teacher quality

Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert, Matthew Lynch, Teachers

The Master List of Interview Prep for Teachers

While the precise format for an interview may vary from site to site, no matter where you are, there are some general tips and tricks for succeeding in your interview. Remember to:

1. Smile. Teachers are expected to be good-natured, friendly people; you can convey this by smiling during your interview.

2. Listen. Make sure that you listen very closely to what the interviewer is saying. Maintain eye contact, pay close attention, and be sure to ask pertinent questions.

3. Pause before answering. You don’t have to give
a quick answer. Take a few moments to collect
your thoughts and reflect; then give a well-thought response.

4. Don’t filibuster. Although some people would disagree, admitting that you Add New don’t have all the answers can be a positive trait and not the end of the world. If you’re stumped by a question, let the interviewer know that you don’t have a clear and concise answer. Tell the interviewer that you would probably seek the advice of a veteran educator, especially if it’s in the best interest of your students.

5. Dress to the nines. Like the old adage says, “always dress to impress.” Women should wear slacks or a nice suit and closed-toe shoes; men should always wear a business suit or at the minimum slacks, a shirt, and tie.

6. Participate in a mock interview. Before the interview, have someone from the field of education (friend, family member, professor) conduct a mock interview using a list of commonly asked interview questions. If this is done correctly, then the interview should be a breeze.

7. Break out the portfolio. The majority of teacher education programs require students to begin creating a portfolio beginning with their introduction to education and culminating with their student teaching experience. Ask your interviewer if you can showcase your portfolio during the interview.

8. Research. Make sure that you take the time to learn as much about the interviewing district as possible. Demonstrating a thorough understanding of the mission and vision of the district can really impress interviewers.
Remember, practice makes perfect! It’s a good idea to practice answering questions you think you might face in your interview before you have to answer them in the moment. Practicing what you’re going to say ahead of time can help you sort out your thoughts and sharpen your diction. Common interview questions include:

1. Education and Background
Briefly describe your education background and explain how it has prepared you to teach.

2. Work Experiences
What work and volunteer experiences have you had, and how have they helped prepare you for teaching?

3. Strengths and 
Weaknesses
What do you consider to be your particular strengths as a beginning teacher? What are your weaknesses, and how do you plan to strengthen them?

4. Teaching
Why did you select teaching as a profession?

5. Meeting Diverse Needs
How do you plan to meet the diverse needs of students in your classroom? Give an example of how you would plan to meet the special needs of a student in your classroom with a disability.

6. Curriculum
What kind of curriculum do you think is appropriate for the students you will teach? What was your most successful lesson?

7. Preparation and 
Planning
What are things you will do to prepare and plan for instruction? What kind of planning have you done?

8. Instruction
What instructional strategies do you think are most effective? How will you meet the individual needs of your students?

9. Evaluation
What techniques will you use to evaluate student learning?

10. Classroom Management
What kind of classroom management techniques do you plan to use?

11. Parent/Family/ Community Involvement
Describe how you plan to involve and communicate with parents.

12. Philosophy/Beliefs
What are your core values and beliefs about education? About students? What is your philosophy of education?

13. Collaboration
Do you get along well with others? What are some people skills that you use when collaborating with others?

14. Extracurricular Activities
What extracurricular and community activities have you participated in? What extracurricular activities would you be able to supervise?

Practice answering these questions while watching yourself in the mirror, or have another person act as an interviewer. Learn what it feels like to say your answers out loud to another person, and you’ll ace your interview when you have to say the words for real!

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education

Are lectures a good way to learn?

Phillip Dawson, Monash University

Imagine a future where university enrolment paperwork is accompanied by the statement: Warning: lectures may stunt your academic performance and increase risk of failure.

Researchers from the United States have just published an exhaustive review and their findings support that warning. They read every available research study comparing traditional lectures with active learning in science, engineering and mathematics. Traditional lecture-based courses are correlated with significantly poorer performance in terms of failure rates and marks.

