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One of our greatest methods of assessment has been something that is unique to our summer school structure, having multiple instructors in one classroom enabling us to pull a student out of class if they need individualized instruction or extra help. We did this for all of our kids, and no more than once or twice a week for a period of no longer than 5-10 minutes. So they didn’t miss much of what was being covered in class, while we could directly see where they are each at and how far they have each come. Furthermore, having so many of teachers allowed us to get to know each of our students very well, very quickly while still being able to plan and teach effectively.
The official ‘assessment’ came in the form of a pre and post-test that mirrored one another. Our students did better than we anticipated on the pre-test, but still missed a lot of what they should know by eleventh of twelfth grade. There were a few students' that considerably underperformed, on both exams, and I feel that we failed them just as much as they failed, or almost failed, the class themselves.
In addition to these more formal assessments, we were fairly consistent at assigning homework each night – sometimes from multiple instructors. I gave little to no homework during the past year, and hope that I can next year but am not keeping my hopes up. Again, the nature of the beast has changed due to the dynamics we have here at Holly Springs, but nevertheless we have been able to see how much more material can be covered and much deeper the students’ level of cognition runs when they are responsible for work both inside and outside of the classroom. In addition, we are teaching them just that – responsibility; how to be accountable for their own education and make it a priority. What we could have done better would have been to improve our own accountability and resposibility by keeping better track of homework assignments for absent or tardy students.
A failure could be our lack of parent-contact and absence of an official progress report. While we could easily blame this on the short duration of our Holly Springs tenure, it still should have been done. Because of this, we had several students very close to not passing our class in the final days of summer school, all of which claimed to have thought they “were doing fine”, and a few others who did, in fact, fail. This, to me, is almost unacceptable in a summer program such as ours and shows that somewhere along the line, somehow we as teachers didn't give these couple of kids what they needed, and what we had the ability to give.
As for individual students, the first is easy. We had one particular girl who came in the first week of school and did nothing but put her head in her hands and scowl the entire morning. She was not rude at all, but never participated in class voluntarily and rarely provided anything when called upon. We kept on her, involving her in a non-intrusive way, and by the middle of the second week she had started to open up, raise her hand occasionally and participate in class. She told us she is shy, and doesn’t know anyone here, and agreed that her reluctance to take chances on answers or jump into the mix may have contributed to her having ended up in summer school at all. By the end of the month, she was laughing and joking along with us. I think this month helped her out quite a bit, with confidence in the classroom and socially as well. The other individual who made great strides was a young man that we paid special attention to during our out-of-class individualized sessions. I spoke with him more than any other student, and our other instructors all pulled him aside often as well, as he needed the most help. He was eager to learn, and willing to try. However, his basic skills were so low it was difficult for him to keep up with the rest of the class. By pulling him out occasionally, giving him multiple opportunities to get something right or done, and working with him one-on-one, we could directly see the “light go on”, and were ecstatic to see him begin to answer questions correctly on quizzes, in class, and eventually on our post-test. These were objectives that he did not know at all prior to this month, and he at least has a basic understanding of now.
Overall, as was the case last summer, both us and the students got a tremendous amount out of our experience at Holly Springs. The students get instruction more intense (especially for the 1-2 person classes) than they may have ever received in their lives, more attention than they are used to for sure. A lot of material is crammed in, but because of this they are able to experience the entire spectrum of a course in one McSchoolYear. As for us, I enjoy getting to know the kids, and getting to know myself as a teacher better - still fixing some things, changing some others. Because we are around so many other great instructors, I’ve picked up many tips that I will hope to implement come August in my own classroom and was given feedback as to how I can improve what I already am doing. If only every school was run like this school, then students would actually start learning.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Success Story
SUCCESS STORY:
My success story, like my failure story, has a name. We’ll call this one “Ryan. It’s nice to spend some time thinking of successes from this past year, especially since there are so many negative problems to dwell on. While my successes may seem minor in comparison to my lengthy litany of failures, this one in particular I would say is rather large.
