Sometimes when the plane goes into its nose dive, there’s no magic lever that will prevent the coming crash. I wanted to put this idea out there today because … well, because reality is real and we are enamored of stories of the kids who come from behind to succeed. Some kids do manage to clamber and claw their way back up to join the pack of grade-level classmates.

But I cannot emphasize strongly enough that other kids go down and don’t get back up.

So… potentially useful advice:

Parents:

1. Get a tutor as soon as that dive begins. If you can’t afford a tutor, lean on the school district for extra help. Consider bartering goods or services in return for tutoring. Or be the tutor. I will observe that some kids work better for outsiders than parents, and as children grow older, an outsider may be necessary because not everyone remembers — or even took — that second algebra class.
2. Find books or software to tackle detected learning deficiencies. Here is a place to start: https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/blog/reading-websites/
3. Limit screen time not directly addressing any academic losses. Screen time can become a black hole, sucking away social connections, stealing sleep, and exacerbating anxiety, stress and depression. Emotional states may have EVERYTHING to do with an academic dive.
4. If you are concerned about ADHD or other medical conditions, go in search of a formal diagnosis. This search is rarely simple, frequently demanding multiple attempts. But schools often require a diagnosis and medical input before providing accommodations, whether informally or in the form of an IEP or 504 plan. That diagnosis will help target therapy and any related medication regime.
5. AND PLEASE, PLEASE don’t plan to pull out of an academic plunge “LATER.”

“Later” never comes for so many kids. One reason the achievement gap has proved so intractable is we don’t acknowledge this truth often enough: In numbers, if Jenny only learned 80 days of last year’s 160-day curriculum (I chopped off 20 days to account for days lost to testing), then to catch up she has to learn 240 days of knowledge in her next 160-day year. How does that happen? An extra 80 days of learning on top of a full year’s curriculum represents a soaring, academic mountain to climb, especially if Jenny has special learning challenges such as ADHD or depression. That climb can happen, but seldom without numerous outside interventions — such as evening and week-end tutoring, long sessions with remedial software, or targeted therapy and/or medication.

US test scores amply document that many of our Jennies NEVER recover once the plane starts going down.

Teachers:

I know you are swamped with work, bureaucratic excesses, and an avalanche of meetings, making it hard to leap onto more documentation. But Jenny or Joshua’s learning deficiencies must be documented. Because despite our love of comeback stories, comebacks don’t always happen. In fact —

Comebacks mostly DON’T happen.

The success of Remediation is a function of the time available for remediation — and a few extra hours after school or over the week-end is almost never enough once Jenny or Joshua is in real trouble.

Whatever our students’ challenges, once they fall far enough behind, the hours required to make a full academic recovery may not exist. This is especially true for students who have fallen behind in reading, since reading is a source of learning as well as a result of learning. An IEP or 504 plan can be part of a rescue but, like all saves, the rescue has to come in time.

Eduhonesty: In the movies, the damaged plane rarely explodes into an expanding ball of wind-blown flames and debris. In the learning landscape, though, crashes are happening everywhere right now. That’s what our far-too-numerous testing days are telling us.

I’d like to reach parents more than teachers today. If Jenny is getting lost, Jenny needs immediate help. Don’t blame her teacher. Her teacher is probably teaching as fast and as furiously as she can. But she has a room full of kids with individual needs and only so many minutes in one day.* A curriculum that works for most kids will hardly ever work for all kids, and I suspect that teacher is trying to strike the best balance she can with the materials she has been given.

Besides, blame will not help Jenny; it may do the exact opposite. Blame can become an excuse not to try. To share a quote from a student that has resonated with me for years: “Don’t expect me to do much. I have low self-esteem.” Kids will take excuses and run with them.

If Jenny has fallen behind, she requires extra hours of instruction outside the classroom. Today’s curricula NEVER leave enough time for remediation. We pack, pack, pack in new learning targets. The problem of remediation time has been worsening. But that’s a macro problem. The microproblem is Jenny’s confusion, and one by one, we can help our individual Jennies.

Don’t wait.
You want to get ahead of the crash. You don’t want to pick up the pieces.

Hi, fellow teachers, especially the newbies! The start of the year craziness is underway.

