The GreatSchools Blog

It’s not just the words

Valle Dwight — Wed, 23 May 2012 06:00:00 -0700

By Valle Dwight, LD Contributing Writer

A high school in Texas recently recalled all of its yearbooks because there was a page that described particular special education students as being mentally retarded.

The school was tripping over itself apologizing for allowing the description and the commenters on the story are predictably decrying the PC police run amok once again. And others were genuinely confused about what the problem was.

To me, the problem had nothing to do with the words used to describe the students, and everything to do with the misguided notion of separating the special education students within the yearbook.

The school seemed to think they were doing a good thing by highlighting the students in special education. According to stories, they wanted to give them their own spotlight in the yearbook. But what they ended up doing was defining this small group by their challenges, not their abilities. They described them as “blind” or “deaf” or “mentally retarded.” Why not herald their accomplishments, which is what yearbooks usually do?

Can you imagine a photo of the football captain that had a nice bold headline saying: “He has dyslexia, terrible acne, and almost failed math.” Or a photo of the senior class president: “She has an eating disorder, wears glasses, and is a lousy driver.”

Wouldn’t that be fun?

What other group in the yearbook is segregated and highlighted based on what they can’t do? It was a mistake from the word go, and the use of “mentally retarded” was the least of it, in my opinion.

Instead of featuring students with disabilities as a separate group, how about including them in the theater club, on the wrestling team, or the Spanish Club? Then their photos would be sprinkled throughout the yearbook, as their lives would be sprinkled throughout the high school. As they should be.

The myth of the super teacher

Jessica Kelmon — Tue, 22 May 2012 06:00:00 -0700

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

Are you waiting for a super teacher to magically help your child? It's no wonder. From To Sir, with Love to Dangerous Minds, we've been fed a steady diet of brilliant, miracle-working education whisperers for decades. Inexperienced yet innovative, these young idealists take on the bland land of classroom learning and turn it into Hollywood heroics. Now, with a new generation of educators seizing the lectern, we've got aspiring super teachers appearing at a struggling, turnaround, and/or charter school near you (think Teach for America).

But it wasn't until I heard teacher Roxanna Elden demystify "the myth of the super teacher," that I realized how teachers had swallowed that notion – and were trying to live up to it. The myth of the super teacher begins early, Elden told a crowd of education reporters, reformers, researchers, and union types at a conference in Philadelphia on Friday, when they play Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All” at graduation to inspire the newest generation of teachers.

Confession of a fallen super teacher

Elden says she remembers clearly the pressure to outperform her first year in a classroom. “I had every intention of being a super teacher,” she recalls. She pushed her class and herself so hard that she lost perspective, adding piles of homework one day (against her training and better judgment) when her kids just would not sit still and be quiet. Later, she realized it was Halloween. “I ruined Halloween for a bunch of fourth graders,” she laments, a breaking point that ended with her sobbing in a Burger King parking lot for two hours. Her book, See me after class: Advice for teachers by teachers, compiles humor and practical tips for teachers; it’s her way of helping others avoid a similar meltdown.

Will all the good teachers please speak up

The myth of the super teacher, where only the elite, caped crusader can get through to kids, is a dangerous one. Recently, the search for great teaching has become a matter of national urgency – but the teacher’s voice is often absent from this conversation. That we’re losing teachers at a pretty fast clip – 40 to 50 percent leave the profession within five years – makes it all the more important for us to listen when a teacher reminds us it’s a profession (not an exercise in perfection) and the myths of extravagant kindness, empathy, wisdom, classroom management, and zero work-life balance, all wrapped into a Hollywood heroine, aren't really helping anyone.

Hey mom and dad: how’s your GPA?

Jessica Kelmon — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:51:03 -0700

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

You teach your kids to work hard in school and respect the teacher – but what if the tables were turned and that highly revered educator started grading you?

Welcome to parent report cards, a proposed pilot program at two struggling schools in Tennessee. It’s a novel idea, and I’m guessing a small part of teachers the world over consider it long overdue. In fact, it probably is.