I knew of Ryan before I ever was introduced formally. Ryan has a commanding presence, a large guy with his mini-dreads sticking out like a tamer version of Coolio. He always seems to be in the middle of things, good things, and is involved in nearly every aspect of out school extra-curriculars (except for sports). Most of all, however, I knew Ryan as the kid who took the trash out at lunch. In a chaotic cafeteria where most students leave their trays behind, throw them in the trash with their garbage, or stack them in precarious towers, it is rare to see someone going out of their way to help the lunch workers. Every day, I would see Ryan dragging full garbage bins out the back door and emptying them into the large dumpsters found there, before dragging and bagging the empty trash cans back inside. Nobody really thanked him, in fact, a lot of the kids would make condescending comments to him because of his good will. So you can see why I was glad to see him come walking into my room late in the fall one afternoon.
It started off as curiosity, I think. He said hello to other students in the room, then eventually introduced himself to me. Somewhere in the midst of the pleasantries, he mentioned that he was really interested in acting but that there wasn’t really any opportunity for it around here that he knew of. Without thinking, I offered to talk to him more about his options and he agreed to come after school (his mother was a health teacher, so he was after every day anyway). That afternoon, I learned that while not a great student academically (B’s, some C’s), he has a ton of talent theatrically. He told me stories with flamboyant gestures and laughed with me through impersonations of students and staff at our school. He has a ton of charisma and great energy. I encouraged him to pursue acting in college, being a senior and starting that whole process, and he said he planned on it. So we sat down at the computer and started researching schools with good theater programs.
Over the next week or two, Ryan and I put together quite a list, contacted schools and began filling out applications. There was one in particular that he really got a good feeling about; AMDA (American Music and Dramatic Arts Academy) in New York City. We spent a lot of time on his essays, probably a week of after school sessions and more time than he claims to have ever worked on one thing at a time before, then began looking for short monologues to perform for his live audition component of the application which would take place a few months later in Nashville, TN. While I was struggling to get any of my students in class to come after school for help with work that would decide whether they passed or failed my class, Ryan came willingly every day to rehearse. I felt like a teacher for the first time, he ate up my feedback and advice to eagerly. He listened, and applied. In class, I may get students to sit and stare quietly, but it’s rare that I see anything retained. Ryan let nothing go and, while he was already a great actor, I saw his mastery of the selected monologues grow and grow. When it came time for the audition, I took him around town and made him perform impromptu at local businesses for patrons and workers alike to get a feel for acting in front of strangers.
And he nailed it; for them, and for the school audition. A few weeks later, he was accepted and elated to be heading to New York City next year. Since then, I have seen Ryan get all kinds of attention from the school and community. He instantly became popular when people learned of his post-grad plans, largely due to a wonderfully written newspaper article on him that ran multiple pages and was posted in the library and the front hall by the main office. He deserved it also, more than most. I began helping him research and apply for scholarships, several of which he received. It was incredible to see his excitement, and sometimes apprehension of course, to do what very few, if any, from his community had done before. In addition, this spring Ryan has helped backstage at a local community theater which is running a play soon that I’ll be performing in. He has not only learned very much from an incredibly knowledgeable and experienced cast and crew, but broken racial barriers by becoming involved in what is traditionally referred to as “the white theater”. I have watched his confidence blossom, and cannot wait to hear how he fares in the Northeast this fall.
So, while there were more than a few students that I allowed to slip through the cracks, I believe I was largely responsible for helping at least one student up through the rafters. If he succeeds in this pursuit, which I strongly believe he will, he can do so much for his community and those that will follow behind. It does make me feel good to know that he may not have had the courage, the vision or the motivation to reach this dream of his if I hadn’t helped him. Though I am always quick to point out that he found me, and I just answered his questions. He is a perfect example of what can be accomplished with hard work, belief in yourself and someone else to believe in you as well.
