Linking Cultures, Building Better Schools
TV and Kids: Not Always A Good Mix
Teachers as Actors at the Head of the Class
Members Behind Works4Me Work Overtime for You
NEA Innovators | Trends

Learning: Innovators
Linking Cultures, Building Better Schools

In Philadelphia, an educator helps Asian American kids forge connections and find themselves.

Realizing the need for an “activist pan-Asian group that could address social justice issues,” educator-activist Debbi Wei in 1985 co-founded Asian Americans United.

Back then, most Asian organizations in her Philadelphia area were identified by country or focused on the needs of either recent arrivals or long-term residents, remembers Wei, a curriculum specialist in Asian Pacific American studies for the Philadelphia city schools.

“We wanted to link across ethnicity,” says Wei, “and to help the most disenfranchised.”

When Asian Americans United started, Wei, who is Chinese American, was an English-as-a-second-language teacher organizing in the neighborhood where she lived and worked.

“I felt committed to my kids and their families,” Wei says. “I see my role as an educator holistically. In Asia, teachers are viewed as a second parent, but that respect comes with responsibility.”

In 1986, Wei’s fledgling group began addressing student issues. Involving students was also a good way to organize the Asian community across disparate cultures and languages.

“The young people learning English had common denominators––a Vietnamese kid, a Chinese kid, and a Lao kid could all speak English, and they were all growing up here and understood racism,” Wei recalls. “From the start, the youth wanted their home language respected at their schools and to see themselves in the curriculum.”

Impact:
In the mid-1980s, Asian Americans United filed a class action lawsuit charging that Asians in the area weren’t getting an equitable education, because bilingual education wasn’t offered.

The case eventually resulted in the creation of “sheltered” ESL classes, where ESL students could take all their subjects together. The outcome, to Wei, was not ideal, but the new arrangement did help students speaking little to no English who couldn’t keep up in the regular classroom.

After the case, Asian Americans United continued to fight for bilingual ed, and, two years ago, the district finally started a small Asian bilingual program in two languages.

Teenagers belonging to Asian Americans United’s Community Youth Leadership Project currently mentor younger kids and help organize community projects. With their help, the group recently won bus transportation to a bilingual school serving children in Chinatown.

For More:
Write to Asian Americans United, 913 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107, contact 215/925-1538, or send E-mail to aaunited@critpath.org.

TV and Kids: Not Always A Good Mix

Innovator: Tom Robinson

Job:
Assistant professor of pediatrics and medicine at Stanford University

Bright Idea:
In a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Robinson found that American children are getting fatter because they spend too much time watching TV, playing video games, and engaging in other sedentary activities.

The link between obesity and children’s viewing habits may seem obvious, but other studies previously conducted on the topic had found only a weak relationship, Robinson notes.

Robinson’s study took a novel approach. He sought to change student viewing habits before measuring their weight. He also developed an 18-lesson curriculum giving students a major role in determining their own TV watching.

The study started with third and fourth graders at two San Jose elementary schools monitoring their TV viewing for a week. The students were then challenged to go 10 days without any TV at all.

About two-thirds succeeded. For the next six months, teachers collected weekly SMART (Student Media Awareness to Reduce Television) slips, which indicated how closely students came to meeting a personal budget of daily TV watching.

Six months later, Robinson found reduced weight gain among these students, compared to a control group at a school with similar demographics.

Impact:
The teachers in this study had a big impact on their kids’ TV viewing and, as a result, their health, says Robinson, “a bigger impact than I have as a single pediatrician.”

Robinson hopes to have both school and parent versions of the curriculum available for distribution by next fall.

For more:
Contact Robinson at trobinson@scrdp.stanford.edu. To read his study, visit http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v282n16/full/joc90434.html.

Teachers as Actors at the Head of the Class

For almost 20 years Dr. Morris U. Burns, professor of theater at Colorado State University, has given workshops across the country with his colleague Dr. Porter Wood, helping teachers explore the connection between acting and teaching. In 1992, Burns and Wood co-wrote Teacher as Actor.

