High School Students with Low Expectations

Today attendance was terrible. I fail many students because they never attend class or they miss so many of them. I marvel at the time I spend marking students absent – I think to myself, “I got my Masters degree to mark all of these students absent everyday!” I call homes and sometimes get a student to come back to class – but most of the time the calls bring no results. And all of these phone calls take time away from my students who do come and want to be involved. A large number of the kids I teach don’t seem to care about their grades – they have such low expectations for themselves. This New York Times article about the 4 year HS graduation rate gives a shocking report on how poorly so many kids are doing. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/10/nyregion/10graduation.html?ex=1297227600&en=ed78a0920e8a88d7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss.
It seems to me that many of the kids come to high school ill prepared. In fact many of my students do not write near grade level. I was helping one of my students write something for an art piece he was submitting for a contest and his writing needed a lot of work. I spoke to him about it and mentioned that I myself always struggled with writing. He confessed to having the same struggles but he told me he was relieved because he got an 85 on the English regents. I was really shocked! But he goes to class and is passing his classes. He will graduate on time. His story is perhaps more about low tesing standards. It’s the other kids that just seem determined to fail. They don’t seem to have any vision for their futures. I truelly believe that our schools are set up for failure because they are not designed to meet the needs of at least half of the students. How can the needs of those students be met? That's another question

Blogger.com and the DOE

Today the advanced computer design students looked at the blog for the second day. I had added an art image and a couple links. I told the kids that they could look at the links on their own time so I’ll see how many of them tell me they did it. Managing the blog is a little problematic at school. Some of the editing features don’t work because of the DOE filters. I have access to an administrative computer (less filters) so I did a few quick fixes on that one. On the classroom computer I couldn’t add elements to my template. I spent a bit of time on the blogger.com help page. There I learned that clearing the cache might help – it didn’t.

My Classroom Blog

I made a blog for my advanced computer design students and they looked at it for the first time today. Some of the comments included: “it’s fun!” “did you make it?” “I’m going to look at it at home tonight!” I myself am very excited about it. The learning material is so much more accessible to the students with a blog. Now I have to make blogs for my two other classes. One of my publications students was so impatient to get a blog up for our class that he made one himself. He had been visiting the classroom during the advanced computer design class and he saw me present the blog to them. His blog was pretty good but I did ask him to modify it so that it is now in his voice and not presented as an official blog for our class. He is a particularly eager student. Perhaps he can help with our publications blog after I get it started. Hopefully the DOE won’t block blogspot.com

The Need for Strong & Intelligent Leadership

When I got my NYC license to teach art back in 1999, I had no idea I would end up teaching almost exclusively on computers. I suddenly went from presenting drawing lessons to my classmates at Brooklyn College to teaching 5 high school art classes in a Macintosh computer lab. I got a position that opened at my school when the technology teacher went on Sabbatical. I have a strong background in fine art - painting and drawing are my preferred mediums. Despite the fact that the teacher that went on Sabbatical spent countless hours showing me the ins and outs of the lab during the Regents Week before he left, I was very nervous and anxious about being in control of this very complicated classroom. In fact I spent so much time figuring out how to manage the student accounts, the printers, and all the different software that I had to work a lot of extra hours to make time for lesson planning. I had to write my own curriculum because there wasn’t anything in the lab I could use. And there weren’t any teachers that I could find that were teaching computer art. There were a few brief references to possible computer art ideas in one of the art text books I used. So I started adapting traditional art projects for the computer and I made up some of my own. I felt comforted that each new group of students would find me to be a better prepared teacher because I kept creating new student handouts, units and lesson plans that were all specifically designed for the lab. But then I wondered each September and February if I would end up getting excessed – transferred to a school where I would have no use for all of my work. I had the least seniority out of everybody in my department so the fear was real. But thankfully I got lucky – I was never excessed and I never had a supervisor that I didn’t get a long with (I’m up to my 3rd); I had been told that I should expect the worst.
So how does this relate to anyone else? I think it’s crazy how a new teacher can be left alone to figure everything out without the support or guidance they should have. I think the administration should be stronger and more unified. Schools should have a clear vision that is administered by the administration. The teachers should follow that vision – not be separate agents who simply function in the same physical setting. Teachers who want to do that should run their own schools or tutoring programs. When someone has the role of leader I think it is necessary to trust that person to run things properly – that’s their job; as long as the leader puts student learning and teacher professional support first. Unfortunately there are principals and assistant principals who have no business working in a school. They don’t seem to care about kids or teachers. And there are teachers who aren’t doing anyone a favor by being teachers because they don’t care about the kids; or they’re spending so much time fighting with the administration in effort to get or maintain autonomy. These negative agents seem to so often go on unchecked and unchallenged. Corruption, mismanagement, and neglect run rampant. Having a weak central leadership in the DOE that keeps on changing everything doesn’t help! If the structure wasn’t constantly going through big upheavals – maybe more focus could be put on nurturing strong and enlightened leaders. In NYC we have a very challenging group of students with a huge diversity of needs that are not being addressed. How can we properly address these needs when we’re so distracted by the unstable structure of our educational system?
When I first started teaching I was figuring out so much on my own and I was working so hard trying to keep on top of it - I hardly slept. And so many teachers have the same experience. Who suffers? The kids! And what do many of these hard working new teachers face despite this hard work and stress? No professional support and the fear of getting transferred to a new school - this is because of weak leadership.