New Diploma Option Possible in Louisiana

Louisiana state legislators are working to pass a bill that will establish an alternative diploma option for Louisiana high school students. Currently, Louisiana suffers from a dropout rate of over 50%. The hope with the new bill is that students who are at risk of dropping out will stay in school in order to learn a trade (i.e. welding, car repair, carpentry), thereby graduating from high school with a modified diploma and a marketable skill.

According to The Advertiser, State Superintendent Paul Pastorek opposes this bill. While the article does not detail his objections, it does state that he—and other opponents—point to the fact that progress has been made in lowering the state's dropout rate. My argument to these opponents, however, deals with the level of marketability these students possess upon graduation.

Teaching twelfth graders in a high needs school, I see firsthand the number of students who manage to squeeze out a passing GPA and graduate, but who have not earned high enough marks to enter college. What good, at that point, are their traditional diplomas? They are still relegated to menial work, low income, no health care, and no prospects of anything better. Yes, they can enter a trade school, but with no funds to pay for these schools, they then become strapped down to student loans. So why not give them the opportunity to learn a trade while they are in public school, still learning the necessary academic skills they need, and not financing a tuition they must face repaying later?

Aside from this group of struggling students, I also work with young people (regular and special education) who are so overwhelmed by their academic deficits that the see no other option than dropping out. If they had the option of staying in school and learning a trade, so many more of these students would find success, both in and after school. How could that be a bad thing? How could that be something, especially someone in education, would oppose?

Society is changing more rapidly than anyone could have prepared for or predicted. Our state is one that values its sense of tradition and its resilience to being infected by a faster, modern societal pace. If, however, Louisiana is going to rise from the bottom of the rankings, we have to do something untraditional, out of the box, and out of our comfort zones. We have to do everything in our power not to fail the children of our state.

Listen up, Secretary Duncan!

Recently, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan embarked on a listening tour of 15 states, hoping to gain insight from educators, students, and parents regarding education in America. In an attempt to reach those who cannot attend one of his meetings, he has launched a blog where he will post various questions aimed at gathering insight into possible solutions for our failing educational system.

His first question: “Many states in America are independently considering adopting internationally-benchmarked, college and career-ready standards. Is raising standards a good idea? How should we go about it?”

My response: Yes, we need to raise standards—studies prove that if you raise expectations of students, the students will meet those expectations. My concern, however, is the creation of a national criterion for what the teaching of these standards should look like. My state has a state-wide comprehensive curriculum that each district then has the authority to edit and manipulate, so that it really is no longer a state-wide curriculum.

I teach the standards and grade level expectations as addressed in the curriculum—among the plethora of other things I must teach in my classroom each day that have nothing to do with British literature—however, many my counterparts across the district, who supposedly teach the same curriculum I do, have a more lax view of what those standards and GLEs should look like when they are met. They expect the minimum from their students, and they get the minimum.

So, what good do national standards do us if there is no national standard for teaching them? We have teachers in our district who are blatantly racists, sexist, incompetent, and inept, but there is no way to get them out of our classrooms. So each year, they are given new groups of low-income struggling students whom they give the least amount possible in terms of an education.

How do we change it? Hold me and my fellow teachers to higher standards. Create a way to asses us. Make it easier to remove those of us who are ineffective or even counter-effective. Require us to have high, uniform expectations of each and every student we teach. Enforce the laws and guidelines for ESS accommodations to ensure that we are providing those needed accommodations. Make federal monies available so that we have the resources needed to help these children who have no other way to access these resources.

Hold us all to higher standards, Mr. Duncan. Please.

Book Trails

I'm on spring break, and I've spent a great deal of my time wondering about next fall. I'm one who constantly changes what I teach and how I teach it, hoping to find a formula that works for a given set of students. My newest discovery is Digital Booktalk.

A digital booktalk works on the same premise as a movie trailer, but involves…well…books. Some make them by using video recorders to act out scenes from the book. Because my school does not have a video recorder, I decided to make a demo using PhotoStory 3 (free software you can download) and music from FreePlay Music (a site that "offers free network synchronization"). After creating the demo, I showed it to my current students who were excited and eager to create their own. My plan for an end-of-year project is for my students to create digital booktalks for their favorite Accelerated Reader books they've read this year. We will then catalog them on the school's server and use them next year as peer-to-peer suggestions for reading.

If you happen to try one, please share it with me! I'd love to see what you and/or your students come up with!

Thank you, Mr. Collins

...for helping me free the poem that was for so long strapped in the chair of Institutional Education.

Asking my students to read a poem with me for the first time is always a funny experience. The idea that a poem can strike such fear deep into the hearts of seemingly dauntless teenagers is remarkable. My first year of teaching, I wasn't sure how to combat that fear. When I asked them their ideas or thoughts on the poem, they struggled to become mind readers, wishing so badly that they could crack the lock on my skull, sneak into my vault of knowledge, and pilfer the answers they thought I wanted.

I knew that I, too, had been unable to read my teachers' minds; and I was not able to break free of the fear of poetry until I was in college. But I wasn't sure what had clicked for me, what had made me get that I could interpret poetry for myself, that I could bring to each poem I read my own experiences, beliefs, and ideas. If I didn't know how it happened for me, how was I suppose to teach it to my students?

Then, I was introduced to you, Mr. Collins. I read Introduction to Poetry and knew that it was the missing link, the Rosetta Stone I needed to do my job well. And I was right. My students truly understood what the poem was trying to tell them, what I had been trying to tell them for the longest. The poem became that color slide-bee hive-mouse-light switch-waterskiing blade they needed to slice through the ropes they used to bind the poem. They dropped their hoses; they began to understand.