SMH’s blog

Many of the psychology classes have emphasized a "critical window" in a child's early development in which learning, especially reading and language acquisition, occurs.  During this phase, cognitive growth takes place at a much fater rate, so much so that it cannot be made up at any point later in life.  With this in mind, I have always wondered if there are programs that focus on children's learning and development at a more earlier age because many of today's alternate teaching programs-- MTC or Teach for America -- seem to be geared toward middle and high school education.  The Barksdale Reading Institute is one organization that does focus on early education.  More specifically, coaches of the Barksdale Reading Institute assist teachers in Mississippi to help struggling students in K-3rd grade achieve literacy.  The Barksdale Reading Institute encourages teachers to adopt a reading intensive program filled with strategies focusing on phonics, decoding, fluency, reading comprehension, and reading motivation.  This seems to be a promising approach to improving student literacy.  What I found most interesting about the program is their encouragement of differential diagnostic testing to group students of varying literacy levels together and teach each group separately.  As Amanda pointed out, this grouping of students seems like a red flag in terms of classroom management.  Teachers already have a difficult time maintaining peace in the classroom when managing a single group-- how does the teacher maintain classroom decorum among multiple groups of students?  At the same time, Dr. Mullins pointed out earlier this week that if you teach students at one reading level-- either those at the top, middle, or bottom-- you inevitably lose touch with those students in the other two groups.  Those students at the top progress at the expense of the average or most struggling students.  The underlying question is whether you focus on quality or quantity.  Do you focus on teaching all students at the expense of classroom management and more focused instruction or do you customize your instruction to a certain level of students and put the other students at a disadvantage?  Overall, it seems to boil down to limited supplies and high demands-- pure economics.  Maybe then education should be approached as a business?  I don't know.  My gut  tell me no-- there are too many qualitative and uncontrollable factors in a student's education to be able to approach schools, teachers, and instruction as a business operation.  I don't know.  It's a tough question that I need to learn more about.   

Corporal punishment is permitted at your school. It is a district goal to not paddle any students in the first nine weeks. After about 7 weeks, some students you write up come back complaining about getting “burned” or just admit that their “tail hurts.” Their discipline forms indicate that indeed, they are getting paddled.
    There is no intermediate step like detention between parent contacts (which are largely ineffective anyway) and write-ups, so you continue to write up students and they continue to get paddled. The administration, though careful to not make it overt, subtly indicate that they would prefer if you “handled classroom discipline” yourself. There are practical and perhaps moral problems with you paddling, but you have witnessed a few and feel comfortable that you know what to do.
    A student throws a book across the room at another child. If you write it up, the friction with your administration increases. And the kid still gets paddled. If you do it yourself, you cross a moral line, perhaps. What do you do?

During Ann’s class in the summer I kind of scoffed at the whole concept of planning out every procedure in intimate detail for the kids. It struck me as insulting for them and boring for me. Then, about 36 hours before I started teaching, I freaked out and realized that I had to control five actual classes of 30 kids. So I cracked open Wong and Wong and started planning out procedures. I didn’t actually do them in as much detail as some people I’ve seen, but I had procedures for walking in the hall, fire drill, passing in papers, starting class, leaving class, asking a question, and going to the restroom. It’s amazing how slow some of these kids are to get a handle on the procedures. That being said, they’ve already made my life easier. The kids know how to pass in paper or go to the bathroom, and when they screw up I don’t have to correct them because one of their classmates does.

The first few days have been up and down. It’s kind of thrilling to have my own classroom and finally actually be a real teacher, but of course it’s also daunting. I also don’t know a lot of things about how the school functions that I probably should have been informed of. For instance, one of the five classes I have during the day is far and away the worst behaviorally. The first two days I though to myself, “Wow, it’s really strange how random class assignments can create such different classroom dynamics.” Maybe I should have figured that it couldn’t have been random, but whatever. Anyway, I just happened to hear another teacher say in passing that they assign all the behavior problems to the fifth section of every grade, and lo and behold, 7-5 is the section in question. If I hadn’t heard this at random I literally could have gone a whole year not knowing why one of my sections is so much more difficult than the others. That’s one example of several where my life would be made easier just by knowing things that I don’t even know I need to know.
I finally got the principal to explain the way they assigned sections and what he said was that they put all the “turds” in the same section. Because turds, of course, make everyone stink. That is literally what he said. I should admit now that I do actually like my principal.
The kids are pretty fun though. I had a bad day on Tuesday, mainly because I planned to fail, as they say. I failed to plan, because I couldn’t plan since the schedule is so unpredictable right now. I felt much better on Wednesday though. The kids had something to do and I didn’t have to stay on my feet all day.