My success story, like my failure story, has a name. We’ll call this one “Ryan. It’s nice to spend some time thinking of successes from this past year, especially since there are so many negative problems to dwell on. While my successes may seem minor in comparison to my lengthy litany of failures, this one in particular I would say is rather large.
I knew of Ryan before I ever was introduced formally. Ryan has a commanding presence, a large guy with his mini-dreads sticking out like a tamer version of Coolio. He always seems to be in the middle of things, good things, and is involved in nearly every aspect of out school extra-curriculars (except for sports). Most of all, however, I knew Ryan as the kid who took the trash out at lunch. In a chaotic cafeteria where most students leave their trays behind, throw them in the trash with their garbage, or stack them in precarious towers, it is rare to see someone going out of their way to help the lunch workers. Every day, I would see Ryan dragging full garbage bins out the back door and emptying them into the large dumpsters found there, before dragging and bagging the empty trash cans back inside. Nobody really thanked him, in fact, a lot of the kids would make condescending comments to him because of his good will. So you can see why I was glad to see him come walking into my room late in the fall one afternoon.
It started off as curiosity, I think. He said hello to other students in the room, then eventually introduced himself to me. Somewhere in the midst of the pleasantries, he mentioned that he was really interested in acting but that there wasn’t really any opportunity for it around here that he knew of. Without thinking, I offered to talk to him more about his options and he agreed to come after school (his mother was a health teacher, so he was after every day anyway). That afternoon, I learned that while not a great student academically (B’s, some C’s), he has a ton of talent theatrically. He told me stories with flamboyant gestures and laughed with me through impersonations of students and staff at our school. He has a ton of charisma and great energy. I encouraged him to pursue acting in college, being a senior and starting that whole process, and he said he planned on it. So we sat down at the computer and started researching schools with good theater programs.
Over the next week or two, Ryan and I put together quite a list, contacted schools and began filling out applications. There was one in particular that he really got a good feeling about; AMDA (American Music and Dramatic Arts Academy) in New York City. We spent a lot of time on his essays, probably a week of after school sessions and more time than he claims to have ever worked on one thing at a time before, then began looking for short monologues to perform for his live audition component of the application which would take place a few months later in Nashville, TN. While I was struggling to get any of my students in class to come after school for help with work that would decide whether they passed or failed my class, Ryan came willingly every day to rehearse. I felt like a teacher for the first time, he ate up my feedback and advice to eagerly. He listened, and applied. In class, I may get students to sit and stare quietly, but it’s rare that I see anything retained. Ryan let nothing go and, while he was already a great actor, I saw his mastery of the selected monologues grow and grow. When it came time for the audition, I took him around town and made him perform impromptu at local businesses for patrons and workers alike to get a feel for acting in front of strangers.
And he nailed it; for them, and for the school audition. A few weeks later, he was accepted and elated to be heading to New York City next year. Since then, I have seen Ryan get all kinds of attention from the school and community. He instantly became popular when people learned of his post-grad plans, largely due to a wonderfully written newspaper article on him that ran multiple pages and was posted in the library and the front hall by the main office. He deserved it also, more than most. I began helping him research and apply for scholarships, several of which he received. It was incredible to see his excitement, and sometimes apprehension of course, to do what very few, if any, from his community had done before. In addition, this spring Ryan has helped backstage at a local community theater which is running a play soon that I’ll be performing in. He has not only learned very much from an incredibly knowledgeable and experienced cast and crew, but broken racial barriers by becoming involved in what is traditionally referred to as “the white theater”. I have watched his confidence blossom, and cannot wait to hear how he fares in the Northeast this fall.
So, while there were more than a few students that I allowed to slip through the cracks, I believe I was largely responsible for helping at least one student up through the rafters. If he succeeds in this pursuit, which I strongly believe he will, he can do so much for his community and those that will follow behind. It does make me feel good to know that he may not have had the courage, the vision or the motivation to reach this dream of his if I hadn’t helped him. Though I am always quick to point out that he found me, and I just answered his questions. He is a perfect example of what can be accomplished with hard work, belief in yourself and someone else to believe in you as well.
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