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Learning:
Every student teacher could use a shoulder to lean on, a personable source of information to answer questions and address concerns. Kerri Gawlik, president of the Illinois Education Association Student Program, has had that kind of great support over the last year in Keith Hauge, a 38-year classroom veteran and now an NEA-Retired member. The two are part of a new IEA program that pairs hundreds of student teachers with mentors who are retired members. "It's been wonderful," the 21-year-old Gawlik says of her relationship with Hauge. "Keith helps explain little things my teachers don't, so I'll be better prepared for the classroom. He gives all the free advice I can ask for." The student/retired mentor program is the brainchild of Tina Nicpan, former state student Association chair, who saw an opportunity to tap into the vast wealth of practical knowledge of IEA's active retirees. "I wanted--needed, really--to supplement what my professors were teaching in the lecture hall," says Nicpan. "Then it came to me: Who better to both bridge that gap and offer students lessons in reality than recently retired teachers?" Nicpan took her idea to IEA-Retired and received immediate support. After both groups secured grants, the students and retirees paired up in teams. Today, more than 1,300 student members work with retired mentors on a weekly basis through phone calls, E-mail, and in person. Pairs remain together until the student graduates. Gawlick and Hauge are typical of the helpful, caring relationships that have evolved. A student at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, Gawlik hopes to become a math teacher. Hauge, who's 76 and taught drafting and woodworking, serves as vice-chair of IEA's Retired Program. "I've called him at late hours when I have a paper to do and no idea where I'm going with it," says Gawlik. "Or, depending on the kind of day I had, I can vent or gloat." Gawlick also says she appreciates the opportunity to moan and complain, things she'd never do with her supervising teacher. Mentor and mentee have a high level of trust, and their conversations are held strictly between them. Currently, Gawlik is doing the last of her "clinicals," during which she observes an eighth grade teacher in action. Combining the clinicals with the mentoring, Gawlik believes, gives her a much better chance of being successful when she takes over her own class. For his part, Hauge says, "I give her options, two or three different things to try. I provide insights on what might work and what might not." They talk about everything from invidualized education programs, to getting along with colleagues, to dealing with school boards. They don't talk about things Gawlik covers in her education classes, and that's just fine with her. "What's in the book is entirely different than learning from what people have actually lived," she says. Adds Hauge: "We go out of our way to stay hands-off the subject matter. She has professors to help her with that stuff. It's the 'side effects' of teaching that we work on. It's my job to counsel the whole person." How are mentors paired? Living relatively close together can help. Subject matter isn't so important, but grade level may be. A mentee who definitely wants to teach elementary probably would not be paired with a mentor who taught only high school. The two also should have similar computer skills. The program benefits both sides, Hauge notes. "This is a form of volunteering, butbetter, because we can relate to it more closely," he says. "Also, it's fun. Students are so much better prepared than when I graduated in 1949. The courses these kids take are just amazing. This program helps me stay young and keeps my mind going." Gawlik has no plans to discontinue the relationship after she finishes school. "Keith is going to be at my graduation and my wedding, and we'll stay in touch until it's not possible anymore." --Tom Nordby For more: visit www.ieanea.org/iear/srmentor.html Dilemma During the course of a school year, both good and bad news happens. We must be prepared to deal with both as gracefully and intelligently as possible. Here are a few tips for dealing with media: Don't wait for them to come to you. Call, or write them and ask them to visit your school. Invite them to lunch in the cafeteria. Think of projects you can do together. Hold a writing, drawing, or photo contest sponsored by the newspaper. Field trips to newspaper plants or broadcast media offer a multitude of opportunities for close encounters. Prepare a press release about a special activity or display at your school. Make sure to include the name and all contact information of the person in charge of the project, whatever it is. Be prepared for the worst. The day everything breaks loose is the day your relationship with the media becomes more valuable than gold. When you hear the voice on the other end of the line say, "Before we print these allegations, we'd like to run them by you," you'll be grateful you took time to build bridges with the media. Gwen "Lisa" Kaneshiro When I asked Julie Martin, managing editor of the Asheville-Citizen Times newspaper, this question, here's what she had to say. You can increase print coverage of school news by making it easier for reporters to talk to teachers and staff. Designate a school contact person to maintain open lines of communication between school personnel and reporters. Often reporters are "put off" by attitudes of teachers and staff who don't want to talk about a topic. Inviting reporters to a public relations staff development at the school would help break negative attitudes and help administrators and teachers feel more comfortable in talking to reporters about school news. Carol Fabrey Getting publicity for the good news in schools is easy for us because teachers and students do the reporting in this rural county. Our media consists