Education and Law Project | NC Justice Center

Education and Law Project | NC Justice Center



I mentioned briefly a few posts ago that there were several hard-hitting, Republican-led approaches to public education in the works in our great state. The NC Justice Center monitors these policy approaches to ensure compliance with the common good. Yes, public education means inclusion of the entire populace. Republicans, too. Visit their website for some news on NC education policy.

Sailing towards the end of year 21 in a teaching career

My job as a high-school teacher remains a high-end, challenging and rewarding one. Despite the political turmoil that has surrounded North Carolina public education the past few years - school boards shenanigans, Obama-derangement syndrome, anti-government Republicans who want to take part in government - and getting electing because of aforementioned medical condition - all these things have made the typical NC teacher disgruntled, angry, demoralized and often searching for an alternative way of life.

My gig at my school is a primo one. My students are all respectful, with supportive families, and they all seem genuinely interested in taking German. When reflecting on my efficacy as a teacher I do tend to be hard on myself, but the fact that I still keep getting marvelous students streaming into my solo German program is testimony enough that I am doing something right. My colleague at the middle schools keep German alive with her zany middle school approach, highly effective, and I take her students on in a more intensive way, I believe, quicker with the material, higher expectations. Success at maintaining this level of rigor throughout a 180 day school year varies considerably, but that is the way life works, ebbs, and flows, and peaks and valleys. In the end, though, I always earn considerable satisfaction in knowing that I brought some great students to a high-level of discourse.

This year has been a great year: 2nd place overall at German Day, a student being awarded the Philip Watts Scholarship, another student being awarded a three-week sojourn in Germany because high National German Exam test scores. Six out of eigh AP German students will be taking the AP German Exam. German Club maintained consistent attendance, because of a collective effort to keep it that way; we have great officers and steady membership. Now the possibility of finally getting t-shirts for the club would do a lot to forwarding the Club mission at our school. An altogether good year.

Things missing: shall I revive the National German Honor Society for next year? That would be current German 3 and 4 students (non-seniors, of course). It's decided: I WILL. Their service hours would be tutoring struggling German students and maintaining my classroom, etc.

Speaking of my classroom, it appears that I will have a couch in my room on Monday. How that's going work is open to varied scenarios. Most good.

The big issues

The biggest issues at my current school involve our struggling students. There are many and they deserve our attention if we want our mission of public education to withstand scrutiny from an increasingly polarized political climate. This is a climate that views public education with mistrust, sometimes rabid, sometimes subtle. Public schools are inclusive symbols of American democracy; their success is paramount if America is to remain great. Now, my school has a marvelous faculty, and wide diversity of course offerings, accolades everywhere, but there remains a constituency flailing apart from the strengths of our curriculum.

We can easily identify the members of this group, and outline the prevailing attitudes that prevent these students from conforming to the written and unwritten rules of a school setting. Question is, how do we remedy it? How do we integrate more students into the academic club?

Education theorists have spoken repeatedly of the need to adapt our curriculum and instructional delivery to the caliber of the students. The rowdy, disinterested ones, the students manifesting the attitudes that make their success more difficult to attain, these kids demand a different approach. After years in the classroom I do believe in this dictate of American public education.

Hallo, mein guter Freund! Lange nicht gesehen...

Amazing revisiting an old internet chestnut, created at a time of the blogging revolution, when everyone could become a noted scribe or a cybernaut's amanuensis on the INTERNET. I started this particular blog while a pedagogue at Southern Durham High School, back in the day, in the Wild Wild West of the Internet, before the marketeers took control.

Goal of this reencounter? A possible reimagining. So much has occurred since the last update, I would be completely remiss in ignoring a call for an update. All over the web, probably, are artifacts that put together a picture of where I've been since 2007 when I last checked in. But who can trust the internet these days? With this reignition, I can collect these artifacts and in a centralized location display them with the perspective of the protagonist, the man on the scene and in the action.