Tennessee wants parents to grade themselves

But it’s not just an innovative school program, it’s the subject of a state bill that just passed the Tennessee State Legislature and the state’s governor is reportedly inclined to sign. If passed, parents would get a report card to evaluate themselves when they get their child’s report card. So teachers wouldn’t actually grade parents – but parents would grade themselves on how they’re supporting their children’s education at home (stuff like reviewing homework, communicating with the teacher, and attending school conferences) on an E to U (E=excellent, S=satisfactory, N=needs improvement, U=unsatisfactory) basis.

This is the state’s second major attempt to increase parental involvement in public education. Tennessee has already passed a parental contract which will go into effect next year. It allows schools to give parents contracts specifying how they should support their children's education.

Schools can’t do it alone

If it passes and succeeds, the four-year pilot report card program could be expanded to more (maybe all) schools. Both the contract and the report card programs are more about raising awareness than censuring parents – there’s no real bite. Signing the contract is voluntary and there’s no penalty for failing to uphold it. Even if parents give themselves straight U’s, such “failure” has no external repercussions.

The point, however, is important – and one the legislature is trying to drive home: when parents get involved, kids are more successful at school – with better grades, better staying power, and a better chance of attending college.

If your school sent home such a contract, would you sign it? If you had to grade yourself right now on reviewing your child’s homework each night and attending school meetings, would you get an E or U? You can tell me – I won’t judge. In fact, no one should; the point is to get us thinking.

Not such great expectations

Connie Matthiessen — Tue, 15 May 2012 03:00:00 -0700

Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

Worry is part of being a parent and it makes evolutionary sense. If cavemen and women didn't worry about predators gobbling up their infants, for example, they might let their children wander far from the safety of the family cave. If modern parents didn't worry about car accidents, they might not teach their children to buckle up.

Most of our parental worries turn out to be blessedly unfounded — the worry that our child will develop a serious illness, or connect with a pedophile on the internet, or get pregnant in high school. While worrying may not prevent these outcomes (and too much worry is sure to drive both our kids and ourselves crazy) a certain amount of parental concern helps keep us vigilant and involved.

Now that my kids are older, there's a worry I hear with increasing frequency: every parent I talk to wonders how they're going to pay for college. Even friends who are solidly middle class are concerned — not to mention those who are struggling financially.

Skyrocketing college costs and student debt

Unfortunately, this parental worry has a firm basis in reality, according to several recent articles in The New York Times. One article points out that growing numbers of kids are going deeply into debt to pay for college — total student debt has passed the $1 trillion mark — and economists fear the scope of the student debt crisis could rival the mortgage and credit crises. Many students enroll in high-priced colleges that are a stretch financially, but there have also been steady increases in tuition at state colleges and universities, putting these traditionally lower-cost institutions beyond the reach of families who've seen wages stagnate in recent years. A report by the nonprofit Education Trust, for example, found that for low income families, paying for a college education for a single child eats up 72 percent of annual income; for middle class families, college costs amount to 27 percent of annual income.

The second Times article chronicles the increase in overall college costs in recent years. Many colleges have engaged in an "arms race" of spending on new buildings and upgraded facilities to attract students. Eye-popping administrative costs are also an issue, as the article makes clear: Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee received a compensation package of $2 million this year, for example, and has reportedly billed the college for more than $550,000 in travel costs over the last two years. Meanwhile, tuition at Ohio State has gone up nearly 60 percent since 2002. The report offers some good news as well: some economists believe that college tuition costs have reached a tipping point, and that continued increases could affect enrollment. A growing number of college administrators, including the well compensated Dr. Gee, are beginning to look for other sources of funds — besides tuition hikes — to cover costs.

Good news on college costs?

There are also signs of relief from Washington. In recent speeches, for example, President Obama has talked about capping tuition hikes and college loan interest rates.