The study’s authors boldly compare our new awareness of the harm done by lectures to the harms of smoking. Their article – they claim – is the equivalent of the 1964 Surgeon-General’s report that led to legislated warnings about smoking in the United States. The renowned physics education researcher Eric Mazur has described continuing with lectures in the face of this new evidence as “almost unethical”.

This paper is so important because it combines 225 individual research studies through a technique called meta-analysis. So although individual studies published over the past 70 years may have occasionally found lectures to be better, we now know that the collective evidence is in support of active approaches.

So what’s the alternative?

Rather than the perfect lecturer performance or PowerPoints, active approaches privilege “what the student does”. Courses built around active learning require students to spend class time engaged in meaningful tasks that lead to learning. These tasks might be online or face-to-face; solo or in a group; theoretical or applied. Most of our popular learning and teaching buzzwords at the moment are active approaches: peer instruction, problem-based learning, and flipping the classroom are all focused on students spending precious class time doing, not listening.

This new study confirms a significant difference in student achievement and failure rates between lectures and active learning. A hypothetical average student would move up to the top third of the class if allowed to participate in active learning instead of lectures. The difference in failure rates was large too: students in lecture courses were 1.5 times more likely to fail than active learning students. Active learning was better than lectures for all class sizes and all of the science, engineering and mathematics fields they considered.

But active learning as defined in this study is such a broad term. If your lecturer pauses to get you to solve a problem in a group, or asks you to explain a concept to the person sitting next to you, that is active learning. Worksheets, workshops or other activities taking up at least 10% of class time was enough to get a class labelled “active”.

Rather than a call to abandon lectures, this study is important evidence that we need to improve them. We now know beyond all reasonable doubt that talking at students non-stop for an hour or two is a bad idea. But we knew that already, didn’t we?

Sadly, the study authors calculate that in their dataset of 29,300 students, there were 3,516 students who failed but would not have failed if they were in an active class. They go on to muse that if those studies were conducted by medical researchers they would have stopped the experiments for ethical reasons, as denying the students access to active classes was harmful.

So perhaps the warning label should read:

Warning: bad lectures may stunt your academic performance and increase risk of failure.

What makes a good lecture?

In What’s the Use of Lectures, Donald Bligh notes: “One of the most common mistakes by lecturers is to use the lecture method at all”.

Bligh’s review of the research found that aside from transmitting information to students, lectures were not good for much at all. Lectures should not be a default teaching approach, but should instead be used in a targeted way when they suit the specific goals of the class. For other goals, such as teaching ethics, provoking thought, or developing practical skills, more active approaches work better than lectures.

There is some debate about the ideal length of lectures, with claims that student attention diminishes after 10 or 15 minutes, however the evidence behind these claims is thin. This doesn’t, however, give us permission to waffle on: unnecessary-but-interesting details can hurt learning, and so can excessive quantitative information.

The Conversation

Phillip Dawson, Lecturer in Learning and Teaching, Monash University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers

Keeping children back a year doesn’t help them read better

Paul Thomas, Furman University

If you’re an eight-year-old living in Charleston, South Carolina, you’re soon going to need to study extra hard at reading. The US state has joined in with a policy trend across the country that links children’s chances of progressing from third to fourth grade with their performance on reading tests.

Back in 2012, 14 states plus the District of Columbia had policies in place that hold students back a year on the basis of their reading ability.

New efforts to reverse the trend, in states such as Oklahoma, remain rare. This is despite research showing that holding children back a grade – known as grade retention – causes more harm than good.

Following Florida

In the US, holding children back a grade as a key element of reading legislation can be traced to a 2001 programme Just Read, Florida. Because of this programme, Florida was characterised by the New York Times education writer Motoko Rich as: “One of the pioneers in holding back third graders because of inadequate reading skills.”

But two problems lie in the popularity of such grade retention policies. First, while the Florida model has significant bi-partisan support among both Democrats and Republicans in the US, reviews of the outcomes of the Florida policy show research on it is misrepresented and inconclusive, at best.

Alongside this, 40 years of research into the policy of holding children back a grade refutes the practice.