Seriously, though, the point of this blog is education and my role in it. I still teach German, full-time, have been since 2007 when I signed on at Enloe High School as a replacement for Frau Martin. An eye-awakening experience this gig became, because the vast majority of my students, no, virtually all of them, were interested and well-behaved young people who genuinely wanted to learn German. Breathtaking levels of enthusiasm awaited me each day - breathtaking? a little overzealous, aren't we? We're taking about teenagers, right? - Yes, teenagers, who took a shining to German and who generally trusted me in leading them to higher levels of discourse in the German language and culture.

Since then, I have done German Day each year at Enloe - 7 times, each time a great success. I have done three GAPP Exchanges - 2009, 2011 and 2013. All of these were highly memorable experiences and were executed without a single problem. National German Exam - a yearly tradition.

In a short breath, I am in my 21st year of education, all have been good years.

Links
An old autobiographical sketch, with links and assorted nuggets.
GAPP Exchange Blog - from last year - 2013

Alternative Tardy Policy

Essential Requirements:

1. Each teacher does their X-2 attendance within the first 20 minutes of class and possibly later to track changes to attendance for the period. If this isn't possible, teacher does period X-2 as soon as possible, preferably between classes on a colleague's computer.
   
   
2. Tardies for each student are diligently noted in X-2.
   
   
3. Absences and tardies are also done in a notebook. Teacher ensure that hard copy attendance books and X-2 are in synch. Teachers maintain a tardy log of chronically tardy students for documentation purposes.
   
4. THe SIMS operator creates a report on Thursday after school of the previous 5 day period attendance/tardies. Students who have 6 or more tardies during this 5 day period are assigned a 2 day OSS suspension for the following week. Students each week have 20 opportunities to get to class on time. If they are late 6 times, they get assigned the OSS. One day can be forgiven if parent arrives to school for a conference with an administrator.
   
5. Every 5 day period begins a new cycle.
   
   

SHS Retreat in June 2007

I read the several emails resulting from the retreat I missed on June 22, 2007, and I am sorry I missed it. I was at Wrightsville Beach, frolicking with family on the ocean. The retreat seemed to emphasize the student code of conduct. We have the discussion constantly in the halls of Southern. We teachers are astounded at the capacity for our student population to misbehave. The discussion on what to do about many students' abject dismissal of the "rules of public engagement" is an essential part of changing the culture at Southern.

So I read the document, the student code of conduct. It struck me as being a mostly outdated document. There are too many rules in it that are never enforced, so many in fact, that I wonder if these offenses should be totally ignored altogether. Or we proclaim some good rules, but the infrastructure is simply not in place to accomplish the behavior. For instance, no bookbags in the classrooms or hallways. Fine, I am all for this rule. But it cannot work if we wait until four weeks into the school year to grapple with assigning lockers, and we allow the students to carry them around until the adults get it together with this rule. Why can't lockers be assigned BEFORE the school year begins, and then allow the students, no, DEMAND that the students arrive before school begins to claim the locker, sign an agreement at the front office, and then go put their own lock on the locker. Southern was obsessed with maintaining a rule that only SHS LOCKS were to be used on the locker. What is the point of that rule? If administrators or police need to get into a locked locker, they can do it with bolt cutters, big deal. And if a mistake has been made, a new lock can be furnished to student.

Another example is the issue with cell phones and mp3 players. We should ban them from use in the classroom during instructinal time, and in the hallway we should ignore it. Minimally, ban cell phone usage in the hallways also, but so what if a kid zones out in his music while trotting to his next class? Maybe we can institute curriculum wide podcasts of instructional materials and encourage mp3 player owners downlaod and listen to lectures, notes, etc on their players.