In the meantime, American parents will continue to worry about paying for college — but that could be a good thing, if it leads to positive change. And while the grown-ups fret, the kids are doing their part to shed light on the problem: across the country this graduation season, graduates are showing up at commencement ceremonies wearing inflatable balls and chains to protest the daunting cost of attending college.

Afterall, if something doesn't change our kids are the ones who are going to shoulder the worry — and the cost — when we're gone: according to a survey cited recently in the Huffington Post, college graduates today are likely to still owe more than $20,000 in loan debt by the time they're 45.

Jamie Oliver's recipe for fixing school lunches: getting us all to join the food revolution

Leslie Crawford — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:23:47 -0700

By Leslie Crawford

Where were the naked chefs when I was growing up?

There was sure no Jamie Oliver reminding grown-ups that to raise healthy kids, we need to feed them healthy food – that if made well, beans and rice made from scratch trumps a deep-fried Twinkie any day.

School lunch before the food revolution

There was certainly no Food Revolution going on in Teller Elementary's cafeteria decades ago when, faced with an untouched and flaccid ort (noun: a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal) slathered in a brown, gelatinous sauce, I launched my own "I'm-not-going-to-eat-this-slop" insurrection. After lunch, taking a page from Oliver Twist's daring move, I marched to the principal's office to ask for, not more food, but please sir, edible food.

The principal, to his credit, didn't go all Charles Dickens on me and toss me into the streets. Instead, he invited me to join a Denver Public School lunch committee made up of students who, over the course of a week, were brought into a private room during lunch and asked to try different new dishes. I remember taste testing several burritos, which meant choosing between simply bad and repulsive. In the end, my efforts – and even the laudable ones of the school district – to make food more palatable were futile ones. The food never improved while I was there. But then, change can take a long, long time.

Children's health and the obesity epidemic

Now it's 2012 and Jamie Oliver is leading a desperately needed revolution. Certainly, on his "Food Revolution" TV show, he's been preaching to the masses about the pleasure of eating good food that's also good for you and the perils of our fat-salt-and-sugar-heavy diet. (Because of the obesity epidemic, the current generation of children may have shorter life expectancies than their parents.)

The first ever Food Revolution Day is this Saturday, May 19. Oliver's call to farms is meant to wake up educators, and parents, to the fact that it's our duty to nourish kids' bodies as much as it is to feed their minds (and that by nourishing their bodies, we are also helping their brains). You can get a feast of ideas on how to be part of this Food Revolution on his site, including perhaps my favorite Tip #3, which recommends: "If you can, eat lunch at your school and find out for yourself what is on the lunch tray and what other food and drink is available during the day."

Have you ever eaten one of the lunches they serve at your child's school? Unless the school is one of the lucky few that has risen above the proverbial Salisbury steak, that might be enough to get you to join the revolution, too.

A big win in the battle against childhood obesity?

Jessica Kelmon — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:34:31 -0700

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

First, the sad news about America's childhood obesity epidemic: “Poor kids get fat for different reasons than rich kids, and they suffer from it more.”

That's the disheartening message from an LA Observed article by author Greg Critser, who’s written a handful of books about health and science. Critser argues that the biggest influence on children’s diet-related illnesses – diabetes, heart disease, hypertension – is not what they eat now, but their mother’s nutrition and health during pregnancy. In utero nutrition affects an infant’s ability to efficiently process sugars for life, Critser says. Childhood obesity begins before birth.

Equally dispiriting, it’s not that poor families lack access to healthy food. The less recognized but very acute issue is that their sources of income (everything from wages to food stamps and other forms of aid) can be so irregular. “Episodic income … ,” writes Critser “leads to an eat-as-much-as-you-can-now mentality that goes a long way to explaining why poor people are fat.” Suffering financial ups and downs makes families more likely to stretch their food dollars by buying more filling, starchy, and unhealthy foods putting kids' health, yet again, at risk.

Finally, there's soda, which Critser writes, “may also be the single most destructive element in the human diet.” From an evolutionary standpoint, he explains, we’re not equipped to process liquid calories other than breast milk. (Though this WebMD piece seems to negate his evidence, at least in part.)