Long-term consequences

The policy of holding children back a school year remains “widespread” internationally, according to a 2013 study by two Belgian scholars who studied retention and behaviour in Flemish high school students.

Research addressing retention in Senegal, in Belgium, and in Lebanon reinforces disturbing patterns about the overwhelming negative long-term consequences and ineffectiveness of grade retention. In the UK, where the practice is very uncommon, the policy has been assessed as costly and ineffective.

Holding children back a grade is strongly correlated with behaviour problems for retained students. Examining the Florida model, CALDER education researcher Umut Özek concluded, “Grade retention increases the likelihood of disciplinary incidents and suspensions in the years that follow.”

Another 2009 study by the Rand Corporation for the New York City Department of Education, found:

In general, retention does not appear to benefit students academically. Although some studies have found academic improvement in the immediate years after retention, these gains are usually short-lived and tend to fade over time.

Most disturbing are the long-term consequences. As literacy professor Nancy Frey explained:

The practice of retention … is academically ineffective and is potentially detrimental to children’s social and emotional health. The seeds of failure may be sown early for students who are retained, as they are significantly more likely to drop out of high school. Furthermore, the trajectory of adverse outcomes appears to continue into young adulthood, when wages and postsecondary educational opportunities are depressed.

Despite a well-established research base discrediting the practice, the policy appears to endure for two reasons. A political and public faith in punitive educational accountability sits alongside a straw man argument that advocates keeping children back instead of “social promotion”, where they are automatically passed onto the next grade regardless of student achievement.

Reward vs punishment

Giving children punishment and rewards for reading ability, like grade retention, is ineffective, especially in the context of teaching and learning. Education writer Alfie Kohn has challenged both for years.

Punishment and rewards shift students’ focus away from learning and toward avoiding one or seeking the other. In literacy, that failure has been exposed in the popular but flawed Accelerated Reader (AR) programme that seeks to increase reading through rewards.

Writing about the AR programme, literacy scholar and professor Renita Schmidt explains

If we continue to let AR ask the questions, we may very well lose the interest of our students and create literal readers who only want to ‘get points’ and be done with reading. That’s not teaching and that’s not reading.

But the National Association of Schools Psychologists asserts that neither strategy – repeating a year, nor promoting the student automatically – is an effective remedy.

Alternatives include addressing the powerful influence of how much access children have to books at home. Other research-supported policies, suggested instead of retention by Shane Jimerson and his colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara, include focusing on parental involvement and targeted practices based on student needs. They also suggest modified reading programmes as well as more holistic approaches to supporting students, including mental health services and behaviour interventions.

But the most urgent political step is to acknowledge that holding children back a grade fails both students and their progress in literacy. Instead, we need an effective and evidence-based policy to replace decades where punishment is preferred over educationally sound practices.The Conversation

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

Paul Thomas, Associate Professor of Education, Furman University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Matthew Lynch, Teachers

Cloud Computing and K-12 Classrooms

Cloud computing has taken the business world by storm. Climate controlled rooms full of servers are quickly being replaced by remote storage technology, whimsically referred to as “the cloud.” Over half of U.S. businesses use some form of cloud computing to back up their important data and improve productivity. Instead of trying to find the capital to pay for a secure server structure, businesses are subscribing to cloud services and paying for more storage as their needs grow. The practical uses of cloud computing technology also translate to K-12 classrooms. Simply put, cloud storage saves space, money and time for teachers, parents, students and administrators.

A report by CDW Government found that over 40 percent of schools use cloud applications to store their data and by 2016, schools are expected to spend 35 percent of IT budgets on the cloud. The savings add up though. Right now K-12 schools report that their cloud initiatives are saving them an average of 20 percent on IT costs. By 2016, those savings are expected to reach 27 percent.

So how exactly are K-12 schools using cloud computing and what are the benefits? Let’s take a look:

Stronger communication through access. Through K-12 cloud platforms like Edline, teachers have better communication with parents and students regarding assignments, tests and projects. Parents can log in from anywhere (including their phones or tablets) and instantly know how their kids are progressing. Teachers can post important messages and keep an archive of completed work in one spot. Depending on the school, cloud forums may even allow parents and students to contribute in the application for a two-way dialogue.

