Teacher's Desk: Tough Kids

First week back in the classroom. Our new math teacher is fresh out of college and trained by Teach America. Our returning students aren't what you'd find at most high schools. I saw two this year that I hadn’t seen for two years. One of the young men spent the last two years incarcerated. In fact, even though he is eighteen years old, he hasn’t been to school since middle school (except for two days here two years ago) because he spent his high school years locked up. I am almost in shock with the pleasantness of the students. The first week often is filled with fights and disagreements. This year: none. My kind aforementioned thug spent a good hour with me explaining his feelings of isolation as a “blood” amongst a lot of students affiliated with “crips.” We shared our experiences, and if not for the criminal involvement of the gang, sometimes they do some solid citizen stuff, believe it or not. He also shared the differences of the two types of gangs, which honestly was news to me.

His feelings of isolation reminded me of another student at our school. He never went to a high school before because he was home-schooled. He, too, had feelings of isolation because we only have a handful of white students and being in a new school, he didn’t know anyone.

“Hmmm…..” I thought.

While speaking to my friendly thug, I asked if he would watch the other young man’s back because he, too, felt isolated and didn’t have street smarts. He agreed, but told me not to let him know.

Another new student came to class this week and I knew he took meds for a bipolar condition (many of my students do). He looked like a fierce fighter of some sort with his hair in a sumo wrestler style on top of his head, some serious weight, and a piercing look emitting from his eyes. He has to be one of the sweetest kids I’ve ever met. Again, he is someone too familiar with the juvenile justice system.

That is why I love these students so much. In any other setting, I’d be like everyone else, probably pretty nervous around these guys, but here, I get to see their humanity and value.

Val, from a previous blog, visited my today. She decided to go ahead and go to college, so she was here getting help. She continues to be androgynous and just the smiliest person ever!

This is going to be a fun and successful school year for everyone. I can feel it in my bones!

Kathleen Kullback is a licensed special educator with an MA in educational leadership and a former candidate to the State Board of Education.

Teacher's Desk: Measuring Better

The Colorado Department of Education recently unveiled a new measuring tool and made its results available to the public. Without going into a lot of mumbo jumbo, it shows three years’ growth of students, individually, as a school, and as a district. I say hurray. When I ran for the State Board of Education back in 1990, I supported the idea of a student achievement data tracking system that showed student growth so that parents and others could compare schools and school districts. Hey, along with Independence Institute, I was one of the first to call for academic transparency. I really thought then, and still do, that schools and districts that show more than incremental growth ought to be acknowledged and replicated.

This information from the new growth model should be used to target students that need more time on task, more fundamentals to build a better foundation, and stop passing students through even though they do not understand the concepts and cannot perform at grade level. If District 50’s new standard-based program succeeds, it will be the model!

We all need to re-think math. I have had the pleasure of working with many mathematics professionals to begin to understand how we can catch these kiddos up in about three years (if we have regular attendance). This next year, I will be discussing it further.

Speaking of math, I had a dear friend with a K-8 license who lost her English position at a Denver middle school. She wanted to broaden her horizons by understanding math through eighth grade, so that she could teach 3-5th grades anywhere. She was a fabulous student, and reminded me many times about what turns students who “hate math” to students they really get into it. I wasn’t ever a “hater.” Writing and science was more of my thing, but when a person can understand not only the math processes AND FACTS, but how she/he interprets mathematical learning, they become motivated. The better one becomes in a content area, the more he/she wants to learn it, and the more motivated one becomes. Mostly my students taught me this.

I hope my friend finds a new position because she is a motivated learner and because of that, knows how to motivate others! Kathleen Kullback is a licensed special educator with an MA in educational leadership and is a former candidate for the Colorado State Board of Education.

Teacher's Desk: Special Ed & Charters

There's a controversy over the enrollment disparity of special education students in charter schools vis-a-vis district schools. The Denver Post editorialized about this on June 15, based on an earlier story by their own Jeremy Meyer. He found that charter schools average 7% of student enrollment identified as special education and whereas the figure for district schools is 10%. I’ve worked in both district and charter schools and my personal experience does not match this report! Montbello High School, where I worked for 2 ½ years, had approximately 10% of its student population designated as special education and the school served as the center program for two different special education populations. There were also five of us working as mild/moderate special educators and each of us carried a case load of about thirty-five students.

Then, I worked for both KIPP College Prep, a middle school, and Academy of Urban Learning, an alternative charter high school. My percent of special education students at KIPP as a percent of enrollment was 20% and at AUL was approximately 25%. At Colorado High School Charter, I have had a high of 25% of student population identified as special education and a low of 10% of student population identified as special education students.

Many parents of special education look for schools that are highly structured and/or have small classes so that their special needs child does not fall through the cracks. That is why so many urban parents are trying to place their special education students in Denver charter schools. I also have many students not qualifying for special education, but who have significant gaps in learning and are also four to seven years behind grade level after a career in district schools from around the metropolitan area.

