Join the Educational Revolution!

I consider myself an Education Reformer. Through the years I have tried to reform education from the inside out. It has not worked. What makes me so smart, nothing really? I think every teacher wants to assist students with learning to the best of their ability. At least that is my deepest desire, to assist kids that struggled to overcome their challenges. Which in turn, produces more well-rounded, self-sufficient, educated people as citizens for our county. Does this seem far-fetched?

This is my general premise as per my paper, The Multi-Sensory Classroom (Aug. 2004):
“Each child develops sensory/motor preskills at a very young age (e.g., auditory processing, fine and gross motor skills, visual perception, reflexes, tactile processing, sensory modulation). These bottom levels of sensory/motor development are often taken for granted because they are basic and develop automatically in the typically developing child. When we teach a student at school, the child uses these sensory/motor preskills as a foundation for learning. Children in whom these preskills have not fully developed find learning difficult if not impossible; they become our struggling or special-needs children. Without the appropriate developmental foundation, they cannot build the abstract thinking skills we try to teach them in school. “
Therefore, students may struggle in an educational setting and it may not be obviously apparent why the struggle exists.

So here’s my beef. Many students receive the necessary tools to overcome struggles in public education by the support of parents, teachers and interventions. There are a great number of students who do not receive additional support for whatever reason. This fact needs to change very rapidly.

Case in point, let’s examines the test scores for the high school exit exam for California. According to the California Department of Education website’s data for July of 2008, 13, 237 students took the Math portion of the California Exit Exam and 13, 373 students took the English portion of the exam. 29% of the students passed the Math and 30% passed the English portions of the test for the state. That means that 9,423 students failed the Math and 9,420 failed the English! Holy Smoke!

I cannot be the only one screaming in the wildness. Where are you? Please don’t give me the spill about more qualified teachers and incentives. In today’s, New York Times, Week in Review section on page 5 there is an advertisement from the President of America Federation of Teachers. The name of the article which is really an advertisement is called, “ What Matters Most: Words into Action”. In the ad-like article the president, Randi Weingarten explains this problem in education, “ For too long and too often, teacher evaluation –in both design and implementation – has failed to achieve what must be our goal: continuously improving and informing teaching so as to better education all students”. She goes on to give an example from Colorado of the school board and teacher union working together. Then at the end she says that school board members, teachers, union leaders all feel the same way, they want what’s best for the kids. I felt the article was about working relationships in these difficult financial times. Maybe that needs to be the focus for the advertisement that educational higher ups and teacher unions do not need to eat each other alive so they can eventually help kids. Although our students are failing right now and I don’t want any kid to miss several years of learning because people who make a lot of money can’t get along. We are talking about kid’s futures here. Give me a break!

I’m tired of the Infomercial Education. The kind that keeps promising that magic ellixir yet, the product is just so-so. The real conversation needs to be around the individual differences of students or their learning styles and needs. Administrators, school boards, teachers and all school staff members need to be trained in how to recognize a struggling student’s needs: emotionally, developmentally and physically. They also need to know how to build or recognize curriculum for these needs and drive the curriculum based on assessment data, not a hunch or a feeling. I’m not saying that public education can fix it all and is a one-stop shop. But let’s be honest students come to school with all of these issues and as a whole we cannot ignore the numbers. Our students in this state are not making the cut. Our interventions are not making the cut. Identifying student’s needs are not based on each student’s individual differences or assessments yet blanket interventions are thrown on major problems.
So, we need an Educational Revolution…stay tuned how to join the fight.

On Edge-Who Me or You

I get it, even if no one else does! I notice the signs of mistreatment when I see it. That is what’s wrong with our society. No one wants to see anything. We all walk around like uncomfortable feelings do not exist. Many of us have learned to be desensitized to people in pain. Society turns the other cheek but not in a good way. Case in point, in the New York Times Magazine, Michael Sokolove wrote an article about Shani Davis. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/magazine/07Davis-t.html
I’m going be honest. I was not aware of Shani Davis. As my spouse read me excerpts from the article, an overwhelming parallel occurred based on my experience as a special education teacher.

Shani Davis is a world-class Black American gold medalist speed skater from Chicago. He is awesome! He is a Hercules on skates. That is so great what is his story? I asked as the article unfolded. Shani is a product of a single mother. He started skating and competing on ice by age 6. In the upcoming, 2010 Winter Olympics, Shani already holds the world record for the two middle distance events he is favored to win.