What’s the initial reaction of teachers to your “acting” workshops?
There’s an element of fear, but teachers like it once they realize we’re not trying to turn them into actors. We’re just helping them expand the skills they already have. After all, teachers are already involved in public performance.

Give an example of an acting technique that could work in the classroom?
First, develop an awareness of how you can project feeling to your audience. The number one feeling teachers need to project is enthusiasm. It can be as simple as focusing on how you hand out papers or use a pointer. For an actor, nothing’s done physically that’s not important. Even simple actions can communicate boredom or enthusiasm.

It’s not uncommon for teachers to get bored. It happens to actors who play the same role repeatedly. Try this technique. Ask yourself, if I were excited about doing this, what would I do? Recall a time when you were excited and draw on those feelings.

How can thinking like an actor impact discipline, learning?
Just as actors reserve part of their consciousness to observe the audience, teachers need to be aware of student reactions.

If kids lose focus, take time out for exercises. Before class, rearrange physical space, putting desks in a circle to create more openness and energy. If you lecture in front of the class, try exploring students’ physical space. At different times of day, change your normal ritual to grab the students’ attention.

What about feedback?
Some actors develop a core of other actors who watch performances and give feedback. As teachers, we’re pretty protective of ourselves. It would be valuable to develop, as a group, a way to guide each other and give feedback.

For More:
E-mail Morris Burns at mburns@vines.colostate.edu to order Teacher as Actor ($16.95) or to get information on his acting workshops.

Members Behind Works 4Me Work Overtime for You

Innovator: Susie Olesen

Job:
Special education teacher and curriculum director at Greenfield Elementary and High Schools, Greenfield, Iowa

Bright Idea:
Three years ago, Susie Olesen brought her passion for networking with other teachers to the Internet. That’s when NEA created Works4Me, a free weekly E-mail that features practical teaching tips. Olesen, a classroom veteran, volunteered to help launch the program.

“Three of us got started giving tips ourselves and asking for suggestions from friends,” she recalls.

The volunteers would then edit the tips into the weekly Works4Me E-mails. As word spread about the weekly E-mails, more and more teachers began signing up to receive Works4Me, and the wider audience started generating more and more tips. Works4Me subscribers are now contributing as many as 40 tips in a single week.

All the tips circulated through the Works4Me E-mail list are also available at the NEA Web site. The Works4Me area offers tips on topics ranging from teaching techniques to managing your classroom.

Tips come from teachers who’ve tested the ideas in their classrooms, says Olesen, who helps determine site content. Those educators who want to have in-depth discussions about topics––ranging from Shakespeare to guided reading––can join “threaded” discussion groups.

“Teachers often are isolated and need to feel connected with other teachers and their ideas,” says Olesen. “Works4Me provides that opportunity.”

Impact:
When it started in 1997, Works4Me had about 20 subscribers to its E-mail list. At last count the number had grown to 23,759. One recent tip featured on the Works4Me Web site was downloaded approximately 10,000 times.

“The power of teachers being connected with each other is not to be diminished,” Olesen says. “Together we have far more ideas than apart.”

For More:
Visit www.nea.org/helpfrom/growing/works4me/index.html.

If the Teacher Education Initiative (TEI) had to be summed up in one word, it would be “collaboration,” says NEA’s Sylvia Seidel, who directs the program.

Now in its fifth year, TEI is devoted to transforming teacher education through partnerships among schools, universities, the Association, and its affiliates.

The initiative takes the best practices from current research and tests them in professional development schools (PDSs). “PDSs provide a reality-based training experience for teachers-to-be and rich [research] opportunities for educational professionals,” says Seidel.

For a copy of Teaching to Teach: New Partnerships in Teacher Education ($16.95, Item #2083-9-00-F), a new NEA book based on TEI findings, call 800/229-4200 or visit www.nea.org/books.

When it comes to getting students new to speaking English proficient in the language, most politicians and policy wonks agree that three years is sufficient, according to a recent article in Education Week.

Supporters of the time frame include the Clinton administration, House Democrats and Republicans, and most state officials with a position on the issue.

But education researchers say it takes four to six years to become proficient and called the three-year mark "arbitrary" and unproven.