of one weekly newspaper and one radio station. Both have welcomed news items from our schools. Teachers and students submit articles and photos for publication, sometimes via E-mail. High school students produce a weekly news show. Both forms of media have showcased accomplishments of individual students and teachers, as well as the activities of classes and student organizations. The key has been for us to take the initiative and do some of the reporting work. It also helps to invite the media to attend special events. Mary Sue Burns Our district has a publicity committee (one representative each from eight schools) responsible for obtaining positive items and interesting events about our schools. As our school's representative, I send "news flashes" to my list of local media. If a reporter or photographer can't attend, I send a story and photos to print. Remember, the media doesn't know what we're doing unless we tell them. Sophia Ramdass Getting publicity takes time. But a fax or E-mail isn't enough. The personal touch is necessary. It's essential to follow up with a phone call. Politely ask if the reporter received the fax or E-mail and if the paper might send a reporter or photographer to your event. Your chances of gaining coverage increase if you send the initial request up to two or three weeks early and then follow-up. If your request is denied, ask to send a photograph and a short paragraph about the event once it's taken place. Should the item run in the paper, be sure to call or E-mail to thank the editor. Hope Blecher Sass Got an Answer?How do you keep students from losing ground over the summer? E-mail your answer to dilemma2@neatoday.nea.org. Or send by regular mail, or fax to 202/822-7206. Please include your name, city, state, and job title. Published respondents will receive an NEA Today mug! Idea Exchange A Musical Heads Up I use large flash cards so children can see them from the back of the room, and I use identifying songs or quarter, half, or whole notes with young students. The game is fun for inclusion students because you can give an easy card or play a song you are sure a child will know. That way, everyone's successful. Students can also play this game by themselves while you are helping another student individually. Garnet Tremble A Yummy Lesson Parents provide the child with the recipe and, when possible, actually make it together. The student writes out the steps to making the dish in paragraph form and explains why it is a favorite. The student also includes any memories associated with the dish in the story. We publish our recipes and stories in a book and give it to parents during the holidays. David Grider The Power of Reading Debora Davis Operation Reading Rescue
Low test scores confirmed what teachers already knew--something had to be done to rescue Somerset's struggling readers. Reading scores in the close-knit Eastern Shore district had remained flat while other Maryland districts had shown improvement since 1993, the year state accountability testing began. "Across the board, very few of our students were reading at grade level," says Patti Monk, a fifth grade teacher at Marion Sarah Peyton School. "When we tested, we realized we really had a problem in reading." Teachers diagnosed the problem in a variety of ways--from a reading series that had gotten away from reading awareness and basal series techniques to an influx of new teachers who'd only been trained in whole language. "Teachers were saying that students weren't reading as they had before and that comprehension was dropping," says Whittington Primary first grade teacher April Guard. And because all five elementary schools in the district were using the same curriculum, they were experiencing the same difficulties. Three years ago, Superindent Michael Thomas took the first step to making a change. With the support of district educators and the school board, Thomas brought in a private reading consultant. Working together over the next two years, Somerset County teachers and administrators helped devise a comprehensive plan to rescue the district's young readers. Their efforts paid off fairly quickly. In September 1999, 90 percent of the district's fifth graders read below grade level. By November 2000, that number had plummeted to only 5 percent. And scores were comparable in the lower grades, with a near 90 percent of third graders in 2000 reading right on target. "Once we started the intervention program in the spring of 1999 we saw a tremendous development in the children," says Viola Bivins, a second grade teacher at Whittington. This school, with 360 pre-K through second graders, was one of two pilot sites. For three months, reading consul-tant Peter Dewitz--a former elementary and higher ed teacher--observed classes, interviewed staff, and reviewed curriculum. Somerset's reading crisis, he concluded, was more a problem of a poorly designed system than poor instruction. The schools had a weak program for teaching basic phonemic awareness. Teachers were getting mixed messages about right reading methods, and they tended to teach in large groups. Kids read texts assigned by grade instead of reading ability because of publisher recommendations. And, says Dewitz, the schools had no assessment system for tracking results. The research-based intervention plan that resulted is a hybrid of reading recovery and phonics. Change took place at every level. How staff was apportioned was addressed early on. "We added a reading specialist in each elementary school," says Monk, whose school has about 250 third through fifth graders. "Before that, we didn't even have one for the entire county." Another big change was increasing reading instruction to at least 120 minutes a day in first and second grade. In a typical class of 24 students, half attend a reading lab for 45 minutes while the others remain in class with a teacher, a reading specialist, and a special education