“The implementation of the Common Core State Standards presents countless challenges, and as a result, successful implementation depends on the resiliency and willingness of school staff to grapple with incidents of defeat.”

Eduhonesty: Dammit, you bastards! We are making the children of America into fodder for this latest test machine. THEY are the ones who will need resiliency as we pummel them with yet another test that most of them will find difficult, if not impossible. I may be wrong about this, but I fully expect the Illinois state test that will be our first Common Core experiment to be a general disaster. That’s my prediction.

I’d love to be wrong.

He stayed after school on Friday for an hour. His mother came to pick him up. A few others were supposed to stay, but the siren call of Friday afternoon was too much for them.

So I worked with David as he slowly, laboriously struggled through his science packet. His cousin has helped him. He showed me a few things she had taught him. Still, the effort was a struggle, a word-by-word fight for understanding. His other teachers and I agree that David might belong in special education. But the process of even getting him considered is a multiday effort with no guarantee of success. I have done it all before only to be told that my student had an I.Q. of 78 and did not qualify for any special services. The magic number is 75, I believe. Almost everyone knows that those tests can easily vary by 3 points, but that one magic number kept my student out of special education. David seems very much like that girl from my past.

Still, we are going to have to assault the portcullis, the heavy iron gate at the entrance to the special education castle soon. David needs help.

At one point, I said, “See, you are learning this. You are getting better.”

“Am I?” he answered. There was such pride in his eyes, but behind that pride lurked a scintilla of hopelessness. I could see the doubt mixed into that expression. David now doubts his ability to learn.

Eduhonesty: This kid who reads so slowly is about to take the first Common Core annual state exam. The math problems supposedly will be all story problems with more than one right answer possible. David is going to get annihilated. His reading speed would ensure that, even if he could sort out the math. If he’s feeling somewhat hopeless now, I can only imagine the fallout from the upcoming test.

Right now, my David is a polite, helpful kid who tries to do the work. He always says thank-you when you help him or give him a treat. Sometimes he drifts and talks too much. Sometimes he gets distracted and does not pay attention, especially when he cannot understand the material being presented. I was kind of entertained when I went with him to his locker to get his coat and we found one missing assignment we had been working on towards the top of a crumpled group of homework papers that had obviously never exited the locker. He apologized profusely. We will have to try to work with him on locker organization.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this great kid becomes hell on wheels in high school, though.

February being African-American history month, I’d like to quote Langston Hughes, who expressed my concern for David perfectly:

A Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

How long can we keep throwing this kid in over his head and expecting him to say “thank-you”?

“Who invented social studies anyway?” Paula asked peevishly. “Why do we have to do this?”

I laughed. Nobody knows, I told her, and gave her a little pep talk. I spend a lot of time being peppy. I figured her social studies teacher could use the help.

Paula did not seem reconciled to social studies when I was done.

RtI is an acronym standing for “Response to Intervention.” It’s a new, mandated plan that requires schools to identify students who may be at risk of failure and provide those students with steadily more intense interventions to get them back on track. RtI can be extremely complicated since it requires small group and one-on-one assistance — whether a district has any additional resources for this small-group and individual work or not. But we all have lots and lots of meetings on how to implement RtI, frequently concerned with how to identify those students needing extra help. Then we try to figure out how to provide help without neglecting the regular students more than necessary.

I just stumbled on a note in a journal from some past RtI meeting that I found entertaining:

“We need a wild banshee intervention system.”

Eduhonesty; Students fall behind for many reasons. Behavioral issues create the biggest challenges. Our wildest banshees seldom respond to RtI, but we can leave no child behind. So we leave everybody else behind while we try intensive interventions on students who are wild, loud and out of control. I’m not saying these students don’t need help, but they frequently need more help than anyone except a trained psychologist or psychiatrist can provide.

The teacher who lost her job was not using the textbook she was supposed to use. She was skipping meetings. She was not following the school’s system for math instruction. She was sometimes verbally sharp with her students. She made them work constantly and criticized any perceived laziness in a manner that some other teachers thought seemed overly harsh.

That said, I think she may have taught a great deal of math, more than the usual person occupying her position.

Eduhonesty: Our current push toward nothing but positive reinforcement is not in the best interests of America’s students. It’s naive at best. When a student has done a lazy, substandard job, sometimes a dressing down is exactly what is needed. Laziness can be cultivated by positive reinforcement for rubbishy nonefforts. I am afraid we are creating a group of lazy students by not calling them out often enough on their blow-off efforts.

The truth is that I’d give that teacher a recommendation based on what her students seem to have learned. I suspect a good teacher just lost her job for not playing the game. She has not adapted to the new approach to teacher/student relations. But she did make her students do a formidable amount of math.

“I just want to say thanks for everything. You help me alot when I needed your help. You never let me give up with anything. And I’m really apreciate.”

Eduhonesty: This field is awash in bureaucratic interference from people who have never taught or who have taught for a year or two in some wealthy suburb. Sometimes, all these mandates from above are aggravating as all hell, especially the ones that actively interfere with educating students. But a few notes like this can definitely keep a teacher in the game.

I found this while on a search related to an earlier post. If I were an elementary school teacher, I might order it if I could find it.