How to Manage Six "Problem Students" in One Class

It always starts with someone calling out.

Below is an example of an actual conversation that happened in my class:

Student A: OOO!! He pushed me out of the line

Student B: NO I DIDN"T

Students C, D, and E: Yes! I saw him
                                    No, he didn't he's just lying
                                   He pushed him first
Student B: *falls to the floor and begins to cry* I really didn't! They're lying on me! Stop laughing at me! *Get's in student A's face* I didn't do it!

Me: The next child I hear to say a word is on silent lunch.

I have a notorious group of kids this year. In that past I prided myself in my classroom management skills. I usually get compliments on my students' behavior. I strongly believe that having an organized classroom, with no downtime, and per-planned activities, and established rules and routines cuts out 90% of most classroom management.

Not this year. I am totally lost with these kids. Often teachers, or other staff will walk by my class and say oh, you have him... and him?! and her? and her?! You really have your work cut out for you this year Ms. Brown. It's only first grade, but a few of my students have their names well established. During my maternity leave, they ran off three different long terms subs, all with the two most challenging students placed in different classes.

I have been researching and trying literally everything, but it hasn't been until recently that I've seen some small success. My approach in the past has been to address behaviors. Each behavior has a corresponding consequence. This has not worked with my class this year. My children this year seem to be dealing with real issues at home. My worst student by far had to be sent to a veteran second grade teacher because none of the other first grade teachers were able to deal with her. She was the topic of my "Funds of Knowledge" research. I learned that I really need to be addressing the issues she's facing at home. She responds when I notice the positive aspects of her character, and hold her to higher standards.

But it's not as simple as that. Each student that I am having trouble with responds to different consequences and rewards in a different way. Instead of addressing specific behaviors, I've learned to address students and their motives. This takes a lot of relationship building. My students know I'm their advocate. I love to praise their good behavior, and I'm very disappointed when they have earned a consequence. They know I am expecting their absolute best behavior.

How can students fail and the teacher be rated as "effective" or "proficient"?

Great article on how most states evaluation systems (including TKES) are essentially used as a list of items to be checked off rather than as a tool to support student learning.  The article was entitled Teachers Get Effective Ratings Even When Student Gains Are Low.  According to the article, 40 states have recently revamped their teacher evaluation systems to include "evidence of student learning."  However, most states have found a way to dance around that element while paying lip-service to it.  According to one study called The Widget Effect, only 1 percent of teachers nationally have received an unsatisfactory rating as of 2009 -- albeit, before most of the changes took place.  But still, just 1%?

Furthermore, only two states require that student growth be a significant part of the eval process -- Indiana and Kentucky.  I would love to see how this has impacted teacher morale as well as student growth.  This hasn't been studied yet as far as I know.

As we dig into TKES, I wonder how effective the state of Georgia has been?  The article was primarily based on a study entitled: RUNNING IN PLACE: How Teacher Evaluations Fail to Live Up to Promises (2013).

I have been at a struggling school the past 7 years, and it never occurred to me to link the two measurements:  student growth and teacher effectiveness.  After reading this, how can the two not be related?  How can a teacher be effective and their students show no improvement?  I shared the article with a couple of my co-workers.  One suggested that since the evaluators treat it like a box to be checked off, the teachers can only follow suit.  We talked about how education works in other countries.  To become an evaluator, you go through a two-day seminar.  How can you learn to evaluate all of the nuances of "effective" instruction in a two-day seminar?  You can't... but, that is what we currently do.  In fact, I'll be getting my certificate this summer through Griffin RESA.  

This is where I would say that cameras in the classroom make sense.  The "dog and pony show" are eliminated when cameras are used.  Evaluators can compare different strategies being used to accomplish the same task.  Do teachers lose some of their autonomy... yes.  I firmly believe that isolation prohibits growth.  In football, we look at film to more closely examine the players and make necessary adjustments.  Teaching needs the same attention.

While it would be interesting to see how cameras would impact the evaluation process, I can not imagine designing an evaluation system where student growth was not at the center of the process.  It is the very reason why we do what we do.  Hopefully, Indiana and Kentucky show the rest of the state gov'ts the way forward.

