What Grade Level Are You Really Teaching?

Gabe (my 4th grader) was working on a project for school last night.  I remember the days of projects in school.  I always struggled with how bad my handwriting looked or if I was going to meet the teacher's expectations.  Of course, back in my day, we didn't have scoring guides to help us figure out what to do.  It was much more vague.  

Gabe had a scoring guide for this project.  What was the project?  A timeline.  He was asked to create a timeline with at least 10 events from his life.  He was being graded on neatness, spelling and grammar, capitalization and punctuation, dates being in correct format, among a few other things.  Not a bad project, except for a few minor problems.  

My concern about the project began with repetition.  In 3rd grade, Gabe had been asked to create a personal timeline.  As far as Gabe and I could tell, there were only two differences between the assignments.  This one required him to use specific dates, rather than just month and year.  And this one required 10 events, whereas last year's project only required 5 or 6.  I was so frustrated.  Why was he being asked to do the same project all over again?  What new learning was taking place in this classroom?  I was prepared to email that teacher and tell her to think about why her students might not be putting a lot of effort into the project.  I know of a few students who used some of the same pictures and events on their 4th grade project as they did on their 3rd grade project.  Does anyone else see anything wrong with this picture?  Wait...it gets worse.

This morning, I was prepared to email the teacher about my irritation with the assignment.  I should insert a side note here:  I try really hard to keep myself from coaching my son's teachers.  I know that they don't really appreciate my attempts to make them better teachers. (Imagine that!) I just come across as some crazy parent who thinks she knows it all and knows how to teach their students.  I may be that crazy parent, and I sure don't know how difficult it must be to teach 25 little 4th graders, but I do know what makes a good teacher.  And I know that doing the same project two years in a row is what makes kids get bored with school and start to become discipline problems.

Whoops.  I wandered off there for a minute and forgot to get to the best (actually worst) part of this whole situation.  Before writing the teacher and ranting, I decided that I should probably check the standards and see if the timeline was a 4th grade standard that last year's teacher just decided to teach early.  (I am a high school math teacher, who is currently coaching in a middle school.  I had no clue what the 4th grade standards were.)  Hang on to your hats, because this is where it gets really good.  

Here is Indiana's 4th grade standard regarding timelines:

4.1.15   Create and interpret timelines that show relationships among people, events, and movements in the history of Indiana. (Individuals, Society, and Culture)

Where is the part in that about his personal timeline?  Gosh, for that matter, I don't think that I can recall Gabe ever talking about cultures or people in Indiana.  I do remember a state map towards the beginning of the year.  I decided to check the 3rd grade standard.

3.1.5   Create simple timelines that identify important events in various regions of the state.

Regions of the state?  We are in southern Indiana.  I guess last year's timeline wasn't even supposed to be a personal timeline.  Well, maybe personal timelines are not in the standards.  Maybe they are something that the teacher likes to throw in to help the students make a personal connection to the timelines about our state.  I decided to keep digging though.  What was the 2nd grade standard?

2.1.5   Develop a simple timeline of important events in the history of the school and/or community.

Okay, I do remember Gabe doing something like that.  I thought it was simply because the school he attended in 2nd grade was closing and they were looking at its history.  It could be, but it was a perfect tie-in to the standards.  Surely 1st grade isn't where the personal timeline comes into the standards.  Is it?

1.1.8   Develop a simple timeline of important events in the student's life.

Did I read that correctly?  Is my 4th grade son doing a project, for the second time I might add, that is a 1st grade standard?!?!?!?!?  I am sure you can imagine the feelings that raged through me as I read this.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  You have got to be kidding me.  Do I have a right to be upset?  Am I upset because I am an educational coach, who tries to help teachers improve student achievement?  Or am I upset because my son is not getting a 4th grade social studies education?  Probably a little of both.  

When it is the teacher/coach in me that is upset, I can usually count on my husband to bring me back to reality.  He has a way of calming me and helping me remember that I cannot coach Gabe's teachers and to let most things go.  Not this time!  He wasn't too happy about it either.  His words were, "I can't stand busy work." Wow!  Is that what the assignment was?  Was it busy work?  Was it that the teacher didn't really know her grade level standards?  What was it?

I don't know what the reasoning behind the assignment was, but I will be talking to the principal about it.  I feel that it is my job, as a parent, to hold my children's school accountable for teaching the standards at grade level.  Differentiation for students who need it is absolutely acceptable.  Assigning a 1st grade-level assignment to the entire 4th grade is not acceptable.  Absolutely not!

Here are a few resources that I like about standards-based teaching/learning:

The Standards-Based Teaching/Learning Cycle

Designing Standards-Based Instruction

The Middle Web Guide to Standards-Based School Reform

We have to stop teaching things just because we think it would be a fun activity. I am all for fun activities that engage students in the work, but make it grade-level appropriate.  And what about the parents that didn't look up the standard and find out that this is a 1st-grade level assignment?  They are trusting the school to teach the standards that the state has deemed appropriate for each grade level.  How would they know that this wasn't an appropriate assignment?  Well, one way is to bring back those standards-based report cards that we saw in Kindergarten and 1st grade.  

Most parents assume that the A or the B that their child brings home means that their child is learning and doing well.  And it usually does.  But does it mean that their child is learning what is expected of him at that grade level?  A standards-based report card would show the parent exactly what the child is expected to learn and what progress the child has made towards reaching that goal.  I'll save standards-based grading for another post.  

The point here is this. What grade level are you really teaching my child?  Because, you see, my son is in 4th grade and deserves to be taught 4th grade material.  He's ready for it.  He yearns for it.  And, Gabe, he's not just someone's child.  He's my child!

My Son Hates Reading...and He's Only 6!

