Weekly Homework Tracker

As a parent of a junior high or middle school student, it is difficult to keep track of what your student is doing while trying to look like you're not keeping track. If you reach a point where it will be helpful, a weekly homework tracker is an excellent item for students to use. Parents can require their kids to get teacher signatures on what the kid put as their homework from that class and use it as a motivator for doing fun things on the weekend. Seventh graders especially benefit from this tracker because it adds a bit of structure to their scattered minds. They need to learn how to organize their homework. Here's a link to a file that I've tweaked for my own purposes: Weekly Homework Tracker.

The Danger of Generalizing

A post by a recent reader led me to revisit my conclusions about one of my ESL students. I realized that it is always dangerous to generalize, or in other words, to assume that a person or situation is going to be such a thing based on past observations or experiences with similar people or situations. No person is the same: their motivations, their life experiences, their personalities, their family life...all these things contribute to who they are and why they do what they do.

As teachers, we often catch ourselves grouping our students into one group or another. Now, true, these students often become "self-fulfilling prophecies", in that, because of our experience, we were able to predict how their school year would turn out. But fairly often, that isn't the case, and these students turn out to be or do something else. Often it's because of someone influential in their life who takes an interest in them and devotes their time to helping them do well or to change their choices.

These are the people we should strive to be. These are the differences we should seek to be in the lives of others.

How have you seen the effect of generalizing (or of not generalizing) in the lives of the children that you influence?

When is enough enough?

As I work with kids who are failing their classes, I wonder when it is time to just stop trying. I'm talking about those kids who have had consistent aide from teachers, aides, parents and administrators for 7 months and who still choose to fail the class. What do I do at that point? I hate to say "give up", because when society gives up on the kid, they really are without hope. But if the kid just gives up on himself and chooses a different path, it requires A LOT of effort to help them. Who will help them when the parents aren't doing it? It takes determined and caring people to help. I don't feel that I am in a position within the public school system to offer that help. Or maybe it's not the school system, it's just that I don't want to give the personal resources it would take for me to help--my time, my love, my constant focusing on them. Do I have what is required? How do I get it?

Alternatives to Anger

As a middle school teacher (or any adult that consistently works with teenagers) you realize that they know how to push your buttons. My first reaction is to pull out my angry eyes and try to intimidate them with my "authority." Often, this works well enough, other times, they throw it back in my face with a mocking smile or laugh. In addition, I typically feel a sour taste in my mouth or a twist in my stomach as I revisit those encounters afterwards.

When I have been in the good presence of mind, I have found that these methods work better:

• Crazy but possible alternatives (Fine--if you don't want to finish the test, I'll just call your mother and she can come in to sit with you while you take this test.)
• Blank stare, often with a finger pointing to what they need to be doing (The key to this working is saying NOTHING and patience--show that you can outwait them. However, the waiting can't last too long, or else the stare is rendered ineffective. You need to employ another tactic at this point.)
• Laugh & joke (Hah--take a test? Posh, why would you need to do that? <smile> Now get over there and get on with it!)
• Use pressure of peers (Everyone's waiting on you...can we get started, please?)

Sorry, parents, invoking the "I'll call your parents" doesn't work as well for you. Perhaps the "We'll see what your dad/mom have to say about that" works okay.

These are some of my suggestions. What do you do to manage button-pushing teenagers?

Being the People Who Understand

I want to be the kind of person who understands. Someone who can look at all sides of an issue and realize that my way is not the only right way. I realized today, as I helped in a teacher's classroom, that there are people who understand and people who don't. Allow me to explain.

As the end of the term approaches, the life of a teacher gets chaotic. Between finishing units, grading papers, entering scores, and then grading and entering scores of late students, your time to teach is drastically reduced. And you tend to not like it. You also have administrators, classroom aides, and other teachers who are (just like you) working hard to make sure some students don't fail their classes. So it becomes a tense atmosphere around the school as adults try to not step on toes while achieving their purposes.

Today, a teacher came into the class I was in and asked, with five minutes remaining in class, if he could borrow a student. My classroom teacher become very prickly and insisted that her student was learning something so he would just have to come back later for the student. The teacher graciously apologized and quickly left. The rest of the story is that the kid wasn't really learning anything lasting--the teacher had thrown in a movie and asked me to to "wing it" and make the kids take notes or something for a quiz that they might have at the end of class but which, she had already told me, they wouldn't have time for, and which I knew would not end up on their grade or ever be reviewed again.

After class had ended, the teacher came back for the student and this time, apologized in a manner that I don't think anyone with good intentions should have to do. He was basically groveling before her, debasing himself, his actions and his intentions just so she wouldn't hold a grudge, be offended, and hold it against him. Which made me think inside "Bully for you!" for the visiting teacher. How humble this man was to apologize so freely and so sincerely, just so this teacher wouldn't get upset. And I also thought that it was a sad moment when two colleagues, on equal footing, can't communicate in a way that helps the child and which allows both adults to maintain the dignity they deserve.

So, thus the title of this post--Being the People Who Understand. May I be a person who would allow a teacher to enter my class, with very good intentions to help a student raise his grade, and graciously allow them to help that student. Especially when I know the content in my class isn't the best thing he could be doing right then.

