children

When It Comes To Testing, Kids Get Labeled Failures First

by Jose Vilson on April 22, 2013

In my new co-blog The Collaborateurs, I wrote a little bit about testing and race. Here’s a bit:

What’s sometimes missing from this side of the argument is that the effects for students is much worse than for teachers. Obviously, the teaching profession has a long way to go before we have the right working conditions and respect from society to make this profession more … professional. On the other hand, a few of the people who replied to my thoughts said that it’s teachers, and not students, who get labeled failures when they don’t do well.

What?!

How can we say that children don’t get labeled failures? At least most of us have a degree to fall back on, if not an advanced degree, and perhaps another job they can take up in case this job fail. We don’t want to leave, but if we have to, we’ll be OK.

Read the rest here. Like. Share. Thank you!

Jose, who wishes Mr. Vilson the best this week …

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The Power of We: In The Memory of Malala Yousafzai [On Thinking Globally] #BAD12

by Jose Vilson on October 15, 2012

Malala Yousafzai

Have you ever felt like the things you do in the classroom connect to some other, higher purpose?

Sometimes.

When I read about stories like Malala Yousafzai’s, it puts everything I do in the classroom in its proper perspective. For those of you who are unaware, Malala’s shown up in the news recently after Taliban rebels tried to assassinate her by shooting her in the head and neck for speaking out about education and women’s rights in Pakistan. The world has already seen a fair share of Muslim women, but what stood out for me is that she’s already posed a threat to such a nefarious group … at the age of 15.

Holy cow.

It makes me wonder how teachers can empower students to take ownership and advocate for themselves. It has scary implications for the adults who want all of the control all of the time, who prefer children to be seen and not heard, who won’t take the time to see what their students bring to the table rather than assume they know nothing, or, quite frankly, the adults who don’t care whether the students learned anything so long as they achieved on the test. This spans our entire school system, teachers included.

Yet, in Malala, we have another icon for students’ potential.

The more scaredy-cat nervous reader will say, “Well, I don’t want my students to get shot in the head and neck. They’re more effective alive and well.”

True. However, if you believe this, you’re missing the point. We can’t simultaneously believe that students these days don’t want to do anything AND we want them to become more informed. We as teachers have a responsibility to see ourselves as a primary interpreter for what children can see and do outside of their world view. Plus, coming where I come from, the alternative for getting shot for speaking out about injustice is getting shot for nonsense. I’ll take the former.

Malala, currently recovering in a hospital somewhere, has the courage of a person twice her age. Someone took it upon themselves to instill the virtues of learning more about what the world has to offer … and the obstacles she has to overcome in order to achieve true parity with her male counterparts. People with even a modicum of empathy cheer her on. But if the movement for students (girls in particular) to become more socially conscious citizens engaging in the problems and solutions for the world starts with her, then we have to prompt others to take that on.

This seems like a large task, but sometimes, it comes down to just having students reason it out, telling them, “I can’t tell you the answer. You say it.”

Jose, who is participating in Blog Action Day …

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7,000 Children Left Behind

by Jose Vilson on August 6, 2012

A couple of weeks back, newspapers across the city reported that around 7,000 students were wrongly sent to summer school because of their ELA or math test scores. I’m almost certain a few of those include my own (former) students.

For those of you who don’t know the inner workings of how these officials make their decisions, the ELA and Math tests have two basic elements: the multiple choice and the extended response. The multiple choice questions are (obviously) given a different weight than the extended response, but, because the test keeps changing on us, it’s hard to determine off-hand whether the student actually passed the whole test based on the multiple choice section.

That’s exactly what the state officials do, much to the chagrin of those of us who have to face the students.

When students get their summer school letters, they’re told on the spot whether the recommendation was based on classroom grades or the test grades. As quickly as teachers from certain districts try to grade their assigned exams, the entire process can take a couple of months to really get the score for these exams. Most teachers I know are OK with students getting the letter based on the grades they’ve gotten in class because a) there’s often accompanying evidence (or lack thereof) and b) we have a few people who can speak to the student’s mastery, including administration and parent coordinators. However, the test is trickier because we often have to follow a company line like: “Sorry your child didn’t pass the test. We don’t have anything to do with that, and it’s up to the city or state to determine if your child has mastered the grade material.”

