School's Out!

          “Four more days!”

          “Yea!”

          Teachers are counting down, too.  Some teachers have had grades done a while ago; especially the benchmark grades when a student’s passing or failing “the test” determines if she goes to the next grade.  The rest of us are scrambling to get everything into the computer. The rooms have to be packed up.  Files on students have to be ready to pass to the next grade’s teachers. 

          The schedules are full of talent shows, field days, and parties.  If you are in an unairconditioned room then your lights are off and you are just trying to stay cool.  Rooms are being cleaned.  Letters are being written by each student to the next year’s unknown teacher. 

          The kids are tightly wound rubber bands just waiting to let loose.  As a teacher, you are trying to ease the tightness or stop it when it starts spinning out of control.  Neither is an easy feat.  I gave a lot of surprise sight word spelling tests or subtraction fact quizzes to stop the spin.  Those artsy-crafty projects requiring costumes, shoe or cereal boxes, family photos, or whatever are to ease the tightness. Distractions work.

          Those crazy kids seem to have forgotten everything you taught them.  They suddenly put the eraser end of pencils into the electric pencil sharpener. They stop putting homework on their desks in the morning.  Normally organized areas turn into piles of paper and pencil shavings. Pencil shavings!? Probably, that is because I still haven’t unplugged the electric sharpener and used a paperclip to get the eraser out of it for the umpteenth time.

          Sometimes, I would have to give in and just try to control the spin. I would put on bubble-gum music and we’d clean our desks, bookshelves, and general classroom stuff. I rarely let my second-graders pack for me for fear that I’d never find things the next fall. The over zealous eight year olds usually got carried away and start throwing things into whichever bin their friend was working at.

          The room alternates from the complete chaos of cleaning, to the passionate creation of a shoebox diorama about a duck’s birthday party or a olive tree in Greece, to the silence of a pop quiz on the phases of the moon.  It’s about keeping everyone engaged and out of trouble.

          Part of the craziness is due to the upcoming freedom of sleeping in and the dream of no structure. Much of it is due to the anxiety of the year ending, leaving a structure a child understands, and the uncertainty of what the next school year will bring. Which friends will be in my class? Who will be my teacher? What about “the test” next year? (A huge concern for the almost third graders in Chicago.) Will I be able to do the work? And the ultimate: Will my teacher like me?

          I would always get a lot of sneaky, looking-over-their-shoulder kind of conversations at this time of year.  “Ms. Meredith, what if I can’t do a math problem on the test? Will I flunk third grade?”  This is usually asked by a smarty pants math whiz.  I try to reassure him by letting him talk to a third grade smarty pants math whiz who has already breezed through the test.

          “Ms. Meredith, what if the work is too hard?” I remind these children that a year ago the work we are doing right now was too hard for them. They will be ready when it is time for them to learn the next thing.

          “Ms. Meredith, will my best friend be in my class?” I’m not really allowed to answer this directly.  So, I tell them I’m not sure yet but they will still have recess together.

          One of my favorites was Clementine who asked, “Ms. Mewedif, who is the weally, weally, weally, weally, weally nicest teacher at Moofy School?”

          I put a stunned look on my face and reply, “Why, me, of course!”

          She put her hands on her hips and studied me for a few long moments.  Then, she shook her head. “No, Ms. Mewedif. Yo the funny one.”

          It worked for me. 

          Each year, I was sad to see my class leave.  I knew I would miss them.            And each year, as we walked out of the school for our final second grade dismissal, I sang, “School’s out. School’s out. Teacher let the monkeys out.”

          Have I mentioned how much I love monkeys?

          HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!

What Happened to Corduroy?

          “Can I take him to the bathroom and wash his ears?”

          I turned to stare at the practicum student teacher who had just asked the question. Maybe it was my ears that needed to be washed.  “I beg your pardon?”

          “His ears are filthy. Just filthy! Actually, he’s filthy in general, but his ears…” She shuddered.  She was not an early twenties student teacher but a woman in her forties.  She had come to do a short-term teaching practicum in our classroom three weeks before the school year was over.

          “No. You may not wash his ears. That would be embarrassing to him.  His family is quite poor.  I’m not even sure if they have hot water--or water period--in their apartment.”

          Her jaw dropped.  Honestly, where do these people think they’re teaching? Kenilworth?  In fact, while the vast majority of my students were from low income families, they were mostly neat and clean.  Only three types or kids were ever dirty: the “Pigpens,” those children who were magnets for dirt, food, and any other spot-making substance; the poorest of poor; or the neglected.  Unfortunately, the little seven year old with dirty ears was both poor and a dirt magnet. 

