Gladly Would I Teach

Each year around Valentines Day, my school hosts a special dance for all of the special needs high school students throughout the county. Students who volunteer to host the dance are given colorful shirts to wear, and their job is to greet students as they arrive on buses and then escort then to the gym where the dance is held. Scores of buses arrive all morning, and hundreds of excited teenagers, many in wheelchairs, are cheered as they enter the decorated gym.

The goal for our students is to dance and entertain the visitors all morning and make them feel that they are just like the “regular” students who attend proms and homecoming dances during the school year.

We held the dance today, and 6-7 students in each of my classes were absent so they could serve as hosts. Other students had donated much of their weekend to help decorate for the dance. Although I hate to have so many students miss my class, I can’t think of a more worthwhile endeavor. So many students who are often overlooked or who rarely have the opportunity to participate in traditional school events are treated as if they are the most important and most popular students in school as they dance with cheerleaders and football players.

What an outstanding event for students who too often are shunned!

What an outstanding event for privileged and popular students who learn the importance of extending friendship to special needs students! At the end of the day, these students, dressed in their new red “High School Musical” shirts returned to class — exhausted, happy, and with lots of stories to share.

I wonder who benefits the most!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

For the past couple of days, I have been working on a faculty newsletter tribute to Ed Deavers, an outstanding teacher who died a little over a week ago. As I wrote previously, one of Ed’s former students established a Facebook page for Ed and invited students and former students to share their stories about Ed so they could grieve together.

As I copied many of these messages so I could add them to the tribute, I found one of Ed’s aphorisms particularly poignant. When students were working on plays together and worried about their own performances, Ed told them, “You’re safe; you’re warm; your with friends.” According to another student, Ed sometimes interchanged “family” for “friends.”

If we want students to learn, they must be willing to take chances, and they must learn to work together productively without fighting with each other or establishing factions. A supportive classroom environment is crucial.

What better way to welcome kids into a classroom and teach them to take care  of each other than repeatedly teaching them and saying to them, “You’re safe; you’re warm; you’re with friends.”

I wish every student could sit inside a classroom that emphasized this belief!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

Have you heard the story about the middle school quarterback who has already committed to play football for the University of Southern California?  If not, please read this story.

Delaware high school football: 13-year-old’s pledge to USC stuns sports world

I first saw the story on one of the morning shows, and I’m still trying to figure out what I think about it. While I think it is marvelous to see such a talented young man who is working hard to achieve his dreams, I don’t understand the purpose of committing or pledging at such a young age to later play football at a specific university. What’s the hurry, particularly when it appears that the pledge is not binding on either the player or the university?

Part of me wants to scream, “Let him be a kid!” Yes, David Sills is talented, but does he possess other talents that he might develop if he did not devote all of his time to football? Instead of spending so much time working with a quarterback coach, wouldn’t the young man be healthier and happier if he spent more time just playing with his friends and doing 13-year-old activities instead of worrying about his future as a college quarterback?

I want to scream that this is not right, but I stop myself.

I don’t know the young man or the family, but I have no doubt that the parents are helping their son make the right decisions. How could a parent turn down an offer when it is exactly what the son has been working to achieve?

David’s devotion and commitment to football is no different from some of the exceptional students I work with every day who have long dreamed of becoming engineers and doctors. They take every advanced course they can work into their schedules and pursue every opportunity they can find to attend seminars or find internships that will allow them to learn more about the subjects they love.

I just wish USC would contact them with such enthusiasm and reserve places in the freshman class for such exceptional academic students!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

I awoke last night from a terrible nightmare. I was surrounded by soldiers reclining in stretchers or standing around lethargically. They were former students  returning from battle. (I don’t know how I knew that.) I tried to comfort them, but they rarely spoke, just stared right past me.  They looked lost – just vacant faces staring into oblivion. I approached one former student who seemed to be more in control. He was walking from soldier to soldier and providing aid where he could. I said, “Thank goodness!  You at least have a little light in your eyes. Are you okay?”

He merely responded, “I’m here, and that’s all I can say.”

I awoke!

I don’t know what prompted this nightmare, but I suspect it has to do with a discussion I had with a current student last week who is considering joining the marines as soon as he graduates because he thinks this would be better than enrolling in college immediately. My nephew’s impending tour in Afghanistan may also have generated the nightmare.

All I know is that I sat as a teacher in the midst of so many emotionally and physically injured former students, and I didn’t know how to help them.

Amid all of my experiences during my long decades in teaching, I have never had a former student who died in battle. I have many former students who have served in all branches of the military, some who have attended the service academies, and a few who have made careers of the military, but I have never had a student who died in combat.

I hope I never do.

As I crawled back in bed and tried to sleep again last night, I kept thinking of my teenage years. I was in high school during the final years of the Vietnam War. I remember having a young teacher who had avoided the draft because of a teacher deferment. Three or four weeks into the school year, however, he was called up to service and was replaced by a soldier who had just returned from Vietnam. The new teacher didn’t know much about teaching, and about all I can remember about him is that when he was happy with our work, he did a backward flip at the front of the classroom. In normal times my parents probably would have requested that school officials move me to a different teacher, but he was a Vietnam veteran, and people appreciated his service and understood that he might need time adapting to the “real world.”