When Ben* came into my care, he was only 6 years old.  I was a single, 26 year-old foster mother, hoping to change his world.  It didn’t take long to figure out that Ben’s parents had showered him with video games, candy, and just about anything that he wanted.  (Not something I was used to seeing in foster children) Being new to parenting a 6 year-old, getting a video game system seemed like a fun thing to do.  I bought a Sega Genesis, and the games were on!  It was June, summer; what was wrong with playing a few video games?  Right?

There isn’t anything wrong with playing video games, but I forgot something very important.  I forgot to work on his reading too.  I assumed that Ben loved his year in kindergarten and would be thrilled to start school in August. Boy, was I wrong! 

Ben was not thrilled that I was so excited to help him learn.  He wasn’t thrilled that he was going to school.  And he definitely did NOT like reading!  He would have reading passages sent home.  We would struggle with the words.  We would argue over what appeared to be the simplest of passages.  He didn’t want to sound the words out.  I didn’t know how to help him.  I was a high school math teacher, not a primary teacher.  I had been trained to teach adolescents, not first graders!  What was I supposed to do?

Parenting was new to me.  I had been a foster mother to 2 year-old twins for 9 months, but never to a school-aged child.  I could only think about Ben’s learning from my own experience.  Reading came easily to me.  I was reading before kindergarten.  Ben was struggling to read at all.  What do I do?  I should point out that the internet was not quite the research tool that it is now.  Therefore, I couldn’t run to it for advice.  Shouldn’t that advice have been coming from his teacher? From his school? 

It didn’t.  From what I can recall, what I was told was to work on the reading at home.  What a battle! Had that teacher ever tried to get a child, over whom she had little influence, to read something he didn’t want to read?  In hindsight, I am sure that she had.  But it sure didn’t feel like it at the time.  Of course, I passed it off to his background, as I am sure that she did as well.  We worked to what we thought was the best of our abilities to help Ben learn to read, hoping he would eventually love it.  

Ben only stayed with me for 5 months.  He returned to his mother after that.  I know that he repeated first grade.  I lost touch with him after about 2nd grade.  Through the wonders of Facebook, I was able to locate him this past year.  He posts about skateboarding and hanging with friends.  I don’t see anything about school.  It leads me to believe that he may not have finished school.  How sad if this is true!  His mother just didn’t have any idea where to begin with helping him with his reading.  How did that affect him for the rest of his life?

We are very fortunate to live in a time when there are so many resources available to help children learn to read.  Here is a list of some of those resources.  I encourage you to add sites to it that you like.  In fact, I would love to make this a list that teachers all over the world could share with the parents of their young readers.  While we, as educators, realize that these resources are easily accessible.  The parents of our students may not.  

We, those parents of struggling readers, feel as if we are at a loss.  I was an educated mom, and I got frustrated trying to read with Ben.  What is the parent doing who doesn’t have any child development background, doesn’t have the education to support their long journey to literacy with their child, who gets frustrated to the point of giving up?  That’s where we, as educators, must be able to provide resources for those parents.  And, trust me, most of those parents are not going to ask for help.  In my opinion, there are two reasons that they are not asking for help.  I think that they are either too proud to ask for help or that they don’t even realize that there are ways to get help.  They don’t know how many programs there are to help them.

We have to help our students like Ben.  Because, you see, Ben is someone’s child!

*Name changed for privacy.

For My Children

This blog is being started for my children, but I hope that this blog helps many children.  I have been in education for 16 years now.  I have to admit that my perspective on education changed drastically when I became a mother.  My children have helped me become a better teacher.

I first became a mother through the foster care system.  I was a 25 year-old, single teacher, who desperately wanted to be a mom.  My little two year-old twins (one boy, one girl) taught me so much about patience and perseverance.  I saw how teachers were unable to handle the way they interacted with each other and moved them into separate classrooms in preschool.  It worked though!  Each of them were able to thrive this way!  I love those little ones.  The nine months they spent with me taught me so much more than I could have ever taught them.

My next child was also a foster child.  He was in first grade.  He hated school already.  He hated reading.  I had no clue where to even begin with him.  His teacher worked hard.  I worked hard.  It seemed like we were fighting a losing battle.  How could he not like school at the age of 7? What happens so early that the love for learning is already damaged?  I hope that those 5 months left a little better love for learning with that young man.

Next came a marriage and then Gabe.  Gabe is my only biological child.  He is about to turn 10.  He has always loved learning, growing up with a math teacher mom.  He has been doing well with grades, but 4th grade has not been his favorite.  He is beginning to get bored in school, as the teacher makes adjustments to help those who are further behind.  (Many of my posts will be about Gabe.)  The marriage didn't work, but Gabe is one amazing outcome from it!

Finally, there's Jason.  He is now 20 years old.  Jason was a student in my class his sophomore year of high school.  He was in foster care.  Faced with no more homes available for a 16 year-old with a juvenile record, Jason was looking at going to live in a boys' home.  I knew the outcome that was most likely for him if he went that route.  Dating at the time, I asked my now-husband about this young man.  He told me to go for it.  From that point on, Jason became my foster son, and now is my adopted son.  Oh, the lessons about education that I have learned from this young man amaze me! (You will hear much about them; I am sure.)

I hope that my experiences in the classroom and as a mother to these 5 children will connect with you on some level.  I hope that, as I share about my thoughts and my experiences, you will also feel the love, the joy, the pain, the tears, the anger that I feel (and felt) in these situations.  My reasoning for these posts is not to complain, but to look for ways to help others in the same situation.

So, come with me.  Let's take a journey into education through the eyes of a parent.  Because, you know that kid sitting in front of you in the classroom, he's someone's child!