Friday April 08, 2005

The challenge of being a teacher

My daughter is a second year teacher with the Teach for America program. She teaches elementary school in the Alum Rock School District She has 34 students in her class. Two of them are at grade level and 28 of them are 2 to 3 years below grade level. 100% of them are non native English speakers who for the most part do not speak English at home. Two of her students are new comers to this country who, when they joined her class, spoke virtually no English. One of the reasons Allison joined TFA was to find out first hand why things are so bad in so many low income class rooms in this country.

She tells me that the problem has a multitude of root causes. I guess that is not surprising. Her students start school with so much less than students in the elementary school that Allison went to just 20 miles from her current school. They often come with little or no English skills. Kindergartners don't know how to open a book and don't know the alphabet. Children have to be taught to read left to right. The language spoken on the playground is not English. Most students only hear English from their teachers. They have no other English language role models. The parents can't communicate with the school because of the language issues.

The teachers do everything at Allison's school. In the elementary school that Allison went to as a child there were a lot of parent volunteers. Many students at that school had a stay at home parent. These parents did everything from aiding in the classroom to bringing in food for class room celebrations. At Allison's current school many of the parents work more than one job and the teachers do it all in the classroom. There are a lot of amazing teachers in her district who work very hard. They have an enormous challenge.

There are lots more stories. Stories of the gangs, the students with relatives in prison, the students who think that America doesn't allow immigrants to get driver's licenses, the student who babysits for her siblings after school and so they all often hang out in Allison's classroom, the parent who often brings Allison dinner, the teacher who has taught at the school for over 20 yaers and has been a wonderfully effective coach for beginning teachers and on and on.

Allison is coaching two teams from her school for the Tech Challenge competition at the San Jose Tech Museum. This morning she did a presentation to the board of the Tech Museum about her experience leading a team from her school. I went to the competition last year. It was clear that pretty much all the other teams were from affluent schools with lots of parental involvement. It was a great experience for her kids.

Allison is doing the Accelerated Reader program from Renaissance Learning in her class room. She likes the program. The kids read books and then take a quiz on the computer. Last quarter she had three kids reach their goals. This quarter, which ends today, she had 15 kids reach their goal. She is deciding what reward to give these kids. She is thinking about $15-$20 gift certificates to Hicklebees or or Borders She may even take the kids to the store to make their purchases.

The big question is how to pay for the gift certificates. One idea she and her room mates were discussing was to use donorchoose.com I had never heard of it before last night and then I saw an article about it in the Wall Street Journal this morning. It is a really great program that matches proposals submitted by teachers with people who want to help. Allison hasn't used it before but her room mates who are also teachers have. They say it is great.

Listening to Allison's stories over the last two years has been enlightening and heartbreaking. I wish there was a way to end this posting with a summation of the problem and the solution. But there isn't.