Disaster planning. Schools collect a lot of information on their students and that data impacts decisions and the well-being of the kids. It takes a lot of time to build student databases and maintain them. If a man-made or natural disaster threatened the physical location of school records, whether hard copies or stored on servers, it could mean a catastrophe when it comes to student information. Using cloud computing ensures that student records are secure and accessible, no matter what happens to the physical school building.

One-stop shopping. Cloud platforms are able to bring together data pools that were previously unconnected so that educators and administrators have everything they need in one spot. Since there is no physical equipment that schools must purchase to get started with cloud computing, there is also a pay-as-you-go mentality. Schools do not need to pay upfront for infrastructure and can add cloud storage as their needs increase. It saves money, space, time and other resources.

Fast recovery of data. If you’ve ever experienced a server crash on a personal or professional level, it can be a long time while you wait for your information to come back. Cloud-based businesses recover data quickly and often handle any technical issues that might arise in a “crash” situation. A word that is often associated with all cloud applications is “redundancy” because the technology eliminates any chance of single-point failure.

Some peripheral benefits of cloud computing are decreased energy costs and high security features to ensure protection and privacy of student information. As K-12 schools move toward cloud computing, student information will be better preserved and shared content more accessible. While use of the cloud does not have a large direct impact on classroom activities it does improve teaching efficiency overall. It also has long-term savings attached which is always a bonus when it comes to K-12 technology spending.

Does your school use the cloud yet? If so, how has it improved your school efficiency?

 

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here. 

 

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Testing

Students who repeat a year stoke bad behaviour in class

Clara G. Muschkin, Duke University

Students who are held back a year in school or who are older than average for their grade have long been known to be more likely to misbehave and to be suspended from school. But what’s not been clear until now is whether their presence causes ill-discipline across the school community.

In the US, accountability policies in schools have increased the number of students who are old for their grade, or have had to repeat a school year. Schools are evaluated on the basis of students’ demonstrated proficiency in certain skills, such as maths and literacy, for each grade. These policies have led to less frequent “social promotion” – where children automatically progress to the next grade regardless of their ability. Instead, there has been an increase in the proportions of children retained in grade after they fail standardised academic performance tests.

Additionally, some parents choose to hold back their children from entering kindergarten when they become eligible at age five. This trend, known as the “greying of kindergarten”, is linked to concerns about state and school accountability. There are also perceptions among parents that students who are older than their classmates have an advantage in school.

Debates on the consequences of these policies draw upon studies highlighting the effects of grade retention and older age on school attainment and behaviour of these students. But little attention has been paid to the implication on students who themselves are not at academic risk, but who must share classrooms with older and retained students.

Following the leader

Social science theories of peer influence frame questions of how older and retained peers may affect student behaviour in school. These children are more likely to get into trouble at school, in part because of the strong relationship between academic performance and behaviour.

Older students are more inclined to engage in behaviours that seem more “adult” or fitting with their physical appearance, despite a lack of social skills needed for making decisions regarding appropriate behaviour.

The older ones should know better.
Matthew Cole/Shutterstock

A stronger presence of peers who are more likely to misbehave can influence other students through the daily school climate, as well as through increased opportunities for directly interacting with at-risk students. Middle school students are particularly vulnerable to such peer influences, since early adolescence involves developmental adjustments that result in changing relationships with peers, family, and authority figures.

In a recent study, we looked at 79,314 seventh-graders in 334 North Carolina middle schools, using administrative data provided by the public schools and archived by the North Carolina Education Research Data Center at Duke University.

We compared data across schools and took into account student, school, and district-level factors that influence school behaviour. What we found was that the likelihood of a student committing an infraction, the number of infractions per student, and the likelihood of a student being suspended were all significantly higher among students attending schools with higher proportions of retained and older students.

Lowering the tone

There was increased negative behaviour across all groups of students who have higher levels of peers who have been held back a year. But this effect was stronger for students who were themselves retained. Older students share a similar vulnerability to the influence of their peers. There were stronger effects on ill-discipline on older students in classes with more older peers.