I unlocked lockers yesterday, lots of them, as I walked through a school filled with confused, new sixth graders. A few I failed to unlock and someone with a key stepped in. Lock combinations can be tricky. Remembering which lock to try them on also seems tricky for a few. I stepped into a funny dispute over which locker belonged to which student.

I listened to many announcements and picked out the ones I thought mattered most to emphasize. The open house matters more than the upcoming pep rally. We’ll get to the rally, but parents must receive ample warning for that open house, especially since many parents work swing shift in less-affluent areas. They need notice to change a shift or take an evening off work.

I promptly got buried in papers. The physicals and concussion warning forms are being turned in so kids can participate in sports. Other forms are trickling in as well.

Homework and classwork had to be sorted and will have to be graded. Motivationally-centered artwork is being prepared for walls. Stick to it, the work emphasizes, keep going toward your dreams. “You can do it!” Students design bold posters on this theme– maybe because they are a little afraid that they cannot do “it.” A great deal of semi-familiar and even unfamiliar material has begun coming at them fast, leaving sixth graders and others juggling as they try to keep up with the sudden shift away from the lazy days of summer.

Eduhonesty: I can get lost in papers. Many kids are certainly lost in papers. They will be more lost in those Chromebooks if limits don’t get reinforced immediately and regularly. Students WANT to get lost in the Chromebooks. They are itching and twitching to find the games and fun activities now at their fingertips thanks to yesterday’s tech roll-out.

A suggestion for fellow teachers?

Make a list, a handwritten set of items on a piece of paper about what matters most right now. I’d put students who appear to need extra help at the top of that list so they don’t get lost in the paperwork, meetings, more meetings and other bureaucratic thieves of time. Then tape that list in a private place where you will be able to see and update it regularly. I prefer paper to devices for this. Computer files and phone notes tend to get lost in the sheer bombardment of new bytes at the start of the school year.

Then find or make a date for wings with friends and coworkers– or nachos or tempura or whatever you prefer. You might have to be the first one to say, “Buffalo Wild Wings on Friday?” Everyone is swamped at the start of the new school year. If no one else is planning time for fun, teacher-reader, just tell yourself one more time: 

The old research on why boys are much less likely to read recreationally than girls: what is the current status of that research? Did we completely drop the topic because of COVID?

What is the status of checking for lead in our school water fountains?

With school security eating a much bigger piece of the pie than in the past, how are districts allocating funds without harming instruction? That number is no doubt hard to nail down, since it includes both personnel and equipment, and is funded by all sorts of grants as well as district allocations. Still, the number is unquestionably up at a time when COVID protection measures have also eaten chunks out of school budgets. How are school districts coping with these huge, new financial burdens?

It’s hard to get information, too. There’s simply too much information. And who is checking our many sources? The first thing that came up multiple times when I was looking for the cost of school safety measures:

“One ballooning school expenditure is the vast amount of money allocated to school safety. US schools now spend an estimated $2.7 billion.

That would seem clear but it is according to one source — a source that seems mostly to want to sell charter schools. (School Security Is Now a $3 Billion Dollar Annual Industry. Is There a Better Way to Protect Kids? – Foundation for Economic Education (fee.org)) The idea is that if you feel unsafe, then you could go to another school. FEE seems an appropriate name for the organization selling this charter school idea.

Don’t you just love all the helpful, objective sources out on the internet? I am unclear how charter schools are inherently safer than traditional neighborhood schools. Our school shootings are not happening only in “bad” schools. The young shooter who took a rifle to the Highland Park parade went to schools with solid test scores and excellent funding — although he was home-schooled for a while I understand. Middle class schools regularly experience shootings in these times. Truth: People repeat what one website says and then the new sites become part of search engine results until we may all be saying $2.7 billion without the slightest idea as to whether or not that number is valid or its source reliable.

Eduhonesty: I’m wandering today, but I do want to get one observation out to readers: All those issues that were raising flags in 2019? Many of them are still here, and the fact that they have been supplanted does not mean they have been solved.

We shouldn’t just move on to the new issues of our time while leaving the boys who don’t read and the broken or even toxic water fountains behind.