          “Oh, that’s why his backpack is broken.  I can bring him a new one.”  She was so very eager, just very eager in the wrong way. 

          “It’s June! Everyone has a broken backpack.  No one’s mom is going to replace it until they go on sale in July. What you can do is help him find a book he can read and work with him.  The books in the blue bin should be at his level.”

          “But what about his ears?” 

          Sheesh!  “Okay.  After lunch, you can tell him he has food on his face, because he will.  You can send him to the bathroom to wash his face.  You can even remind him to use soap. Maybe some will splash into his ears.  Otherwise, forget them.  Don’t look at them.” 

          This boy was a wonderful spirit.  He was always happy and ready to please.  The odds of academic success were stacked against him.  His mom was at home with a newborn baby.  The stepdad had never been very helpful, and he’d left before the baby was born.  There were no books at home.  I’m not sure what they ate at home. Very little, I guessed.  Another teacher told me she had heard there were rats in their apartment.  His mom told me she didn’t want to move because our school was so wonderful with her children.  She was right. We were. 

          Last week, there was a new study released that discussed the direct correlation between poverty and lack of academic success.  It seems so “Well, duh?” to me.  I read several articles about it with interest.  One thing that really caught my eye was a study done in 1966, The Coleman Report, that said one third of academic success were in-school factors.  The remaining influences were family characteristics.  There have been several studies since then, most recently Class and Schools, 2004 which reaffirm the Coleman Report. 
          In my grandiosity, I'd like to think I had more than a 33% impact on a child's academic success.  Regardless, it is apparent what happens at home is very important to a child's learning.

          Hmmm!  All the rhetoric over the last few years has been about teacher performance.  I don’t know about you but it made me feel like Superman with a bunch of kryptonite scattered around the classroom.  I was supposed to be able to do wonderful things and did do many. Somehow, the superhuman part of me just never could override a child’s home life.

          My experience was that kids who had educated and/or involved parents were always among my top students.  There were, of course, exceptions but those were the exception not the rule.

          I think of a beautiful Latina who came to the US during first grade.  She had no school experience before her arrival.  After a few weeks of school, I met with her mother.  I explained my concern about how far behind she was in reading.  Her mother told me, with a very determined look, that she would fix it.  After the meeting, the little girl and her mom walked to the library, got a library card, and checked out a stack of books.  They read them all that night.  Each day, after school, they’d drag their huge bag of books back to the library and check out new ones.  You know where this is going.  Her reading took off and there was no looking back.  Her mom had added hours of reading instruction to the few hours she got in the classroom.

          I also remember another mother, who got the same concerns from me about her daughter. She just shrugged her shoulders and said with finality, “We don’t read much at home.”  Guess the outcome of that one. She made gains but not what I would have liked.

          The kids who do better often have more life experience.  They were often raised in homes where they were read aloud to.  They traveled places.  The had family meals where they discussed life.  All these factors contribute to larger vocabularies.  Vocabulary is a key component to academic success.

          I’m not judging parents.  I’ve had bad parenting moments myself.  I don’t even want to discuss my parenting after my husband died.  Life is not always easy.  Teachers don’t have magic wands to make up for fights at home, loud partying, the death of a loved one, or financial instability.  All these stressors affect children.  Poor diet, anxiety, and lack of sleep affect all of us.  If a child fell asleep at his desk, I let him sleep. Did he learn much? Hardly, but if he was that tired then he wasn’t going to learn anything anyway. You just had to be ready with a tissue to quickly hand him when he woke.  He would need it to wipe away the drool. 

          A friend of mine taught second grade on Chicago’s west side. One day he read Corduroy to his class.  After reading about Corduroy’s lost button, he asked that proverbial higher level thinking question, “What do you think happened next?”  He called on a boy who was excitedly waving his hand. 

          “He was offed!” Certainly, nothing in the book would lead you to believe Corduroy would be murdered.  It seemed logical to a child in a neighborhood where people routinely and randomly die.

          Please, don’t tell me family dynamics and socio-economic factors don’t strongly impact learning.  It is the kryptonite of the classroom.

Here are some articles I found interesting on this topic:

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/firing-linethe-grand-coalition-against-teachers

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/03/instead_of_a_war_on_teachers_how_about_one_on_poverty/

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/no-rich-child-left-behind

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/rethinking-the-classroom-obamas-overhaul-of-public-education/2012/09/20/a5459346-e171-11e1-ae7f-d2a13e249eb2_story.html

Schools poverty teaching cps Chicago teaching teachers