I’ve written before that schools might be the wrong place to wage the war against childhood obesity, but Critser’s arguments and a promising new study have me rethinking my position. If Critser’s right about episodic income, then schools can be a more stable source of regular, nutritious meals. Soda and sugary drink bans at schools are at least a start.

On this note, the encouraging news: a new study written up in a Washington Post blog today shows healthy school nutrition rules are making a positive difference. The study shows that California’s strict school nutrition standards (with fat content restrictions and calorie limits for school foods and yes, soda bans) are having the desired effect: Californian teens are eating an average of 158 fewer calories per day than teens in other states.

“Researchers have previously estimated that, if children ate just 64 fewer calories each day, the obesity rate would fall 10 percent lower than where it stood in the mid-2000s,” writes WaPo blogger Sarah Kliff. So the 158 calorie reduction is significant – because unlike most school junk-food bans where kids end up eating the same bad foods but don’t get it from the school cafeteria or vending machine, the California state restrictions seem to be working.

If this positive trend continues, would you support California’s school nutrition standards being implemented nationwide?

The best Mother's Day gift ever

Connie Matthiessen — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:00:00 -0700

Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

I love Mother's Day, but I didn't always love it. When my kids were little, Mother's Day meant cold scrambled eggs in bed and a battered bouquet of flowers. Of course, I enjoyed the hugs and the cards covered with hearts and blobs of gluey glitter, but the rituals felt a little forced, not something we'd come up with on our own, I was always glad to see the day end.

Now that my kids are older, we've developed a ritual I actually enjoy. On Mother's Day, my kids do what I want — which usually means we spend the day at an art museum or on a hike together.

If you have teenagers, you know that these are not a teen’s preferred activities. I can occasionally persuade my kids to go hiking or to a museum on other days of the year, but they often have too much homework, or a soccer game, or plans with friends, and there's lots of negotiating and griping involved. On Mother's Day, by unspoken agreement, there are no excuses and no whining — and we always have a blast.

Telling stories

Mother's Day gives us an excuse to put our busy lives on hold to connect with each other. That's why the interviews in Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps are so powerful, because when people go into the StoryCorps recording booth to tell their stories, they open up about the key connections in their lives.

StoryCorps is a national oral history project started in 2003. The first StoryCorps recording booth was in Grand Central Station. Since then, they've popped up all around the country and more than fifty thousand people have participated. People go with a friend or a relative to the StoryCorps booth and a facilitator guides them through the interview process. All of the interviews are preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Mom, one of several StoryCorps compilations, is an eclectic collection of interviews about mothers and motherhood. A few samples:

"I feel a certain longing." Kristi Hager says of her mother, who died shortly before the interview. "It's a very animal type of longing. My enduring image is her sitting with the other mothers in the neighborhood while she watched us swimming in the pond. I just have this image of her sitting with her knees in front of her and her arms resting on her knees and her back was so tan. Right now I just think of that warm back, and I just want to put my cheek next to it. It's just visceral. Her presence there on the shore was so reassuring."

Jackie Miller tells her son Scott: "…I've seen you become such a bold, brave individual. That's something I always wanted for myself. And when I'm looking at my life now, I think, Go for it, Jackie. Go of for it! So I guess you learn from your kids."

Later, Scott tells his mother how nervous he was when he came out to her a few years earlier. She responds, "By that time, I knew — it wasn't even a question in my mind. Just as you were this wonderful little kid with all the curiosity, you were gay — that was as much a part of you as any of the other things..."

Eclipses and Necco Wafers

In another interview, Danielle Hall remembers her mother, who died of cancer. "There was going to be a lunar eclipse, so we turned off the lights, and we put our feet up on the windowsill," she recalls. "We were trying to look at the eclipse, but neither of us had our glasses, so we couldn't really see anything. The lights were off, and we were just totally giddy. Mom got out a roll of Neccos and handed them to me, and I was sniffing each one in the dark, trying to sniff the colors that she liked to eat. It wasn't the big conversations with Mom that matter, it was just being able to spend time together and be ourselves."