teacher. Working in groups as small as three or four students, grouped by reading level, teachers focus on word attack skills, fluency, and accurary. Meanwhile reading lab students engage in reading enrichment activities aimed at building vocabulary and listening and comprehension skills. "We read anthology books, write, learn about authors, play phonics and word games, and do lots of hands-on activities," says Guard. Training was also revamped. In the summer of 1999, for two weeks, 120 teachers, administrators, and principals taught a small group of reading camp students for 90 minutes a day to apply techniques they learned in morning sessions. Even the superintendent took part. In the second year, teachers taught each other through specialized seminars. There is ongoing training by grade level once a month and periodic in-service training during and after-school. Cautiously optimistic at first, teachers changed attitudes quickly when kids started making progress. Kids were tested four times a year, and when teachers saw their kids jump up a grade level, the excitement really began. "It was like a light bulb came on," says Guard. "Before the program, we never got that light bulb." Bivins will retire at the end of this school year. But she adds: "I'd want to come back just for reading intervention." --Michelle Y. Green For more: Contact Guard at 410/968-0747 or E-mail Pdewitz@cstone.net. How do you get students to complete their homework? We have an active business/education partnership. To stress the importance of meeting deadlines, the business community sponsors pizza luncheons for students in grades 4 through 6 who have turned in every assignment for an entire quarter. You should see the faces of the kids who didn't make the luncheon when the pizza deliveryman comes. At the end of the year, all fifth and sixth graders who turned in every assignment for the entire year get treated to a special breakfast emceed by a local TV personality. Nancy Everson During preschool conferences we introduce "Team Day" to parents and students. At the end of every Friday, we take students who have completed their homework and maintained appropriate behavior during the week outside for 20-30 minutes. In bad weather, we use the gym or bring in board games. Usually only one teacher has to stay with students remaining inside. When students catch on that this is a privilege they control, they really work so they can go out for "Team Day." It's also wonderful to share in the accomplishments of students who stayed in before when they get to go out the next week. Tawana Seets As students do warm-up exercises and write the day's objectives, I check homework by walking around the room. If they haven't completed the homework at all, they sign the "I did not do my homework" list and check off the "did not do" column. If the homework is not completely finished or work is not shown, they check off the "incomplete" column. This has made students accountable and created a positive peer pressure to stay off the list. This system also gives me supporting paperwork for the homework portion of their grade. "No homeworks" have dropped from about 40 percent in the beginning of the year to about 20 percent. Mary Anne Pratta I assign two levels of homework--practice assignments (PAs) and graded assignments (4Gs). The 4G is due the day after we've gone over the PA. True to form, few do the PA, and almost all complain about the 4G, insisting it's unfair for me to actually grade homework for accuracy and procedure. Most do the 4Gs, however, and performance and grades have both improved significantly. Katherine Harris Got an Answer?How do you deal with a student who has poor hygiene? E-mail your answer to dilemma2@neatoday.nea.org. Or send by regular mail, or fax to 202/822-7206. Please include your name, city, state, and job title. Published respondents will receive an NEA Today mug! How I Did It
A bulletin board match game tests viewers' skill in identifying famous faces of the century. What do Amelia Earhart, Adolf Hitler, Marie Curie, and Martin Luther King, Jr., all have in common? They all had their faces posted on our "100 Famous Faces from the 1900s" library display at Middletown High School South. Library assistants and volunteers helped set up 12 six-foot art panels featuring photos of influential people from the 1900s. Due to the debate over when the new century actually began, we decided to honor individuals who lived, but were not necessarily born in the 1900s; who had an influence on the world; and who died before December 31, 1999. We solicited suggestions of which individuals to include from faculty, students, and family members. In making the final selection, we took care to balance the photos in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and various fields of endeavor, such as arts, sports, and politics. Once completed, we conducted a contest to see how well people could identify our bulletin board celebrities. Each participant was given a sheet with an alphabetical listing of the 100 figures on display with a brief, written "clue" about each person. The contest challenged viewers to match the correct image with the correct name. Several hundred students and adults participated, and winners received prizes donated by the Parent Faculty Association and local businesses. The project was a great way to incorporate history, current events, research, and technology. But it also was a fun, informative way for Middletown High School to put its best face forward. For more information, contact Ceil Freda at 732/706-6111, ext. 2146. |
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Student
teacher Kerri Gawlik depends on the personal support and practical knowlege
of mentor/retiree Keith Hauge.
Intensive
instruction in small groups was a key to helping struggling readers,
says first grade teacher April Guard.
Ceil
Freda
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