Necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes...

What knowledge, skills, and attitudes do you think your students will need to be successful? Are you teaching to their needs? If not, what do you need to change?

Successful financially? As citizens of the world? Those are two very different questions. To be successful financially, our students need financial literacy. They need to know about savings, credit ratings and FICO scores, interest rates, how to properly use a credit card, mortgages, financial aid, mutual funds, paying bills, the stock market, life insurance, how not to open up those "10% off" store credit accounts, etc. No matter how intellectual a person is, everyone can learn and use the above knowledge and build security for themselves. To me, this is what successful is. Are we teaching this? At my school, it is only a select few who choose to take Life Math, and these are the kids who just want an "easy" math credit. The "smartest" of the kids are too busy with their AP and Honors classes to be bothered with information like this. They go to college and are at a loss. They get that first credit card and use it for everything, without having full understanding of the repercussions. This information should be mandatory for all graduating seniors. I know, at my school, a number of teachers have been trying to get this into the curriculum, but it always falls on deaf ears. I do what I can to talk about a number of these things when I teach my Social Class unit in Sociology, but I don't have complete knowledge of all of these topics to do it justice.

As far as being a successful citizen of the world, students need critical thinking skills, evaluative skills, and the ability to make decisions and choices. Horace Mann was correct that the purpose of education should be to create an informed citizenry capable of making the difficult decisions all members of a society encounter, such as in voting. This is exactly what I strive for. When presenting students with two different scenarios, can they intelligently evaluate the options and make a decision? If we focus on the higher level thinking skills, they should be able to do this. Can they make a reasonable argument for this choice? I do not know if other teachers do this, but, to answer the question, I do believe I am teaching to their needs in this regard.

Our own question and answer

Q: In what ways do you use your department's curriculum? Line for line? As a basic guideline? Don't use it at all? How helpful is it to you? Did you receive it before you started teaching, or did you have to seek it out?

A: In regard to the history section of my curriculum, I use it as a basic guideline for my lessons. I was given the curriculum a couple of months into my first year, which isn't exactly the way it's supposed to be, is it? To be honest, I haven't looked at in in about two years, but I did have a hand in writing the most recent version, so it is actually modeled after my own lessons already in place. As for my Contemporary Social Issues course, I do not use it at all. Half of the writtten curriculum is for psychology and the other half for sociology. About 2 years ago, my administration told me I could not teach the psychology component because I do not have a degree in psych. (But, I don't have a degree in sociology, either?!?) So, then I needed to "stretch out" the sociology component to fill up the rest of the semester. Instead, I have added more units of study and expanded on what was already in place. I have added a significant writing aspect to the course, as well. It is a completely different class than what is in our curriculum. I expect I will be re-writing the curriculum for this course when the time comes, and I will model it off of what I already teach.

NCLB and "Teaching to the Test"

No Child Left Behind has not had an effect on my classroom. I do not teach Math or English, and there has been no demands on me to prepare my students for standardized tests, except for writing my "essay" questions in HSPA-style. Therefore, I do not spend any time "teaching to the test," as it applies to standardized testing. In my own way, I do teach to the test, as I write all of my tests myself, and make sure I teach my students everything on them. When reviewing for tests, we play games that include questions directly (and indirectly) from the tests.
No Child Left Behind includes high stakes testing; if the students do not pass these tests they will not graduate high school. If I did have to prepare my students for such tests, I would undoubtedly join the masses and "teach to the test," but I hope I would not do so to such an extent as to only teach test subject matter. Is there a way to do both? Or do these lessons ultimately consume all of a teacher's time?

Use of Standardized Test Results

Standardized test results are used for a number of purposes at my school:

By the English and Math departments:

• to help guide instruction, students spend time in class doing HSPA-style writing prompts and math problems to improve their scores
• scores do not predict which level class a student is in, their success in the year's previous class does

By Guidance:

• in scheduling,does a student who previously failed need a remediation course to help them pass the HSPA next time?

By Special Services:

• they use 8th grade test scores to determine if a student should be exempt from having to pass the HSPA in order to graduate

By the principal and superintendent:

• they use scores to look at the bigger picture, in terms of how well we are teaching our students, and to plan future programs to increase scores

By me:

• As a history teacher, I do not use the data from standardized scores at all
• I do assist the English department by writing my essay questions in the HSPA-style, thus making the students more familiar by the time they take the actual test. This is mandated by my supervisor, and is something I have no problem doing.