In the StoryCorps interviews, relationships are stripped to their essence, the highlights are crystalized in a few telling paragraphs, and we're reminded about the brevity and the weight of a single life — and the centrality of human connections. It's important to remember — not just on Mother's Day.

Let’s hear it for Mr. Dad: The rise (and struggle) of America's stay-at-home fathers

Leslie Crawford — Sun, 06 May 2012 08:05:51 -0700

By Leslie Crawford, Senior Editor

Yes, by all means we will give them their much-deserved due, bouquets, and brunch next Sunday. But a week before we pay honor to Mom, take a moment to consider the growing band of full-time caretakers who are doing what SAHMs do – and like so many SAHMs – get no small amount of grief for it.

In Salon.com's "Rise of the Dad Wars," Mary Elizabeth Williams takes a sharp, smart look at America's stay-at-home-dads (SAHDs) – in 2010, there were 154,000 of them – and finds that if they are every bit as involved and loving as their female counterparts, they duly get every bit as much criticism as stay-at-home moms (SAHMs) for 'not working.’

Stay-at-home moms aren't the only ones staying home

Indeed, while mothers of all stripes – be it working full-time at an office or working part-time from home or working as a full-time SAHM – criticize other moms, increasingly there's another face, this one with stubble, in the mom war crowd. You've seen them at the playground, and not just during the weekend. You've seen them picking up the kids at school – not only on a rare day when mom can't make it, but every day of the school week.

"A father, even a father who doesn’t go into an office, is not a babysitter," writes Williams. "He is not Mr. Mom. He is Mr. Dad."

Mr. Dad is doing the same job that's part pure joy and part relentless grind that is raising kids full-time. Getting the "What is he doing here?" raised eyebrows at the park is par for the SAHD course. Writes Williams, "... the growing numbers of men who challenge traditional gender roles on the domestic front haven’t yet wiped out a different share of deeply rooted biases."

All the same, Williams continues, while Mr. Dad may be regularly exluded from the after-drop-off mom coffee klatch, he gets the satisfaction of being so involved in raising his children. Daniel, a father of five who pens the blog Post Post Modern Day Dad “says that he hopes his kids will someday 'look back on their childhoods and appreciate that I was able to be part of their lives so much more.’”

A societal shift of more involved fathers

We've witnessed a society shift of mindset as fathers are deeply involved in their children’s lives – and want to be even more so. In a recent survey of working fathers, more than half said that if they could make it financially possible they’d consider being a stay-at-home-dad. It’s not only the SAHDs who are making such a big impact in their kids’ lives. Quality of time spent, not simply quantity, makes all the difference. A soon-to-be-published study in the journal Development and Psychology found that Dads can play a key role in helping daughters avoid risky sex.

We should be welcoming and applauding all involved parents – mother, father, whoever – because we know how important parent involvement is in a child’s life. So the next time you see a dad waiting with the other parents for the kids to come streaming and screaming out of school when the 3:00 bell rings, say “Hello” just as you would for any parent who, day after day, is in it for the long haul.

Would you borrow money for private school?

Jessica Kelmon — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:51:33 -0700

By Jessica Kelmon, Associate Editor

Last month I wrote about the student loan crisis contributing to a higher education bubble. While college and graduate school loans have been making headlines, there’s a much less talked about trend in student loans: parents borrowing money to send their kids to private school - starting in preschool.

In her Washington Post column titled “Kindergarten Loans” last week, Michelle Singletary cites a Smartmoney.com article about the rising rates of families – some with six-figure incomes – borrowing money to cover tuition way before college. The trend is disturbing because families are sacrificing financial stability to ensure a quality education (which, ideally, would be free if they felt their children’s needs could be met at public school), but not surprising, given that many families are still recovering (and hurting) from the recession but unwilling to sacrifice their children’s education and future. So perhaps families decide to borrow for a year or two – or four – just till things get a little easier. Sounds reasonable enough.