Unexpectedly, we found that students in groups that were least likely to engage in misbehaviour were the most susceptible to the potential negative peer influence of retained and older peers. This suggests that contact with older and retained peers can contribute to delinquent behaviour even if the direct contact is not very close or frequent.

These findings can help feed into longstanding debates regarding the benefits and drawbacks of grade retention and delayed school entry. They shift the focus away from the older and retained students themselves, to consider the implications for the entire school community.

For some individual students, being held back a year or delaying school entry might be the appropriate choice for their ultimate success in school. However, it is important that educators and politicians acknowledge that policies that make students repeat a year, and those that delay children starting schools, can have significant school-wide consequences.

Given consistent research evidence of the strong relationship between academic success and behaviour in school, policies that support students academically and prevent them falling back a year have the potential to benefit students who are at risk of academic failure, and can enhance positive behaviour across the entire school community.

The Conversation

Clara G. Muschkin, Director, North Carolina Education Research Data Center, Associate Director, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers

As easy as ABC: the way to ensure children learn to read

Kerry Hempenstall, RMIT University

Human speech has long been present in every culture, and our brains have evolved specialized features to enable its rapid development when we are exposed to the speech of others. Reading however is a relatively recent skill, and we have no such dedicated reading module to guarantee success.

Fortunately, our brains are able to adapt to the task, although there is considerable variation in the assistance learners require to achieve it.

Unlocking the alphabet

Humans have produced numerous writing systems in their attempts to create a concrete form of communication, and those languages employing an alphabet have provided the most powerful means of achieving this goal.

The invention of the alphabet was one of the greatest of human achievements. It required the appreciation that the spoken word can be split into its component sound parts, and that each part can be assigned a symbol or letter.

The only other element required to have an amazingly productive writing system is for the learner to be able to identify the sound for each letter, and blend the sounds together to recreate the spoken word.

This is known as the alphabetic principle, and allows us to write any word we can say. Our written language is thus a code, and phonics is simply the key to unlocking the code.

Should we explain to our students through phonics teaching how our speech is codified into English writing? It sounds obvious that we should; indeed, that not to do so would be cruel.

Early introduction is paramount

But some believe there is a better way. English is after all a complicated language, having absorbed so many words from other languages with differing spelling patterns.

But, no, it turns out from years of research that there is a significant advantage in demonstrating from the beginning how the alphabetic principle works. This benefit is particularly evident in the 30% or so of our students who struggle with learning to read.

It also has become clear that demonstrating this principle systematically is more effective than merely sprinkling a few clues here and there as a story is read with, or to, a student.

If we do not introduce this principle early, there is a risk of students developing less productive strategies in their efforts to make sense of print.

Some of these approaches have a surface appeal because they provide a veneer of reading progress, but become self-limiting over time.

Don’t distract from the words

Despite a lack of evidence for its worth, many teachers believe that skilled reading involves making use of multiple cues in identifying words. They believe that words can be predicted (guessed), based on cues other than their structure – picture cues, meaning cues, grammar cues, and hints from the first letter.

However, routinely using pictures to determine word identity draws student attention away from print, thereby diminishing the central importance of the alphabetic principle.

Asking students to remember words as a primary strategy gives the unhelpful message that reading involves the visual memory of shapes, of letter landscapes devoid of alphabetic significance.

Stressing the integrated use of multiple cues (picture, grammar, and meaning cues) leaves students with too many ill-defined options, and produces marked variability in the preferred approach of students.

Fourth grade slump

Of course, many of the better students will develop an understanding that phonics is a foundation anyway; however, those less fortunate will be left to scour their memories for word shapes or attempt to predict upcoming words based on sentence/passage meaning or on the sound of initial letters.

Syntactic cues to word identification tend to be less employed among this less fortunate group group as their skills in grammar are likely to be under developed.

The problem is often not identified until about the Year 4; hence, the term fourth grade slump. In truth, the problem was there from the beginning, and had an instructional source, but was unrecognised because of some teachers’ misunderstanding of reading development.

