Blind Side Tomatoes - Providing Student Support

One of my tomato plants has a problem.  It's a good problem to have - it's growing too big.  I put a "cage" approximately two feet in diameter made out of fencing wire around each of my tomato plants.  The cage provides support for the plants as they grow larger and begin bearing fruit.  The plant in question has already produced two tomatoes weighing one pound each.  On average, its fruit weighs about ten ounces.  The problem for this plant is its branches have grown over the top of the cage and continue to get longer.  Right now it's not a problem.  In a couple of weeks when that branch has anywhere from two to five pounds of beautiful orange-red tomato flesh hanging from it, those branches will be drooping over the edge, possibly breaking.  I'm trying to figure out now how I'm going to provide support for the plant.

A few weeks ago I finished reading The Blind Side: Evolution of the Game by Michael Lewis.  The movie was great, but it doesn't come close to conveying how much support the Tuoys provided for Michael Oher.  If you don't know the basis of the movie and its true story, click here for a synopsis.  In the book, Leigh Anne Tuoy said her goal was to provide as much support for Michael as possible so that he, a gifted young black athlete from the worst part of Memphis and with virtually no education, could navigate and succeed in the academic AND white world of privilege.  Forget for a moment, if you can, that all of this was motivated by the selfless love of this family.  The list of support measures is endless - tutoring, constant dialogue with his teachers, coaches, and recruiters; financial intervention, social skill intervention . . .

One of my favorite supports was the realization by Leigh Anne that Michael had more than his physical prowess going for him at left tackle.  In middle school, he had scored in the ninetieth percentile on "protective instincts".  Could there be a better skill for the player most responsible for protecting the quarterback?  To me, that's just an amazing example of helping a student identify his strengths and then use them for his success.

The start of the school year is just over a month away.  I'm very excited about this year because I am looping with a majority of my students from last.year.  Last year was so successful on many different levels, in part because of the new support mechanisms we put into place.  Like many schools, we began implementing RTI. Another support was a reading remediation program called Language!  Before, that program was only used with our lowest exceptional children students.  We realized it had many benefits for our low performing students in the regular classroom.  The results were amazing in terms of their end of grade testing scores AND their overall performance in the classroom.

These are great measures, but we can't stop there.  A lot of these students need 1:1 mentoring.  Where are we going to find to enough mentors?  The home situations of many of these kids is unsupportive.  How will we as a school step in and fill the gap?  How will we empower the family to provide that support themselves?  How can we assist a middle school student to say no to pressures and cultural norms that glorify gang membership and denigrate academic success, regardless of your ability?  As a school we must become Leigh Anne Tuoy.  We must find whatever resources available to provide the support.  Creative partnerships must be forged.  A new way of thinking must be inculcated that breaks out of all the old patterns of doing things when they were designed to serve the average-already-going-to-succeed student.  And yes, we probably need to prepare ourselves to do a little more work.  These kids are going to bear so much awesome fruit if we do.

Independence and Public Education

As our little community Fourth of July Parade wrapped up today, I began to think about the place of democracy and independence in public education.  In particular, I was thinking about all of this in the context of these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. (emphasis added)

Before anyone panics, I'm not saying we should storm the Bastilles of district offices.  I am thinking aloud about what such a declaration as the one above means for our role in public education.  The Founding Fathers did not take this Declaration lightly.  It was no easy vote to break off.  They were unsure of what it would take to establish a sovereign nation from the ground up and they knew it.  But they finally reached the tipping point where they deemed no other course available.


How should all this play out in the public education arena?  What actions need to be taken, not just by teachers or unions, but by parents and students?  At what point do we collectively say that this system which has supposedly been established for our good is no longer serving that purpose, peaceably or otherwise?  There are only so many changes and tweaks we can make on small scales within our individual classrooms or even schools.


Perhaps serious consideration needs to be taken with regard to the large scale at which we are trying to implement standardization.  Another sticking point for the Founders was the notion of being the UNITED States versus a collection of independent states.  Should there be national standards or even state standards?  Should teacher licensing be standardized?  Is it possible to identify a set of standards of any type that should be included in every school everywhere?  Or, as part of our declaration do we assert the need for every local context to determine and design what is best for the community it serves?


I've got no real answers or even suggestions.  Just a bunch of questions.  I hope somebody will ask them with me.