Remembering Middle School

As I entered the girls' bathroom today and smelled the overwhelming aroma of body spray, my middle school memories suddenly came back. When was the last time you remembered what it was like to be this age?

--"I love Nick" and "Judy is ugly" (and often worse things) written in the bathroom stalls.

--Forgotten homework assignments and gum wrappers in the hallway.

--The rush to lunch on an empty stomach; worse yet, the constant tapping of your toes or pencil as you watch the clock slowly tick towards lunch.

--The announcement of the upcoming school dance and the worry that someone might like you, or more likely, or possibly that nobody likes you.

--The hurried question to the teacher if you can go call your mom because you forgot your lunch (yes, everything revolves around food), your period just started and you have no idea what to do and are SO embarrassed, and/or you left your homework at lunch.

--The boredom that comes with finishing a test early that was SUPER easy, or, watching everyone around you finish the test and thinking that you must really be dumb because you're the last to finish.

--Seeing the popular kids with their (you realize now) very high maintenance hairstyles, makeup, clothing and trying to figure out HOW they could be so cool when they're so stupid OR being one of those popular kids and...well, I was never one of those so I have no idea what they feel. Any ideas?

In summary--middle school is all about being self-conscious of everything and of yourself. You can't remember a lot about it because you were often just thinking about you or you blocked it out because all anyone could talk about (it seemed at the time) was about you. Quite the dramatic time of life.

The Pressure to Learn (Or Rather, to Pass)

I work with ESL students at my middle school in Provo, Utah, and I have a South Korean student who is so pressured to learn English from home. He says his dad says he's stupid because he is in a smaller group with me, rather than with the regular class, never mind the fact that he just came here 6 months ago and barely gets by with English. I find that I don't understand him and so I sought more information. This essay is wonderful--I realize now that I need to try a different approach with him because of the pressure he's getting from home and inside his head. The thing I can't figure out is whether I should take advantage of the emphasis his family places on learning English and give him more to do and learn, or if I should back off and let him learn at his own pace. Any ideas?


The following is an excerpt from J. M. Beach's new book, Children Dying Inside: Education in South Korea.
Book: http://www.amazon.com/Children-Dying-Inside-Critical-Education/dp/1466269677/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316276963&sr=1-1
e-book:  http://www.amazon.com/Children-Dying-Inside-Education-ebook/dp/B005NRR6BQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316620
He presents some wonderful insights on the pressures that Korean parents in Korea, and thus in America, too, place on their students. 

The most serious flaw with private education, and with “education fever” more broadly in Korea, is the damage done to children. Korean culture places a lot of emphasis on exams and college placements, which creates a "pressure-cooker atmosphere."[38] Thus, most hagwons use a "teach-for-the-test" curriculum that focuses on the memorization of information, standardized multiple-choice tests, and test-taking techniques. Korean students rarely understand the information being taught to them, they are not taught to critically analyze information, and they cannot apply information to other contexts. Students simply become "expert memorizers" of "decontextualized" facts that can only be used to take standardized tests.[39] This teach-for-the-test curriculum "stifle[s] creativity, hinder[s] the development of analytical reasoning, ma[kes] schooling a process of rote memorization of meaningless facts, and drain[s] all the job out of learning."[40] High stakes exams also leads to widespread cheating, grade inflation, and outright bribery.[41]

But there is a much more serious problem for students. Hagwons take up a lot of extra time for classes and homework, add additional pressure for academic performance, and induce more stress on already overburdened students. Students already spend a lot of time studying for regular school exams, but the addition of hagwons and private tutors takes up a lot of time during the week, leaving most students with little to no free time. Students routinely are in school, studying, or engaged in private education for up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week. One student explained, "I have to get up at 7 in the morning. I have to be at school by 8 and lessons finish at 4. Then you go to a hagwon and when you arrive home, it's around 1 o'clock in the morning."[42] The Korean Teachers and Education Worker's Union claims that high school students sleep on average 5.4 hours a day, although a recent academic study found that the average sleep time was slightly higher, around 6.5 hours a day.[43] The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs has issued warnings about student's irregular meals and lack of sleep. About 40 percent of elementary and middle school students skip meals because they lack a break in their busy daily schedule.[44] There is a popular student proverb, "If you sleep for four hours a night, you'll get into the college of your choice - if you sleep for five hours, you fail."

This pressure to perform leads to serious physical harm and psychological distress. Parents and teachers routinely beat students that do not perform well academically. A study published in 1996 found that "97 percent of all children reported being beaten by parents and/or teachers, many of them frequently."[45]Many students turn to suicide as the only escape from this relentless pressure to perform. Statistics are not routinely kept on this issue, but limited data are frightening. Around 50 high school students committed suicide after failing the college entrance exam in 1987. An academic study published in 1990 revealed that "20 percent of all secondary students contemplated suicide and 5 percent attempted it."[46] And the problem is only getting worse. Two recent surveys found that between 43-48 percent of Korean students have contemplated suicide. From 2000 to 2003 over 1,000 students between the ages of 10 and 19 committed suicide. Families also suffer. In 2005 a father was so distressed over his son's bad grades that he torched himself, his wife, and their daughter outside his son's school in shame.[47]