What happens to these apparently progressing students? As text becomes more complex, prediction becomes less and less accurate.

Many sentences will now include difficult-to-decode words that carry non-redundant information, and hence become more difficult targets for prediction.

There are now increasing numbers of such words. For the memorisers, the number of words that must be recalled from visual memory outgrows students’ visual memory capacity.

These moribund strategies collapse, but in the absence of a productive course of action, students often hold on to them, resisting a return to decoding as a first option as being too hard or too babyish.

Resolution of the problems of these older readers is very difficult for both teacher and student. Better not to create this situation in the first place.

The challenges

Even when the value of early phonics teaching is recognised by educators, students vary significantly in the ease with which they develop from their initial painstaking attempts at decoding through to effortless fluent orthographic-dominant reading.

Our challenge as educators is to be truly sensitive to every reader’s progress through careful monitoring, and to ensure the intensity and duration of instruction is appropriate to their needs.

Once they are on their way, future progress becomes a self-teaching issue, driven largely by how much students choose to read. However, until reading is effortless, we cannot expect children to choose books over the many alternative communication modes available to them today.

The Conversation

Kerry Hempenstall, Casual lecturer in Psychology, RMIT University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert

How to Spell Words: Tips From Spelling Gurus

Note: Julie Bradley has been an educator for more than 30 years. Her expertise has taken her to outback Australia and around the world presenting to educators and parents on spelling and foundational skills. Mrs Bradley is Managing Director of Smart Achievers, a worldwide distributor for Smart Words Spelling, Reading and Perceptual Motor Programs.

Do you know a kid who feels so much shame for not being able to read and spell that they don’t want to go to school? A kid who’s very frustrated because they just can’t figure out how to spell or read words? Or perhaps you have a kid who believes they’re “dumb” because they’re struggling while everyone else ‘gets it’? How many of you have changed the word you want to write because you can’t spell it?

Although school is for learning, it just breaks my heart to think that many kids do view themselves that way. And it’s stories like this one that pushed me to travel to Minnesota, USA to work with English guru, Denise Eide.

Denise taught a group of us how to make reading and writing easier for kids to learn how to spell words. I’m so excited by what I learnt that I decided to share some of it with you.

30 spelling rules and 74 phonograms

‘Aha!’ moments seemed to happen frequently for me as Denise shared her research and knowledge. They included her explanations of the 30 Spelling Rules and 74 Phonograms. It is so much easier if you know this stuff!

By the way, a phonogram is the picture of a sound.

Phonograms represent the sound, whereas letters don’t.

For example, the phonogram G represents /g/ and /j/. The rules explain its usage.

The group can now argue why most English words (98%) follow the rules and explain away all those exceptions people seem to think exist.

Denise’s explanations were simple. They made so much sense that I find it easy to remember them.

I’m bringing home some packs of her Rule Cards for all of you and they will be available as soon as my shipment arrives. Every teacher, parent and child will want one. They are brilliant and with them you’ll be creating spelling champions in no time.

Learn the history of phonograms

Denise told us fascinating stories about the history of phonograms which will make teaching them so much more interesting.

Can you believe that the reason we have O representing the /u/ in ‘mother’ and ‘love’ is because the monks who had to copy script, many hundreds of years ago, found there were too many up and down strokes if they used a U? Can you guess what they did? They changed the U to an O.

Try writing the words as ‘muther’ and ‘luve’ and you can see how confusing it is.

Denise calls them the Lazy Monks.

I imagine that with a bit of flourish the kids would love the story and they will never forget how to spell words that apply to Rule # 3.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert, Matthew Lynch, Teachers

Ask An Expert: Dealing with a Parent’s Death

Question: When a student’s parent dies, it impacts the whole school community. How do you recommend schools handle the death with respect to the student whose parent has died, the teachers and students who are impacted and the community at large? — S. C.

Answer: Thank you for submitting your question. You are correct, a parents’ death does have ramifications for the entire school community. In this column, I will delineate how schools can handle the death with respect to the student(s) whose parent has died, the teachers and students who are impacted and the community at large. Without further ado, I will begin.