My Vision for Education

Prompted by Shelly Blake-Plock's post about revolution over at Teach Paperless, I've decided to try give shape to my vision for education.  Plus it will keep me from posting a War and Peace size comment on his blog.  If I ever get the opportunity to start my own school, it would look something like this: student centered, community driven, project/problem based, and 100% differentiated.

One key element is seeing this vision come to pass is the implementation of an apprenticeship model.  Grade levels where EVERY student has to move up at the end of a nine to ten month cycle do not exist.  Not to mention the fact that if a student isn't able to move up at the end of the cycle he has to wait another TWELVE months for the opportunity to move up again.  Instead of grade levels, students just move to the next topic or skill.

The activities (or lessons if you prefer) would center either on completion of a project or solving a problem that requires the use of the current skills and topics being studied.  People, like parents, with real live jobs relating to these issues can serve as mentors, guest speakers, and knowledge resources.  Students would be able to choose which problem or project they wish to complete based on their interests.

Gone also are the needs for standardized testing and the various abuses of the proficiency data relating to teacher and school evaluations.  Are students growing?  Are students moving forward?  If not, why?  What are the forces outside of school that either hinder or prevent movement?  If so, what are the important factors that need to be measured at the moment for that student?

How is such a vision community driven, beyond the use of guest speakers, etc.?  Community is built into the school.  Students help one another.  Collaboration is encouraged, in fact integrated into everything.  Projects and solving problems that benefit the community outside of school are the norm.  These projects don't have to meet curriculum goals either.  They can be done "just because".

Let's do it.

Homework & School Reform

This is a post that I've been wanting to write for a while. The title combines two things that are not usually discussed together. Usually we talk about homework and school reform as two separate and polarizing issues. My intent is to avoid the polarization while sharing some thoughts about how the two can be related.

Some background info first. This post was initially motivated by an op-ed piece in The Atlantic by David Shenk. This article certainly helps polarize the debate and I will admit that I fall on the side advocated by Shenk. However, it is this quote that stirred my thoughts:

The new thinking is that, instead of piling on onerous, rote assignments, homework, kids ought to be encouraged to use their after school time to explore their own curiosities, read books of their own choice, to play, and to get adequate sleep.

I shared the link to this piece, even highlighting the same quote, with my fellow teachers where I teach. One colleague responded with the following comment:

Problem is... human nature does not always have learning and discovering as our number one desire. Unless that is instilled as a small child through their home life , they in most cases become students who want to do only what they have to to pass or make it in life. If you give a child a choice between discovering something new or developing a skill they have and just "playing around" most will pick the "playing around" if that desire to learn has not been taught to them early in life. Not all children at an early age are "educated" that way to become life long learners. Sad.

A great point. However, I do believe that human nature DOES always want to succeed. The path of least resistance is usually chosen because it is the quickest path to success. That could range from acting as the class clown, refusing to do school work to appear cool, or simply pretending school does not exist so that one is not reminded of his failures.

This is where school reforms comes in. I'm not going to address the political aspects of standardized testing, accountability, merit pay, or any of the other hot issues. There are lot of people out here who can address such things much better than I. I want to talk about reform in terms of a practical solution for the student my colleague has brought to our attention. What if we were able to encourage such a yearn for learning? What if we could get real creative and partner with community groups, afterschool programs, etc. to help facilitate providing access to the resources necessary to satisfy such a yearning (internet, library, etc.)? What if we became part of that after school solution and learned with our students about those interests and discovered they really did learn our content more readily because of its sudden relevance and applicability? If there are not afterschool programs already in place that could help, what community groups can we contact to begin one?

There is always talk about differentiation in instruction. We have students in our classrooms with a wide range of modifications including modified grading and modified assignments. How could we begin applying such a philosophy in the life of the student whose parents are divorced but only one parent really makes sure that homework gets done? Do we get the custody schedule and assign the major projects only on the weekends that parent has the child? What about the student who cannot stay awake in class because he shares a bed with two younger siblings and every night there might be two other siblings in the house? Can we modify his load so that it can be completed everyday in the afterschool program he attends?

You see, I don't think reform lies in the political or administrative machinery. I believe reform lies in reaching those students. Our job is not to teach. Our job is to ensure that students learn. What will it take to accomplish our job? What will we have to reform within ourselves to make it happen?