    I’ve been using cold calling from day one, essentially. There are only five kids in my class, so it’s an easy way to make sure everyone is paying attention and participating. The more I use it, the more comfortable the shyer kids are with speaking up. Now pretty much everyone willingly raises their hand to answer questions, so it may even be outliving its usefulness. At the beginning of summer school at least two of the kids were very hard to draw out and get to participate. I can’t say for sure that cold-calling is the reason that they’re participating more, but I think that it is.
       Of course, the class dynamic with five kids is much different than it will be in the fall with thirty, but I think the underlying principle of cold-calling, that people become more comfortable the more they are forced to participate and that knowing you could get called on raises your awareness of what’s going on, still applies.
    What I do is not strict cold-calling, since it’s not entirely random (which would be stupid with five kids). I pay attention to who seems engaged and who doesn’t, and try to involve the kids who don’t . This is easy in a class of five, probably not in a class of thirty. Also, none of my kids are so shy that they seem mortified by being called on and refuse to answer, which I’m sure will happen in the fall. I don't know exactly what I'll do when that happens, but I hope that gradually over the course of the year that all the kids will get more comfortable.

I read Elena Adamo’s focus paper on school uniforms that was written last year. Although most of the paper was very vague and there were few specific examples or analysis, the paper did touch on the main arguments for and against school uniforms.
    On the pro-uniform side, advocates of uniform dress codes point to the elimination of social distinctions, at least those manifested in attire, as the most sweeping advantage. If one of the purposes of public schooling is to unite society and promote a sense of civic cohesion, then this is a worthy goal. The main practical benefit of school uniforms according to its proponents is a reduction in classroom disruption and easier enforcement of dress policies. Behavior problems or home issues that need to be resolved are more noticeable when teachers don’t have to waste time and energy enforcing subjective dress rules. Furthermore, many parents like the idea of school uniforms because it reduces their workload and expenses.
    The main negatives that Adamo brings up are a possible infringement on students’ freedom of expression and calling into question the research supporting school uniforms. She insinuates that the suppression of individuality caused by uniforms is part of a hidden agenda to control the minds of youth. The research of Jennifer Craik is quoted, wherein uniforms are derided as “a means of training the body and enforcing certain standards of thought and behavior.” The tone the paper takes when dealing with these issues assumes a negative response from the reader, but I don’t think those goals should automatically be considered invalid. What else is classroom management if not the enforcement of certain standards of thought and behavior?
    My future school district has school uniforms and as a teacher in that district I appreciate it. I won’t have to deal with dress code issues except for obvious violations of the uniform policy. I won’t have to decide whether a girl’s shirt is cut too low or a kid’s belt is too far down his rear. I’m also writing my own focus paper on this topic, so I’m looking forward seeing the research on uniforms and their effect on school achievement.

This was my second time seeing Lalee’s kin and once again I think the most striking thing was how incredibly poor this family was. It really is unbelievable that this type of poverty exists in our country.

The absence of any consistent and positive male influence in the household certainly has a negative effect on all the children, but it is most clear and most heartbreaking in its impact on Main and Redman. Even Lalee, who cares and sacrifices for all the kids, contributes to the destructive attitude of Main by making her negative opinion of men explicitly clear. When Main gets an attitude, Lalee dismissively attributes this to him becoming “mannish.”

One thing the movie mentions obliquely but never addresses fully is the enormous family sizes and the question of birth control. This family at least for several generations was having children far beyond their means to support them, which then created a cycle of unsupervised and uneducated children, many of whom would also get pregnant as teenagers. Just knowing about condoms and other forms of birth control is no guarantee that they will be used, but you get the feeling that maybe these kids don’t even understand. This family probably couldn’t afford any type of birth control, but you’d think that the state paying for a few condoms now and educating kids might save them money down the road. It’s patently obvious that most of these kids are having sex, so moral opposition seems a moot issue at this point.