But there’s another risk to consider, as the New York Times reported this week: once you’ve committed to private school, you’re on the hook for tuition – even if your financial circumstances change. As Jenny Anderson reported, at least five tony private schools in Manhattan have sued families for tuition even if, for example, the parents withdrew their kids before school started, or have been an active part of the school’s community for years, or if the school could still fill that child’s spot.

Since 2008, I’ve read no end of blogs, comments, and community posts about borrowing to make ends meet – some sentiments that stood out spoke of the preschool years being particularly expensive, pay cuts being temporary, and college being a necessity (not a luxury) – and many made compelling arguments for borrowing shrewdly in the name of education. I, too, have borrowed in the name of education, and full disclosure: despite the fact that I find the trend disturbing, I think a stimulating, social, and positive early learning environment in preschool is valuable for kids and if need be, I’ll borrow to pay for preschool, too.

My question for you, GreatSchools parents who value education, is this: Would you borrow for private school?

Shut up and eat?

Connie Matthiessen — Tue, 01 May 2012 03:00:00 -0700

Connie Matthiessen, Associate Editor

Most nights, my kids and I sit down for dinner together. Over the years I've tried various schemes to organize our dinner conversations. I do it to ground us a little, because we're all arriving at the table from our separate galaxies — school, work, soccer practice, art class, after-school job, homework — and dinner is our chance to connect. But they're teenagers: they're busy, there's homework to do, and if I'm not careful, we all touch down at the table briefly, scarf down a little food, and take flight again. If the conversation is good, though, we all linger a little longer, savoring our meal and our time together.

So I was interested in a recent New York Times article describing how different families approach dinnertime conversation. Members of the Kennedy clan, for example, were expected to come to the table prepared to discuss current events, and, as a child, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was, too. (Emanuel describes these dinner debates with his parents and brothers as "gladiatorial.")

Amy Chua, the ever-ambitious "Tiger Mother," introduced moral dilemmas for discussion at mealtimes, so the conversation wouldn't descend into idle chit chat. "I felt like, let’s not just gossip about stupid stuff,” Ms. Chua told the Times. “I wanted them to be more cultured and have deeper thoughts."

Dinner at the White House

It turns out even the President has to use extraordinary measures to get his tweens talking: at family dinners at the White House, everyone takes turns discussing a high point and a low point of his or her day.

I've tried this and other conversation starters — and sometimes they work, but often they don't. Like so many aspects of parenting, I've found that the unscripted moments turn out the best. Like the night the kids wanted me to read aloud from Treasure Island, and we left the table only to migrate to more comfortable chairs in the living room. Or the time my daughter was talking about a school assignment on atheism, which somehow evolved into a discussion about religion, the Holocaust, and the big bang theory. Or the dinners we've spent playing "Would you rather…?" as in, "Would you rather be attacked by a shark or a lion?" or, "Would you rather eat a slug or a spider?" or, "Would you rather go to school all summer or go to school every weekend and have half the year off?" — which has no particular intellectual or cultural merit but on occasion has kept us at the table long after the food was gone.

Remember to listen

When it comes to dinner conversation, I don't think planning ahead is a bad idea, but be prepared to scrap your plans at a moment's notice if the discussion heads off in a different direction — or stalls altogether. Some nights your kids will talk about what they learned in science class or about slavery before the Civil War, and other nights they're going to be silly, telling jokes and even — gasp — gossiping about stupid stuff. Some nights they may want to just be quiet and eat. As psychologist Sherry Turkle, who calls herself "a partisan for conversation," advises: "…we need to remember — in between texts and e-mails and Facebook posts — to listen to one another, even to the boring bits, because it is often in unedited moments, moments in which we hesitate and stutter and go silent, that we reveal ourselves to one another."

So don’t worry if your mealtime chats aren't always deep or scintillating (read a defense of ordinary dinner conversation), and take comfort in the many social, emotional, and academic benefits of sharing family meals. And let me know what constitutes engaging, stay-at-the-table dinnertime discussions at your house.