Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs
As you go through your Christmas presents, is there something missing? You can order my charter school book, Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds, from Amazon or e-mailing me at joanne at joannejacobs dot com for an autographed copy ($22 including shipping).
Giving diplomas to slacker students is a shortcut to a dead end street, writes Ms. Cornelius of A Shrewdness of Apes. She links to a Salt Lake City Tribune story about students who cut classes then “make up” a quarter’s work in a few weeks by doing study packets provided by a private company.
By the time Spencer Taiti graduates from Woods Cross High School, he will have spent hours of school time doing everything but learning. An inveterate class-skipper, the junior guesses he has failed or will fail as many as 10 classes, often because he didn’t bother to show up.
But he will graduate, the teen says. If he has his way, Taiti will make up all those failed classes by completing packets provided by private companies such as Layton’s Northridge Learning Center. The course packet his friend Meleana Otukolo completed in about five hours earned her the credit she should have gotten attending nine weeks of class for about 90 minutes every other day. At Northridge, that “quarter” credit costs $45.
“I want to get done with school the easiest way possible,” he says.
True slackers copy their friend’s packet, ensuring they learn nothing — except for poor work habits.
A new Utah law requires schools to accept unlimited credits from accredited private programs.
A counselor defends the private programs as an option for students who can’t or won’t attend more rigorous school-run make-up classes.
“If a kid can get out with a diploma, the rest of their life is better for them,” said Orin Johanson, a West counselor. “If we have to send them to some less-than-appropriate make-up [program], I, for one, think it’s OK if a kid is dealing with certain circumstances.”
That attitude drives Ms. Cornelius up the wall.
The door may initially open for these ersatz high school graduates, but as soon as it becomes obvious that the “graduate” does not possess basic skills, unless their family owns the company, they will be shown that very door out in the real world. And besides content knowledge, there are other skills that are valued in the real world, like: showing up on time, showing up regularly, being willing to do mundane tasks in the achievement of a greater goal, and being able to sustain effort for longer than a session of DOOM on the ol’ Playstation.
When I did a series on “Learning to work” about 10 years ago, I interviews many employers who complained that young high school grads didn’t understand that they had to show up every day — even Monday morning when they had a hangover. They complained about graduates’ reading and math skills too, but it was the not showing up that drove them nuts. A guy who ran a machine shop told me he loved to hire Vietnamese immigrants. They knew math and his bilingual Vietnamese machinists could translate for them while they were learning English. They show up every day, he said.
The last Carnival of Homeschooling for 2006 is up at What Did You Do in School Today?, a Waldorf-inspired homeschooling blog. The theme is “a year and a day.”
Sophomoric filmmaking isn’t grounds for expulsion.
KNIGHTSTOWN, Ind. — Making a movie in which evil teddy bears attack a teacher got two budding filmmakers expelled from their high school, but a federal judge says it was the school that was wrong.
Two sophomores made a movie in which a “teddy bear master” orders stuffed animals to kill a teacher in revenge for a humiliation. Students fight the homicidal teddies, reports AP.
School officials had argued that the film was disruptive and that a teacher whose name was used in the movie found it threatening. Prosecutors reviewed the movie but declined to press charges.State law allows expulsion for activity unconnected with school if the activity is unlawful and interferes with school operations.
The judge said the movie was “vulgar,” “tasteless,” “humiliating” and “obscene,” but ruled that school officials did not prove it disrupted school.
The judge urged the boys to apologize to the math teacher whose name they used in the movie.
As I stood in line at Trader Joe’s yesterday, a woman asked me what I was going to do with the smoked salmon I was holding. “It’s for the traditional lox-and-bagel Christmas brunch,” I said. Doesn’t everyone eat lox and bagels on Christmas Day?
May this be a day of joy for you and your family.
In What’s Wrong With Cinderella? in the New York Times Magazine, feminist writer Peggy Orenstein bemoans her three-year-old daughter’s princess complex.
To call princesses a “trend†among girls is like calling Harry Potter a book. Sales at Disney Consumer Products, which started the craze six years ago by packaging nine of its female characters under one royal rubric, have shot up to $3 billion, globally, this year, from $300 million in 2001. There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items. “Princess,†as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; they say it is on its way to becoming the largest girls’ franchise on the planet.
Orenstein worries about the stereotype, but wonders if she’s just a second-wave feminist in a third-wave world.
Maybe princesses are in fact a sign of progress, an indication that girls can embrace their predilection for pink without compromising strength or ambition; that, at long last, they can “have it all.†Or maybe it is even less complex than that: to mangle Freud, maybe a princess is sometimes just a princess. And, as my daughter wants to know, what’s wrong with that?
Girls who love to play with princess dolls consider Prince Charming an accessory, Orenstein writes. The prince stays in the box till he’s needed for the wedding kiss. That certainly was true of the Ken doll.
A Bakersfield, California man set himself on fire “to protest a San Joaquin Valley school district’s decision to change the names of winter and spring breaks to Christmas and Easter vacation,” reports AP. A deputy and parole agent immediately sprayed him with a fire extinguisher.
To save money on utility costs, some rural Idaho schools are switching to a four-day week, reports the Salt Lake City Tribune.
At Marsh Valley High School, one of the latest school districts to make the switch as an experiment this year, teachers say attendance has gone up. At Bear Lake High, where they’re in their second year of a four-day week, teachers say students show up fresher and ready to learn.
“I’m almost convinced the four-day week is better than chocolate,” said Marsh Valley High Principal Gary Yearsely.
When school is session, class periods run 70 minutes instead of 60, extending the school day by an hour.
Students are scheduling their activities and appointments on Fridays, Yearsley said, and they’re less likely to cut classes when they know they’ve got a three-day weekend ahead of them.
Indio Charter School in southern California went to a four-day week because so many students were missing Friday anyhow to go back to Mexico for a long weekend. Riverside County Office of Education withheld funding, even though students were in class for more time during the four-day week.
The days of the coffee mug, bath salts and home-baked cookies are over. In affluent areas, some parents are turning holiday gifts for teachers into a competition, reports the LA Times.
Many schools — public and private — are adopting policies that discourage gifts or impose limitations so that particular teachers aren’t favored with armfuls of goodies while others head out for holiday vacation empty-handed.The policies also lift the financial burden on students of little means who might feel compelled to compete with their better-off peers, said many school officials.
Recent news stories about a public school in Irvine where faculty allegedly demanded expensive jewels, perfumes and clothing in exchange for accepting a special needs student also have reinforced some educators’ desire to reconsider what is an appropriate expression of appreciation.
Some schools ask parents to donate cash to a teachers’ fund: All teachers get a share, whether they’re beloved or not. Education Gadfly thinks this impersonal dole lacks the festive spirit.
St. Paul schools are closing the gap that separates native-English speakers and children from immigrant families, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Forty percent of St. Paul students come from non-English-speaking families. The schools team regular teachers with English language specialists so children don’t have to be pulled out for separate instruction.
A wiggling mass of third-graders occupies the floor space between two teachers during a lesson on “Hansel and Gretel.” When it’s time to split into groups, Concha Fernández del Rey takes the kids who are still learning English, while third-grade teacher Sharon Eaton works on the other side of the room with students at a higher level of literacy.
These children at Prosperity Heights Elementary in St. Paul, Minn., are using identical work sheets, but they’re getting attention that’s as individual as their gap-toothed smiles.
St. Paul’s students speak languages as diverse as Hmong, Spanish and Somali. Few schools try to teach in students’ native languages; it’s just not practical.
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