. If we are integrating western and non-western
ideas, which is one of our social studies standards, I'll talk to them about
it in an on-going way. We bring it up again and again. And every now and
then you'll see these kids have an epiphany when you're talking about one
of these standards. They'll put it together and they'll just be so excited.
Like when we were talking about Egyptian beliefs, and I said you can see
these Egyptian ideas in our own Western thought. We listed off the aspects
of Egyptian religion that are found in Christianity. And suddenly this kid
really saw it. 'Yes! Yes!' A little epiphany. It was really cute."
Teacher
6th grade history
How have standards changed your school?
"I think there's much more awareness about certain things that need
to be covered in classrooms. It's not enough just to get kids involved in
a task. They need to be involved in a task that has something to do with
the academic subject area, something that will be meaningful beyond the
confines of our middle school."
Teacher
ESL department chair
Finally, a common direction
"Standards finally give us a common direction and a goal to reach.
When I first started in the district, when I walked in the school the first
time I asked for the curriculum, and I was handed the teacher's guide to
the literature book. I was quite shocked, because I came from another district
where they had given me a whole curriculum to follow. That was 12 years
ago, and no one ever gave me a curriculum until we had the content standards."
Middle grades teacher
English department chair
The teaching job got bigger
"Our reforms are hard to put together with our large class sizes. There
are limits to everything. Reforms ask teachers to do more-more meetings,
being pulled in so many directions. Teaching is a big job, and it got bigger
with the reforms."
Teacher
8th grade science
"Teach-it's quick money"
When we get people in from industry who want to walk into a classroom and
teach, they have a tough time. I had to counsel a young man out of teaching
who was having a terrible time. As he walked me out to the car, he said,
'You know, when I graduated from college last June they told me go take
(the basic literacy exam) and teach-it's quick money.' And that's not unusual
now. There are so many young people who are thinking 'I can do this as an
interim job.' The pay is not bad right out of college, but they don't know
what they are getting into."
Union executive
Teachers Association of Long Beach
"They don't have the will
and maybe not the skill"
Some teachers just aren't going to be successful in urban schools. Given
the realities of the students and their families-some people just simply
cannot do it. They don't have the will and maybe not the skill. They give
it a shot, they try their hardest, but after a year or two years, it's 'I'm
not fooling myself, and I'm not fooling the kids This is not the place for
me. I can't make a difference.' And you have to respect people who say that.
Area Superintendent
LBUSD
"I would love it if I never had to sleep."
"All teachers feel overwhelmed because of the issue of time. I would
love it if I never had to sleep-I could stay up all night and create wonderful
things. A lot of things deprive me of time with my students. I lose sleep
over it. Last night I worried about a group of students who blew it on an
algebra test when I thought I had done everything I could. But I keep trying.
If I have a middle-age crisis, it won't be because I think I am not making
a difference."
Middle grades teacher
Math department chair
What do you do to
become a better teacher?
"I take a lot of training in the summer. I've always chosen to do that,
because I think it's important. I always want to learn something. I'm always
willing to learn from teachers, too. If I'm going up and down the hallway,
and I see somebody doing something interesting, I always ask, 'What are
you doing in here? Why are you doing it?' My philosophy is that the day
I think I don't have to learn anything new, that's the day I need to get
out of teaching. You just have to learn. You have to."
Teacher
7th and 8th grade history and English
"How can I make my kids understand?"
"Teachers need to always be asking, 'how can I make my kids understand?'
Sometimes teachers jump to objectives without teaching the steps. But standards
really challenge kids, and teachers need to take them up to the standards,
not expect them to start there. We don't do enough diagnostic testing. We
don't examine our lessons enough. One reason teachers feel intimidated when
they're asked to share student work (with other teachers) is because it
is a reflection of teachers' work. And some teachers work in ditto sheets."
Middle grades teacher
Math department chair
Teachers don't share lessons enough
"I think one of the things that people who don't teach don't understand
is how alone you are in the classroom. If you're an engineer, and you're
making something, you run it over to your buddy and say 'what do you think
of this?' And he looks over your plans or what have you, and he can hold
it or touch it, and he says, 'You should do X, Y, or Z." Teaching
is different. When that bell rings, you're in a room with 35 students, alone.
And even if you think the lesson has gone very well, there's nothing to
gauge it by-there's no one to share it with it. So I think that sitting
down with someone and saying 'Here's a lesson I've done; what do you think?'
and hearing what they have to say-I think that, like any profession, whether
it's two doctors discussing a patient, two engineers discussing a problem-it
can be very, very helpful. We've got to do more of it."
Middle grades teacher
History department chair
Planning together is a big change
"I think the biggest change (in the last two years) has been that all
of us who teach history have sat down together and done common planning.
