Last week we had another all-state earthquake drill. Even Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, was under the desk at a school in the East Bay. California is not kidding. No hurricanes, no tornadoes, but schools are prepared for the unknown earthquake.
My 4th graders weren’t even born when the last major quake hit the bay area, October 21, 1989, but I remember it well. I was waiting on my bike at the corner of the major intersection, on my way home from math tutoring. I put my feet on the ground as the road started rumbling. The guy next to me got out of his car, saying ‘That was a big one’ as an old lady fell to the ground. After all the shocks stopped I was riding down the hill street, and another girl helped me stomp out a small fire that was burning in the dry grass.
This year’s earthquakes don’t heave the ground; instead financial choices and school choices are thrown around. Especially with the elections coming up, day after day I read about the latest reform plan for some school, dependent on fiscal policy in the state.
In Monday’s New York Times, the article was about the New Jersey governor doing all he can to dump the teachers union. Free marketers hate the unions, and I’m not sure how long this discussion about free market competition improving the quality of schools will continue. What will happen in the meantime to low-performing schools whose students can’t wait for free markets to come up with, revise, and implement reform to make a unique, perfect school? Some say good competitive schools are already providing a choice, but how many are actually receiving API of 900 like my traditional public school? Right now, the score is the guide.
I know our school does well because the majority of parents are involved in the classroom and raise funds. That’s how all the teachers, in spite of a severe budget crisis in the school district, managed to be retained for this year.
In my master’s classes I’ve reviewed the best language practices to show results. For example, students need the skills to decode new vocabulary, infer, ask questions to analyze characters, predict.
Have you heard of ’silly bands’– thin rubber bands made in different shapes like a rabbit, a genie, a high-heel? I used them in my master’s class to show how one uses those skills to figure out anything, even the form of a silly band. I’ll tell you, those silly bands are one of the earthquakes in our school. Right now they are causing an uproar in the lower grades and in my class, if I see one out, it goes in my drawer.
Still, I have students that read so well that during the language arts bloc each student has chosen a book and conferences with me at which time I give a mini-lesson about a skill not yet mastered. Very different from other teachers in my master’s class who use an all class model to teach language arts.
At staff development at our school yesterday afternoon, another earthquake shook our vision of teaching math. Students are being asked to look at word problems and decode new vocabulary, infer, ask questions to analyze the operation, predict. See what I mean about skills that will help a student do anything?
As long as the students learn to read for meaning and like books, including math books. That is the goal for life, correct?