Tardiness is a vexing, interminable problem. We have a schoolwide policy, but it is so sporadically enforced, and too many teachers half-heartedly manage the bookeeping details of the massive number of tardies they encounter. Teachers need to simply mark tardies on the X-2 attendance system, and then our SIMS operator can tally up on a twice a week basis everyone tardy that week a certain number of times during the week. Make the tardy tally for the entire day for a student. For example, if a student is tardy that week 6 times, the student is called to the office and assigned an immediate 2 days of OSS. One day can be waived if a parent comes in for an administrative conference. The next 6 tardies, results in three days OSS, one being waived for another conference. And thereafter, after every 6 tardies, three days of mandatory OSS will be assigned for the child. The essential piece to this plan is that every teacher do X-2 within the first 15 minutes of class, and possibly update it later in the period, if necessary, and that the SIMS operator create the reports every Thursday, so that on Friday suspension assignments can be administered for the following week. Teachers who fail to do X-2 in a consistent timely manner should be reprimanded. Teachers will also keep a written tardy/attendance log for each class.

The rest of the student code of conduct should focus on social behaviors that have a direct negative impact on the instructional program. Tardiness is one element, and the other piece of the puzzle is classroom misbehavior. Excessive talking while teachers instruct, excessive laughing and joking and generally rambunctious vocal behavior needs to be seriously addressed. Only so much of this ridiculous behavior can be ascribed to generalized teenage squirreliness. Students need to be held accountable for classroom disruption. They need to adapt better to teachers' styles of instructional delivery. We cannot simply constantly blame teachers for their students' misbehavior.

Of course there are teacher responsibilities in managing classroom behavior. We should plan well in advance, assign tasks in which students can both find success and find a decent level of interest. Teachers need to treat students with respect and consistency. Expectations need to be clear and high. If students still behave like idiots even if these essential piece to the teaching puzzle are in place, then it's time to enact punitive measures.

More on this topic later!!

Early June, 2007

I began this final week of instruction after Memorial Day with sore lower back and took Tuesday off to recover. All my students were remarkably well-behaved with Mrs. B., my good substitute, and I was proud of my kids. It was a remarkable semester, really. The students behavior was generally consistently tolerable and good-natured. I had great kids, and I look forward to teaching them again next year at Southern.

Of course, the day I returned, a fight broke out right around the corner. I just exited the bathroom, and knew I wasn't getting involved in that scrum. So I hobbled in pain against the current of children who wanted to glimpse the mayhem, toward my safe haven classroom, and let more other adults handle the melee. You can probably see the fight on youtube.

I might as well admit that once again this year I attempted to find another school to teach at, but I am totally satisfied that Southern will remain my place to ply my trade. Scores of great teachers leave Southern each year, leaving the academic curriculum in the hands of either totally inexperienced teachers, whose energy and idealism at being a teacher are assaulted by the reality of many Southern High classrooms, or long-term substitutes, which translates into chaos and shiftlessness in the students. This year I will say, our fresh teacher cadre is a strong one, very creative and effective educators, and I hope they stick around.

I was gratified by one student's comment, a senior, who I taught only one time in her first year at Southern. She said she was talking to her father about Southern's AP courses, and how too often there wasn't a qualified teacher in the course, and she had other legimitate complaints. She said her father then remarked something to the effect that "at least you had Mr. Kandah as a teacher." She admitted mentioning me to her parents with some regularity, especially in the 9th grade, when she took the legendary Reading and Writing for High School and College, a course everyone at my school dismissed as hogwash, but which I brought to a high-standard of excellence. Needless to say, this fine student remembered my class that well, and she and her parents hold me up as something positive among Southern's faculty.

So what's the point? We make an impact with whatever student body we work with. We may never know after they graduate what impact we've made, but it happens. It's admittedly more gratifying when we can see first hand the bright look in the child's eyes as they positively interact with you on campus and look upon you as a moral, intellectual force. Isn't this what we as teachers should strive towards, being that force of nature that leads willing souls to high plateaus of experience? And a force that finds ways to trick the unwilling into following you because you are convinced it's in their best interest to come along?

Each day I am gratified by how appreciative the students are of the opportunities afforded them at our school. Now, granted, too many of them fail to take full advantage of the possibilities, but when I interact with even the most incorrigible in the hallways, between classes when the students are in a mingle-mode, I see a spark of gentleness, and curiosity, of potential, really, in all their faces.

Thanks for reading this. I'll be back for more comments, especially on my goals for the summer to prepare for another year at Southern Durham High.