So we are all teaching the same thing, with our different teaching styles,
but making sure the same information is getting covered in the textbook
and the homework and the projects. We've really tried to make it so that
if a child is in my class or another teacher's class, they're going to get
the same stuff. That's a big change."
Teacher
7th grade history
*When is student work good enough?
"I hear people talking more in the past two years-and I never heard
this before-about what's good enough when it comes to student work. And
I think that's a really good conversation to have, because it means you're
comparing what you expect your students to do with other teachers."
Teacher
Middle grades language arts
They memorized the facts, but . . .
"It can be a little frustrating when we ask kids to write an essay
and explain why something happened in history. You've got the kid who's
gotten an A on a test, who's memorized the Boston Tea Party and all of that,
then can't put it together in an essay. That's a little frustrating. And
it's informative. It shows you that while they've memorized the facts, they
don't have any idea how it relates to the event."
Teacher
7th and 8th grade history
*'Writing' just means writing their opinion
"One of the problems with writing is that for so many students, writing
just means writing their opinion. That's mostly the kind of writing they've
been asked to do, and that's what most of them keep doing. Getting them
to the place where they support their ideas with the facts, that's a real
challenge. It's a tough process."
First-year teacher
Middle grades
Asking students to write and read
in practical ways
"Even though I know it's stressful for the kids, I think the district's
emphasis on (more practical) writing styles is not a bad thing. It's always
been fun in writing classes to have kids do creative writing and create
stories. But in the real world that's not a writing style most kids use.
They need to be able to write the credit card company and complain they've
been double-billed on an item. They need to be able to write a letter to
return with a defective product. They need to be able to write for purposes
that have nothing to do with the short story. And we need to help the kids
focus more on those kinds of writing.... It's the same thing with selections
we use with students as reading assignments. We need to be aware that they
need to read non-fiction materials in English and not always be heavy on
the fiction side. We need a balance, and I think the content standards help
us focus on trying to achieve that balance."
Teacher
Middle grades language arts
Less of the 'fluff stuff'
"The teachers in my school are committed to making sure all our kids
have the skills they need to do middle school work. We have a double period
of reading in sixth grade. We have reading and English. And we're going
to be pushing more and more that for part of the year teachers are responsible
for helping students read and write in the content areas of history and
science, and even math. What's happening in our district is that the focus
is changing. Instead of writing the fluff stuff, "my grandmother's
90th birthday," we're asking our students to write about something
important. And the same is true in reading. We get them to read Goosebumps,
but what do we really need for them to read? English, history, science."
Principal
LBUSD middle school
It's all in the delivery
"Some principals can introduce new ideas and make you love them, and
other principals can shove them down your throat and make you hate them."
Teacher
Teacher union officer
Including English language learners
in regular classes
"My first year they gave me a cluster of sheltered English kids within
my regular history and science classes. I had an aide who spoke none of
the native languages but was really skillful. She was there three days a
week and I would plan on her teaching my lesson and pulling those kids into
a small group, and our goal was to get them to talk as much as possible
while doing my lesson.... The other two days, they weren't working together;
they were spread out among all the groups, and my goal was to get them talking
and listening to English as much as possible. So they had to use English
to get what they wanted. And I saw an incredible increase in English proficiency
that year. The aide was sympathetic to my goal, and she really primed the
pump of getting them to do their assignments orally and to speak a lot and
to write and record. And I liked that much better than having them all lumped
into one class."
Teacher
Middle grades history and science
*Students who miss out on teaching
"We have whole batches of students who have missed major sections of
instruction, for whatever reason. It may be a limited English proficient
student who had particular experiences in elementary school and is suddenly
classified as fluent-which is great-but they end up in a regular English
class, and there's a whole range of skills that those kids never got. Some
place they need to pick them up. They have a hard time keeping up in middle
school."
Teacher
Middle grades English Language Development
*A vast potential to do fine work
"When I shifted to teaching ELD students, one of things that changed
is that I need to rethink how I approach kids in the classroom because I
need to constantly simplify everything. I know that my kids have a vast
potential to do some very fine work. They just need to be taught. Not that
I need to have simplistic lesson plans, but I need to start showing kids
how to do work that teachers in later grades will expect them to be able
to do."
Teacher
Middle grades English Language Development
Chickens and chimneys
"Teaching is always a surprise. You never know what will snag kids'
attention. There was something in our textbook about colonists cleaning
out their chimneys by dropping chickens down them. And I really wish we
hadn't read that, because I was hearing for weeks about chickens and chimneys.
We'd do a diary of a day in the life of a colonist, and you got back across
the board, 'Well, today, I dropped a chicken down my chimney....' I'm not
sure in laying out our learning goals for the year whether we want to include
colonial chimney sweep techniques."
Teacher
7th and 8th grade U.S. history
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