The loss of a parent is a devastating event for children, no matter the age. Children derive their sense of security from their parents, so the death of a parent can make them feel vulnerable and afraid.  In regards to their reaction to the death; this depends on the maturity level and the resilience of the child in question. Regardless of how well they take it, they will need the love and support of those closest to them in order to make it through the grieving process. The school community can help by conveying how much they care for the student and being empathetic to their loss.

Children must be allowed to grieve on their own timetable without feeling rushed. At the same time, you can’t allow the student to use their parents’ death as a crutch or an excuse. You don’t want them to fall into a pit of despair and pity, so of course the school counselor’s or psychologist’s services will be offered to the student. Children need access to these services both immediately after the death and for a period of time after that. With the support of the school community and their family, most of the children who lose parents go on to lead healthy productive lives.

In regards to teachers, students, and the community at large, immediately after the death they will be searching for answers and information. Schools can help them by serving as a key disseminator of information. This is very important to the process, because we all know that misinformation can sometimes run rampant in situations such as these.

Everyone will not be affected by the parent’s death in the same way, but nonetheless, the death must be acknowledged by the school community. Hopefully, your school already has an emergency team that steps in when a crisis like this arises. In the hours or days immediately after the death, your school may not have a lot of details about how the student’s parent died,  however, you still should disseminate whatever information that you have.

Make sure that you inform your staff, faculty and administrators as soon as possible. Why? Because in addition to the school itself, these are the people who will be inundated with questions from students, parents and community members. If they are out of the loop and are unable to provide these sectors with viable information, your school could end up looking unprofessional and uninformed. Use every viable communication medium that you can think of to accomplish this goal, even if the school is on break.

Also, the staff should be briefed on the appropriate way to address the situation in their individual classrooms, and how to recognize signs that the death is affecting students negatively. Students can be affected regardless of whether or not they knew or are related to the deceased parent. This may lead to anxiety or sadness, especially when children come to the realization that we all are human, even their parents. Some students may become overly preoccupied with death and the possibility that their parents could meet the same fate. Remember, students who are having a difficult time dealing with the situation should be referred to either the school counselor or psychologist.

It is not a good idea for us to believe that we are protecting students by withholding information. Like adults, students want to be told the truth. If they don’t get the truth from the adults around them, they tend to try to put the pieces to the puzzle together as best they can, which can quickly turn into myths and misconceptions. Even if you don’t know the whole truth, tell them the factual information that you possess concerning the parent’s death.

It is best to prepare a written statement to inform the entire student body about the death. Teachers can read the statement in their classrooms. The worst thing that you can do is to deliver the news over a PA system, because it is too cold and nonchalant to express the true gravity of the situation. After the news is announced, students should be allowed to freely express their feelings and ask questions. Also, teachers can use this situation as a springboard to talk about death and dying.

It is also important to remember that parents are also a part of the equation. As soon as possible, preferably via a letter home or a personal phone call, parents should be informed of the death and also of the information that has been shared with their children. It is also important to have a generic form letter that can be used in such instances. Parents will want to know the specifics surrounding the death, as well as strategies that they can use to talk to their children about the situation.

As I established at the beginning of my advice column, a parent’s death has ramifications for the whole school community. In this column, I have provided you with information that your school can use to handle a parent’s death with respect to the student whose parent has died, the teachers and students who are impacted and the community at large. At the end of the day, the golden rule in this type of situation is to “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you, in your time of bereavement.”

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert, Matthew Lynch

New Teacher Tip: Arranging Your Classroom

As the new school year begins, most students look forward to joining their new class. The set up and layout of the classroom will determine the ease with which the children can move around the classroom. It is also important to consider your teaching style while you are arranging the classroom. Here are things you should to consider when deciding the layout of the classroom.

1. Teacher’s desk. In the traditional setting, this is one item that is generally kept in the far corner of the room or toward one wall in order to avoid the teacher’s desk being in the middle of high traffic. On the other hand, if your approach to instruction is likely to be more flexible and interactive, you might want to have the teacher’s desk closer to the students’ tables and chairs.