The problem, as I see it, is not that special education students are being turned away at charter schools, because I have seen that happen a both district and a charter school, but what do parents want for their special education students and why are the district schools not offering it. What can some charter schools do better to provide for special education students and recruit to parents of special education students?

I discovered parents want their special education students to have small classes providing more one-on-one attention. They want parents that will work with their children and them -- and communicate to them! They want their students to continue to improve both their weaknesses and strengths. They want their students to have as normal and productive life as possible and this may include college or post-secondary education. These folks really are not asking for anything that we don’t all want for our children.

The only way we can all get it right, is to provide smaller settings with quality instruction for all our students. If this means districts turn all their schools into charters -- fine, but we must also make sure that we have enough smaller school settings for the students that need them. Whether it is a charter school or a regular district school, when the school is too large, too many students fall through the cracks because the educators lose the time and ability to serve all students well. I am sure the small size of my classes and the extra help I can give to students is why so many of my students flourish.

One of the reasons that some special education students are turned away from some charters is that after the principal and special educator look at the previous IEP (Individual Education Plan), they discover the special education hours to be served on the IEP are not attainable by many schools. The accommodations and information about the student makes them appear to need center school enrollment. I am here to say---they probably do not, and may do very well with a change of settings. I have even taken cognitively disabled students that end up performing better than their IEP would indicate. All of us need to give these students a chance. Kathleen Kullback is a licensed special educator at Colorado High School Charter with an M. A. in educational leadership and is a former candidate to the State Board of Education.

Teacher's Desk: Proving Up

Talk big and you'd better prove up. After blogging recently about year-round school, I lamented to my principal that we help our students make major strides in literacy all year long, then summer comes and it all goes out the window. So my own summer then got a little more complicated, but why not? What happened was, she told me she still had library grant money, why don’t we identify students who could benefit the most and begin a summer reading program helping them earn credit for each book read. We decided to provide the books ourselves so that a variety of reading levels and interests could be matched. We ordered the books, but they weren’t in by the last day of school, so students were invited to come back to school on June 17th, join me for pizza, and select a book. I was surprised how many of the students were excited by this! When we meet, students will receive a reading log and instructions for a short book report.

Then, we’ll meet again on July 8th to either exchange books that the student began but didn’t finish or finished and is ready for another! We are hoping that their benchmark reading scores will be no lower than their ending score this past May.

Nor am I just going to hang out this summer, no sir. I’m also giving a former student cooking lessons, am visiting Taos and Kansas City, as well as, taking Mandarin Chinese lessons. Why? When I take a foreign language, I place myself in an uncomfortable, illiterate position: the same position many of my students find themselves. I use the best practices I learn from the instructor, and I hope I improve my empathy.

It will be a busy summer with the aforementioned activities and my effort at urban gardening which I’ve been doing for nearly forty years. I began my first urban vegetable garden in 1972, Queens, New York. My neighbors laughed when I planted kernels of corn in my tiny back yard. They weren’t laughing two and a half months later when I harvested the sweetest corn in New York City!

For this particular August, an educational harvest is also in prospect, benefiting both my students and their teacher.

Kathleen Kullback is a licensed special educator at Colorado High School Charter with an M.A. in educational leadership and is a former candidate to the State Board of Education.

Teacher's Desk: Degree in Three?

The soon-to-be graduates marched into the World Arena in Colorado Springs while the organist played "Pomp and Circumstance" and we parents watched proudly. It was amazing that so many degrees were conferred by the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. As usual, the most undergraduate degrees were conferred in the colleges of nursing, education, and arts and sciences. The fewest? College of Engineering, of course, and I was glad to watch my son walk across the stage with honors as one of those engineering graduates.

My son was one of the 57.3% of students who earn their degrees in four years. Valerie Strauss, writing for Washingtonpost.com, describes the trend toward three-year bachelor degrees now offered by many universities and colleges.

Rhode Island recently passed a bill in their state legislature requiring state colleges and universities to offer three-year undergraduate programs, but colleges already offering three-year degrees find that many students continue to need four or more years to graduate. Only 4.2% of college graduates do so in three years, but 38.5% of students need more than four years to complete bachelor degree programs.

In order to continue quality programming, many of the new three-year programs are requiring summer classes, preventing many students from earning income to pay for tuition and books or wonderful hands-on internship opportunities in their area of interest.

Senator Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, former leader of the United States Department of Education, is a proponent of three-year programs. He understands the difficulties families are having paying tuition, books, and dormitory costs for four years. Saving $10,000 or more and graduates getting busy in their careers a year earlier can certainly save financial stress on these families.

Purdue has done one better with a two-year bachelor’s program in their college of technology. This degree is designed for the older student needing “re-tooling” and a career change.

Three-year programs have the potential to be useful here. Governor Ritter just signed a bill that will allow motivated high school students to earn a two-year associates degree while earning a high school diploma. The two programs could fit together like a hand in a glove, allowing student to earn a graduate degree in the time span it takes many to earn their undergraduate degree.

Congratulations to all the new grads and their proud parents! Kathleen Kullback is a licensed special educator with an M.A. in educational leadership and is a former candidate for the Colorado Board of Education.