Time Spent Test-Taking

In response to the amount of time I spend giving tests in my classroom, I would say the following:

Tests have a number of purposes in my classroom... I use them to make sure the students are learning the material in my objectives; I use the data to assess where I need to spend more time; and I use them to teach responsibility (students must study and be prepared otherwise there are severe consequences as evidenced by their grades). My class is a junior/senior elective, and I do not give grades for most of the activities we do in class. In an effort to make the class more like a college-level class (they do receive dual credit through the community college), I only give grades for papers and tests. It behooves the students to have more tests than less in case they receive a poor grade on one.

I do not have much of a response for the latter part of the question. There are no state tests given for sociology, nor history. If I did, I would spend plenty of time practicing tests similar to the state tests because practice makes perfect. Again, it is beneficial to the students to be prepared, and not have to "wing it."

RAFT: Supervisor vs. Parent

Parent: Good afternoon, Mrs. Steinen. I’m calling to talk about my son, Clyde. He received his schedule today and we noticed he has Honors History next year. He’s currently in CP History, and we’d both like for him to stay there.
Supervisor: May I ask why that is?
Parent: Well, it’s so easy for him, he’s bound to get an A grade.
Supervisor: I hope you don’t mind, but I’d like to have a conversation with his current teacher and get back to you about this.
****After discussion with teacher****
Supervisor: Hi, Mrs. Stale. This is Mrs. Steinen; I wanted to follow-up with you on our previous conversation about Clyde. I talked to Mrs. Lucas, and she told me that Clyde is head and shoulders about his class, and that he would really benefit from being in the Honors class.
Parent: If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather have him in CP. The high A will look much better on his transcripts than a B in Honors. Also, he has fencing meets, Boy Scouts, horseback riding lessons, and working at the soup kitchen, so the extra homework would just be a burden to him.
Supervisor: Actually, a B in Honors is better than an A in CP, as far as colleges are concerned. Clyde will be more challenged in Honors; he will be able to use his critical thinking skills more often; he will also write more often, which will surely help him when he goes to college. Don’t you want him to learn more and be more challenged? Also, if Clyde has all of those extracurricular activities to his name, plus his stellar gpa, he will have no problem at all getting into a college of his choosing.
Parent: Really? I didn’t think about that. Alright then, let’s do the Honors class. But, if his grades start slipping, I’m calling you back and we’re going to switch him out.
Supervisor: Mrs. Stale, let’s deal with that when, and if, it happens. Let’s be positive, and you should enjoy the fact that you have a really smart kid. Good-bye.

Using data in the classroom

To be honest, I do not use one iota of formal data in my classroom. Until I read Morrison’s article, I thought I was isolated from the issue. Two of my three classes are a senior elective in Contemporary Social Issues, and the other is a "traditional" level of US History 2. I have no standardized tests from which I can receive feedback on what I’ve been teaching. After a unit has come and gone, there is such a time crunch that if a number of my students did not fully understand a concept as evidenced by a low test score average, I still must move on, and there are no consequences. There is no concrete prerequisite to learning about different events in history (though it makes more sense if one understands what happened before) or different ideas is sociology, as there is in the various steps in learning math or science or writing.

I’ve come to realize, though, that my ideas on what exactly data is, have been misconceived. Apparently, I am well on my way to making major changes in my own teaching in regard to data, as I do use data on a daily basis, albeit informally. My classes start with a do now refresher question from the previous day’s lesson or with an anticipatory question about a theme from the current day’s lesson. Judging from the class’ responses, I can vary my lesson based on what they remember, or on what they already know. Unfortunately, my pop quizzes are usually punitive in nature, though I do take the results from them and expand on concepts that need more clarification.

I emphasize writing in my sociology classes, and I tell my students they will become better writers by the time I’m done with them. The way I can prove this is by using a rubric to grade their essays, and looking at the gradual increase in their scores over the course of the term. If I ignore the outlier scores from the lazy students, I can show them that their grades do in fact increase from, let’s say 86 to 89 to 91 to 94. What do I do with this information? I can’t think of anything, except continue to require the highest standards from my students when it comes to writing reaction papers, knowing that it pays off in the end.

Morrison wrote that we need to realize there is more to data than standardized tests, and we will be on our way to making changes in our teaching that will benefit the students. By realizing this, I can actually see the importance of data, and can try to think of new ways to use it, even informally.