2. Students’ desks. The layout of students’ desks depends on the kind of interaction that you want with students. Perhaps you desire to frequently rearrange the desks, depending on the kind of lesson you are planning, provided the desks are not bolted to the floor. Here are some layout options for you to consider:

a. Students facing the front of the room—this option is best for sessions that involve direct instruction.
b. Students facing the center of the room—this layout creates a friendly environment and is best used when interaction and debate are part of the agenda.
c. Students grouped in clusters—ideal for times when you want students to work in groups or complete a collaborative project in class.

3. Overhead projector or multimedia projector screen. It is mandatory that the screen be placed at a height and angle that allows everyone to see the screen easily. Make sure you sit in each seat while others are present to determine if you can view the screen comfortably from all positions.

4. Classroom supplies. Items that are frequently used need to be handy and kept closer to the students. Items used less often can be stored in a cabinet. The pencil sharpener and trash should be kept slightly away from the students to avoid distraction.

5. Announcement board. Decorate the board to liven up the classroom, as well as to communicate with students about important events during the academic year. Consider these suggestions:

a. Make the board colorful with project work that has been completed by students.
b. Put up a “quote of the day” that is relevant, inspirational, and motivating. You may also make this a revolving duty of the students.
c. Allow students to put up pictures of places they visited on a holiday.
d. Educate your students about something pertaining to their curriculum by pinning up newspaper or magazine editorials.
e. Use another bulletin board to put up important school information, like the academic calendar, fire drill instructions, classroom rules and other such information.

Follow these guidelines and you can be sure that the new academic year will start with a bang! Good luck!

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform, Teachers

Are Bilingual Programs Worth the Extra Effort and Expense?

The debate on the best way to educate ELL students continues, with little promise of a clear-cut way to proceed emerging anytime soon. Meanwhile, the diversity of languages spoken in U.S. schools continues to expand. Languages include Spanish, Hmong, Urdu, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Polish, Korean, Tagalog, and Swahili…and that doesn’t cover everything! Achieving the goal for all students to obtain a satisfactory level of learning is often compromised by the cultural, social, and language differences among various groups. The inability to provide the best approach for the learning needs of ELL students places them at greater risk of falling behind.

The original enthusiasm for bilingual programs has diminished, and these programs are now criticized as ineffective. Support for the immersion model has also declined, and initial supporters now believe ELL students simply aren’t learning English quickly and thoroughly enough. They now suggest that the immersion program does not facilitate ELL students’ ability to cope with American culture, not only in school but also beyond school boundaries. The slower learning curve experienced by ELL students in immersion programs may plague them for the rest of their lives.

This belief is based on research suggesting that Hispanics who were enrolled in bilingual programs from the 1970s through the 1990s have earned less money on average than Hispanic students educated during the same period in an English-only setting. Hispanic high school dropouts who were in English-only classrooms are also fewer in number and more likely to return to school later. Immersion makes it difficult for the teacher to provide support for all students’ needs. In the case of a complex assignment such as a research paper, language and usage are challenging even for fluent students. The further complication of using a second language puts ELL students at a serious disadvantage if they don’t have special support. The immersion method of teaching has yet to establish itself as an effective program for minority students.

Supporters of the transitional and developmental models insist that students taught at least some of their core academics in their native language can better keep pace with their English-speaking peers. According to research studies, transitional instruction in both the native language and English helps students learn English more quickly and effectively. Transitional instruction helps students become more literate in their native language, which in turn improves their ability to learn English.

An issue that complicates the education of the ELL learners is the lack of training among teachers and the apparent lack of urgency on the part of states to ensure highly qualified ELL teachers. Most states have no requirements for new teachers to demonstrate competency in ELL instruction. And most states do not have incentives for teachers to pursue a license or endorsement in ELL instruction. Regardless of the model chosen, qualified teachers are necessary for quality programs.

Bilingual programs—are they helpful or harmful? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

 

 

  • no reactions
0
Share