This is so impressive so what’s the problem? Well, apparently there is a sense of bad karma or vibes around Shani. Other people in the ice skating community are not comfortable around him. He is an isolated athlete that has a reputation of being on the “Island of Shani”. He chooses not to train with his team, he doesn’t care about money, and he will not allow his name or image on the team webpage according to the article. Oh, and his mother has quite a reputation for flying off the handle and being what seems too be erratic. People avoid her. Also according to the article people walk on eggshells around Shani while “he basks in his competitive comfort zone, sets up according to his needs and to serves what matters most to him-skating fast. “

Believe it or not, this scenario of people acting what seems to be strange looks very familiar. As a special educator, I immediately saw the parallels of advocating special education parents and Shani and his mother. I have seen good people devastated by an educational system that can barely keep up with the current best practices. Parents in shock or grief of processing having a special needs child end up feeling attacked and manipulated in the educational process i.e., meetings, services, placements. By the time the special needs child reaches the 3rd grade, the parents are crazy according to staff members. The staff says things like: they make their kid sick; they don’t want help; I tried to talk to them and they just want outside providers etc. etc. As the special needs educational process takes place it becomes emotionally, physically and spiritually difficult and the parents start to fight back when they feel their child’s needs are not being met. The parents work to protect themselves from the very system that is suppose to be their partner. I can not count how many times, angry parents looked at me crossly from the other side of the meeting table. Almost like they were waiting for the empty words of promise to come out of my mouth. In time, we formed a partnership and healed together but there was something that needed healing.

So when listening to the article about Shani being difficult to be around, I really had to ask, is it Shani that has been on his island or did he have to make an island to survive.

As I witnessed families sanity be questioned, ideas belittled, and dreams diminished by lack of best practices, understanding, compassion or education of staff, I have to wonder is that the case with Shani too. It seems a part of the ice skating community is expressing their discomfort in how this man chooses to live his life. This is my point about this wonderful athlete.
Shani Davis is not the cookie cutter athlete that society is use to seeing smiling brightly on a Wheaties’ box. No one has really tried to understand Shani’ s journey we just want his journey to look like “ours”. Society wants no waves, no pain, and no distress. The discomfort of his isolation has sparked something but it’s the wrong something. Don’t walk on eggshells, just walk. Walk toward the answers that led this man to protect himself by staying to himself. Now, that is something to think about. I bet no one wants to touch this subject. I get it, even if no else does! That’s what’s wrong with our society. No one wants to see anything. We all walk around like discomfort does not exist.

“UP” was a Downer

Oscar nominations are out! Two times this past year I was dumbfounded by a movie I thought would be entertaining. One of my movie bloopers got several Oscar nominations!

Am I so off the beaten path that I cannot see greatness? Or could it be our society is making adult themed movies in animation form. The movie “UP” was supposed to a delightful ride when I rented it a few weeks ago. What did I have to loose, it was animated, the commercials were so cute and it looked so fun? I knew I was going to have an evening of laughs. Thank God my children are older teens. What was the writer thinking? The movie was emotionally devastating and I hope no one took their children but I know people did.

This animation film had the themes of miscarriage, grief of losing a child, lost dreams, death of a spouse, assault and developers over taking neighborhoods.

What is it with adult themes in animated films? Do the big kids need a new playground? I don’t want to see it and neither do young children. I’m tired of being highjacked after I’m in a movie. This is a manipulative ploy to trick people into the theater to suck more money out the middle class pocketbooks. Writers, animators and advertisers let consumers know on the front end about the adult themes so we can make the decision.

By the nomination of Best Picture, I wonder what Hollywood is saying to young people and parents about the future of animation. Is it for the big kid that wants to work out their childhood issues instead of therapy? Is it now a free for all for Quentin Tarantino types?

Well, I’m not game and many other parents would not be either. I use to trust Hollywood when it came to children’s movies yet, the system has made it very clear by the Best Picture Nominations that bloody war dramas, child abusive, adult themed animation, scary aliens, evil humans and alienated businessman are what makes a good film.

HEY HOLLYWOOD, LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE!
(Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall)

Cut the Blind? What the Hey?

Is it me? I don't get it! Education needs an enema! Cuts, cuts and more cuts.

Today, I heard about cutting Visually Impaired Services! Visually Impaired or “low vision is a severe reduction in vision that can't be corrected with standard glasses or contact lenses and reduces a person's ability to function at certain or all tasks.” (http://www.answers.com/topic/visually-impaired)

How in the world could anyone think about cutting or reducing a trained professional to work with these students? These services are modifications not actual services someone stated today. Are these people out of their minds?

Blind students need services! These students use glasses, Braille, seeing eye dogs, canes and adaptive computer technology. What could the person been thinking that wanted to cut these priceless services. What degree could they have earned to make it ok to even think about this course of action? What university produces people who do not think but desperately do things that hurt the future of our children, state, and nation?

We’d better wake up and take charge of the yahoos that are running things into the ground in education. The thinkers that want to cut starting with my kids education and social skills for autistic youth need a flush.

PARENTS, GOOD SOLID TEACHERS, ADVOCATES and the COMMUNITY pick up your beds and walk. Open your mouths and complain and let’s make common sense in education. Enough is enough, let’s flush out the waste before it’s too late.

Action Plan

•Look for re-elections and up coming school board meetings.
•Go and see what’s cooking.
•Ask a kid about what’s going on in school and the good stuff too. We need to know what is working.

•Visit a local school.
•Ask for literacy curriculum
•Ask to see computers in the classroom, you might faint at this one
•Ask about vocational track for students
•Report back about what you find and let’s do something before education suffers anymore.