   

School Impact Check

I work at an elementary school that became a Title I targeted assistance school four years ago due to redistricting. The change and adjustment was difficult for teachers, students, and especially parents. Since that year our CCRPI score dropped from an 84.6 to now a 70.3. This school year we have put many changes into place to in order to improve our CCRPI score. One of these changes was to plan a mid-year impact check. As our school Intervention Specialist, I was in charge of planning and leading this with the help of a small team which included: two administrators, the counselor, our school LEA, and our RtI lead teacher. We did this impact check last week. As a team we reviewed our school and grade level goals which were all based around student growth. Our school goals were set during our summer planning based on last year’s data. The purpose of the impact check was to see how the school, classrooms, and students were progressing towards the goals. The impact check team created an excel file where teachers could enter student's beginning of the year score and mid-year benchmark score. The spreadsheet helped teachers easily identify students with low growth.

The data surprised a lot of teachers. Many were shocked at the amount of high students who showed low growth. During the impact check there were a few cases where teachers were able to identify students that qualified for acceleration courses or more intense interventions. I have received positive feedback from teachers saying that it was a beneficial way to analyze the data. Teachers have created plans for students who demonstrated low growth and the administration plans to follow up with grade levels to ensure that we are addressing concerns that were discovered during the impact check.

I wanted to blog about my school’s impact check because this is something that I was really excited to plan and lead. I strongly believe that all students can learn and I am very passionate about using data to drive instruction. I hope that my school will continue to closely track student data to help ensure growth and that school impact checks become a yearly practice.

Betsy DeVos- Should money be able to buy you a seat at the table?

Betsy DeVos Confirmation Hearing Highlights 

 Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Tim Kaine, and Al Franken

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc2n9uacQq4 

President-elect Donald J. Trump's nominee for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos needs to be educated on all aspects of education. She has spent almost 30 years, as an activist, philanthropist, and Republican fund-raiser. Her major push has been to give families vouchers to attend private, and parochial schools pushed to expand privately run charter schools that are publicly funded and has continuously attempted to strip teacher unions of their influence. Ms. DeVos’s efforts to expand educational opportunity across the country have not focused on existing public schools, and but instead almost entirely on establishing newer, more entrepreneurial models to compete with traditional schools for students and money. Her endowments and activism mostly directed toward groups seeking to move students and money away from what Mr. Trump calls “failing government schools.”

I truly have a problem when money can buy you a seat at the table to make major decisions as it relates to a profession I love. Especially when your only experience with education has been through a very narrow lens of privilege and exclusion. As an educator, I have seen this story play out time and time again. People with little to no experience in schools of all types and levels making decisions and enforcing laws and policies that are counterproductive, unfair and harmful to schools and their surrounding communities. We have got to put a stop to allowing people that lack a passion for ALL children and who are underqualified to gain positions of power in education.

Professional Development Sessions

            Since moving to a different school this year, I have found myself asking many questions about professional development. At my previous school, professional development sessions happened weekly and we also had choice sessions monthly. Now, at my current school, we only have professional development sessions once a month. I am constantly finding myself wondering, “why?” Why only once a month? Why not once a week? Why are we not taking the time to help develop our teachers and make us stronger?

            I strongly believe that teacher development should be a priority in every school and every district. According to Vanessa Vega (2015), developing systems that support teachers in sustained professional learning and refinement of teaching practice is perhaps the single most important way to promote student learning and educational opportunity in schools or districts” (para. 2). When teachers have knowledge and tools available, the quality of student learning improves.

As a teacher, I have found the most beneficial sessions to be the ones that we, as teachers, choose to attend. Choice creates a sense of ownership, just as it does in our students, and ultimately, creates outstanding results. When I am an instructional leader, these choice professional development sessions are something that I want to implement with my teachers. I would like to have multiple sessions happening at once, different staff members leading the sessions, and offer all of the options for teachers to sign up to learn from their fellow staff members. Teachers all have different strengths and each of these strengths is valued. After reading “Leading learning, first-year principals’ reflections on instructional leadership,” I learned that in order to be successful in each of the roles the principal must take on in schools, principals should use all of the strengths of their staff (O’Doherty & Ovando, 2013). I plan to do just that.