I’ve always hated the company line, and this news only validated my original thoughts.

Even though this adds to a growing list of defeats and push-backs against the testing-as-accountability argument, it hasn’t gotten the national attention I believe it deserves. Now, the Post reports that the city will roll out make-up ceremonies for 1,200 of those students, but it’s far too late. They not only messed up the crowning achievement for these students, they overemphasized the importance of a three-hour long survey. We ought to continue holding our leaders accountable for letting such a farce pass through, but now we should give pause to some of the complicit behaviors we as teachers took in not working hand-in-hand with parents to disseminate information about the 7,000.

The city might have gotten a No Child Left Behind waiver, but 7,000 children still wouldn’t know that.

Jose

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The Shakes, For Real

by Jose Vilson on August 23, 2011

Mayor Mike Bloomberg of NYC with Mayor Boris Johnson of London

This afternoon, I posted the following joke on my Facebook:

If school was in session, Bloomberg wouldn’t close schools. Around lunchtime, he’d say, “Let them have shakes.”

I jest. Well, for the most part. Surprisingly, there was no announcement from our mayor on anything. NYC Educator might quip here that he’s probably having lunch somewhere in Bermuda, to which I’d laugh with my mouth agape. Then again, this earthquake business struck me in more ways than one. While I’m able to find a little levity in earth-shaking situations where no one really gets hurt, the earthquake came right after another jarring moment for me. After cleaning every crevice of my bathroom, I looked in my fiancee’s eyes and said, “I really don’t want to go back to work.”

Customary for the teacher facing the dusk of his summer, but not for me.

Frankly, it has a lot less to do with my students and more to do with adults. I maintain that I’ll always have more problems with working with adults than children. Yes, they both come with their set of issues, but there’s a key difference. With children, you can excuse them for the very reason they’re in front of us: they’re children. They’re prone to childish mistakes, childish attitudes, and childish mindsets. They aren’t always mature, always pleasant, always sparkling, always ready to learn, or always courteous. But for the next 180 periods you have them in front of you, they remain children, despite their contentions otherwise.

With adults, you expect better. Adults come with the same issues I’ve outlined for children, except you’d think that the maturity thing kicks in with age. In my job as math coach, I’m not just working with adults in the building (and for the record, I love my math department, without exception). It’s the people we have to “answer to,” “work with,” and “play nice with.” These parts of my job no one envies. The tons of hands to shake, the memorization of jargon, the distractions from the students, the distractions from the students, the distractions from the students …

I understand it’s about the kids, but it’s not about 30-60-90 for me anymore; it’s been about 750 now. Thus, yet, the farther we get away from them, the more we have to shake hands with too many others. I mean, if you really don’t care much about kids, then working with adults works well for you and you’re totally looking forward to coming into the school year. You come into the job, make a bunch of boxes with words in them that eventually does little but make someone else’s language more oblique, and assuring yourself that validation will come from the eyes of people doing the similar work I just outlined for you.

For the rest of us, who actually seek validation in the improvement of schools (and I do include some principals and central office folk here), the coming school year unnerves us. Believe it or not, there’s a secret tension there, too. As these plates shift to a new school year, I can feel the tremors from here.

For that, regrettably, I feel the shakes, and there isn’t a lesson plan in the world that can help me see otherwise.

Jose, who might post a rhyme or two on my Tumblr page. Stay tuned …

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April Foolishness

April 1, 2010 Jose

This past weekend, I went to Washington DC, home to clean public transportation, Greco-Roman-inspired monuments, and some guy named Barack. I love the place like The Count of Monte Cristo loved Haydee, should anything happen to my dear Mercedes (a.k.a. NYC). I did a fair amount of education-related stuff there, first visiting the Jefferson Memorial, [...]

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