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Alliance for Excellent Education

Attendance

How do you make kids come to school and then stay there? This is one of the big questions we ask at my school.

One of my biggest challenges with urban high schooler is attendance. Today I had 5 students in my 3rd period class. The class officially has 10 students enrolled (since we work with at-risk kids, our cap is technically 15, though some classes are over-enrolled), and 50% attendance is typical.

The problem has many layers:

Why aren't they coming in?
What are they up to when they are not here?
How do they keep up with classes that they miss?
How do we instruct a group of students that changes from day to day? (This brings a whole new meaning to differentiated instruction!)
How do we deal with students who go over on their absences without throwing them out of school and losing half of our population?

So far, we haven't found a foolproof solution. Right now it's just getting worse and worse.

I have to praise you like I should...

My husband and I both have personal journals at livejournal.com. Today he posted a link to this article in New York Magazine which discusses the merits of praising children. In short, it says praising children for their effort is much more effective than lauding them for being smart.

The principal at my school is constantly telling us to "flood the students with praise," but has never been this specific about what kind of praise. However, I always tell my students that I grade them based on effort rather than how attractive their artwork is. I'm much more impressed by a student who works hard than one who has "natural talent."

Segregation?

I got an alumni update email from Tufts, and was disappointed to find that I had missed a lecture by the educator and social activist Jonathan Kozol. I read my first book of his, There are no Children Here when I was taking a class entitled "The Child and the City" back at Hampshire in about 1994. The class was about the plight of the urban children, and was one of my first education classes.

Kozol's lecture at Tufts addressed the topic “Still Separate, Still Unequal: The Continuing Decapitation of Potential in America’s Apartheid Schools.” He makes a strong case for calling out US schools for continuing to segregate.

As a public school teacher in an urban district, working primarily with "at-risk" students, I have to say I agree that there still is segregation, though it is not solely based on race. It is, however very clearly socioeconomic. My school is not the "dumping grounds for poor black boys" that the district fears it is or will be, but it is almost entirely non-white, and almost entirely poor students. And our faculty is mostly educated, white women. It does make you think.

The article about Kozol's talk is here: Public shame:The way America pays for education puts a price tag on our kids’ heads.