I understand, from experience at my current school, that there are many teachers that do not see the benefits of professional development sessions. I know that as a leader, I will have to make professional development sessions meaningful and applicable for staff members to appreciate the value in them. I have learned many ways to avoid the negative attitudes towards teacher development through research by Vega (2015). We should think about the quality of the professional development instead of quantity. Professional development sessions should be customized to fit the needs and interests of the staff members. We should also promote the mindset that learning is a lifelong journey in our staff members and offer productive feedback.  Finally, there should be an atmosphere of trust and focus between leaders and teachers (Vega, 2015).

In conclusion, I would like to support my teachers by including a variety of professional development sessions. I want to give teachers the opportunities to collaborate, analyze data, offer feedback, and feel confident in knowing they have a toolkit of ideas available to them. Professional development sessions strongly influence the quality of teaching in schools.

O’Doherty, A., & Ovando, M. N. (2013, May). Leading learning: First-year principals’ reflections on instructional leadership. Journal of School Leadership, 23(3), 533-561. Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.gsu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?sid=d5ad007b-1cf6-45db-b32e-240aadf1e320%40sessionmgr4009&vid=0&hid=4201&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=eric&AN=EJ1045230

Vega, V. (2015). Teacher Development and Leadership Research Review. Retrieved January 22, 2017, from https://www.edutopia.org/teacher-development-research

School Voucher Programs

Since the nomination of Betsy DeVos as the U.S. Secretary of Education and hearing about her history of support of school vouchers, I have become increasingly interested in whether or not school vouchers are legitimately effective tools for student success. The Detroit Free Press published an article that highlighted a question that many seem to be asking: Can school vouchers give kids, especially those in high-poverty areas, a shot at a better education?  The article mentions a 2013 research study out of Washington, D.C. that found that students who used federally funded vouchers to attend private school were far more likely to graduate from high school on time and saw better reading scores, but reviews of the Louisiana Scholarship Program in 2015 and 2016 found that students receiving vouchers to attend private schools performed significantly worse on state exams. Though early research has had compelling evidence that kids using vouchers were making more progress, there have been negative findings as well. Ultimately, there is limited and mixed evidence on the effectiveness of these vouchers that vary dramatically due to a number of factors. Due to positive findings, though, some researchers have stated that vouchers warrant continued exploration.

DeVos and other proponents of school vouchers have stated that their support is in large part due to a desire to give parents the ability to make choices that will be in the best interest of their children, while others say that the threat of vouchers may spur public schools to improve as well. Though I find both points interesting, I see parents able to make school choice in my own county due to existing open enrollment policies. I also do not think that school voucher programs in particular will motivate public schools to improve with more urgency. 

Currently, one of the biggest issues with vouchers is how voucher programs vary dramatically on a state-by-state basis. There are inconsistent standards for voucher qualification and not every state has these programs to begin with. In addition, though it has been said that $20 billion of federal money will be invested toward school choice in the upcoming presidential administration (with $110 billion of state-provided funds), it is unclear as to where that money will come from and whether or not this plan will get through Congress, as a similar plan was rejected in Congress in 2015.

I see this as relevant to leadership in two ways. One is simply due to the fact that this is on track to become one of the most major initiatives that the Department of Education could undertake under its impending leadership. Another is to serve as a reminder that as educational leaders we must strive to see our schools become continuously stronger. It takes dedicated individuals to influence significant change, and as many of us are teachers in public school systems, we have the potential to help make school vouchers less relevant in our particular neighborhoods and school districts. 

Welcome to EPEL 7000 Course Reflection Blog!

I am excited about reading your blogs for this semester!  We will follow the format and schedule below for posting Blogs.  This schedule includes the minimum number of posts and responses. Remember, you can always do more than what is required.  Students must write 5 blog posts throughout the semester and comment on posts by at least five of their peers.  Students should do this over the semester rather than posting all posts at the end of the semester.  Below is the schedule for your blog posts and responses.

Dates	Schedule
January 23, 2017	1 Post; 1 Response
February 6, 2017	1 Post; 1 Response
February 27, 2017	1 Post; 1 Response
March 20, 2017	1 Post; 1 Response
April 10, 2017	1 Post; 1 Response

Students should post about something education related that they have on their mind.  Some post prompts are below:

• I’m really passionate about…
• I’ve really been struggling with…
• A recent success I’ve had was when....
• A recent challenge I’ve had was when....
• Can anyone help me with....

Posts should be approximately 300-500 words in length and students can use them to reflect on any leadership activity.  

Including links, pictures, videos, and resources is a great way to strengthen your posts.