Until last night, I had never thought about what high school teachers must have endured during the Vietnam War, or World Wars I & II as they watched their students graduate and go off to war. I cannot comprehend how they must have struggled to bear the loss of those who never returned.

Just a nightmare was enough to terrify me!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

“Me and my brother were late to school.”

“This photo is of me, Kayla, and Lauren.”

“Me, Shirley, and Jane want to do our project on Monday.

Is anyone else seeing and hearing “Me and _____” (fill in the blank) repeatedly?  Without question, I have more students uttering this solecism today than I have had at any point in my career.

When I first started teaching 30+ years ago, I often heard students utter “Me and ___,” but these students were not academically advanced students or students who were planning to attend college. Oh, how things have changed.

Today, I have to correct Advanced Placement students who not only utter “Me and _____” when they speak but also write it in formal papers. I know this probably sounds like an old English teacher concern, but I have reached my limit.

I don’t usually correct a student’s grammar errors in front of other students, but I’m making an exception on this one.

Years ago while I was teaching a grammar lesson, a student blurted out, “But that don’t sound right!”

I immediately stated to the student, “Don’t ever determine what’s proper according to what sounds right to YOU!”  When so many people continue to make the same errors and students hear the error repeatedly, they think the error is correct.

I don’t want to embarrass kids, but when so many of even our best students think it’s okay to say “Me and ____,” it’s time to circle the wagons and take a stand.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

As my students gathered in groups to create public service announcements (PSAs)  last week, most of them immediately wanted to create something humorous. They are teenagers who are always in search of humor.

One student came to me before school and wanted to know if she could work alone. She was deeply moved by all of the suffering in Haiti and wanted to do something to encourage people to donate money. Teenagers are often criticized for being  self-absorbed or tagged as the “Me Generation.” As Ansley’s PSA illustrates, however, some teenagers are indeed interested in what goes on around the world, and they have huge open hearts that want to help.

Please take a look!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

Today in class I gave students the opportunity to read aloud their autobiographical papers that were due today. In one class, very few students wanted to read their own papers, and I kept urging someone to be brave and read.

Silence ensued.

One student then broke the silence by saying, “Noes Goes!”  When he said this, everyone in the class immediately touched his index finger to the tip of his nose and became quiet.

I stared at my class of very respectable, intelligent, enthusiastic eighteen year olds who all sat in a circle with their index fingers touching their noses.

All I could do was laugh!

I guess I’ve been living under a rock again because until today, I had never heard “Noes Goes!”  When I asked if this were a game or practice they had learned in elementary school, they assured me that they had never heard of it until last year.

I walked into class the following period and, once again, asked for a volunteer to read aloud. When no one volunteered, I stated emphatically, “Noes Goes!” and fingers flew up to touch noses around the classroom.

What did you learn in school today?  If you don’t want to be “it,” you better touch your nose quickly!

For those of you who have also been hiding under rocks, here’s a link I found of the OFFICIAL Nose Goes rules!

Official Rules

Wikipedia’s Nose Game

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

Year after year, new students flood into our classrooms, and our lives center around those students for months.

Then they leave.

I spent the first six years of my teaching career as an eighth-grade teacher. At the end of the year, my students said good-bye and moved on to high school.  I was proud of them and thrilled that they were going to high school, but I missed them. I rarely saw any of them after they left my classroom.

Throughout the years, those children, the children portrayed in the photo above, have remained children in my mind. I know they continue to grow after they leave me, but I still see them as the awkward thirteen year olds who sat inside my classroom.

Today I logged into Facebook and sent birthday wishes to a student who sat inside my eighth-grade classroom many years ago during my second year of teaching. In my message, I joked that she must be about 14 now. Sherry responded,

LOL! 45! Can you believe it!!!! Thanks, Ms. Parrott! You are still my favorite!!!

45!

No wonder I am tired!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

For decades Georgia has required public schools to teach character traits. Each month spotlights a trait: respect, responsibility, citizenship, compassion, resilience, diversity, commitment, and integrity.

Who can argue with such a plan?

Teaching and emphasizing strength of character is a noble goal, and literature is the perfect platform for discussions about valuable character traits.  Any English teacher discussing Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird certainly touches on each of the character traits Georgia emphasizes.

History teachers discussing the founding of America, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, and other important historical events also teach and emphasize character.

Is it possible to teach science without emphasizing respect, resilience, responsibility?

Is it possible to teach foreign language, or physical education, or mathematics or any other school subject without addressing character traits that we want students to develop?

As with so many things in education, we often let other interests sidetrack our goals, and too often our decisions are not based on what is best for students. Instead of allowing teachers to emphasize character traits naturally as they teach their subjects, my school, along with a few others in my district, changed the process a few years ago.

For 45 minutes one day each month, high school students attend a Character Education lesson. They return to their homerooms and are instructed in the “Word of the Month.” Imagine pulling sixteen year olds into a classroom and saying, “Today we are going to learn about responsibility,” or “This month’s word is ‘compassion.’ Now, who can define ‘compassion’?”

Students complain that the program is silly.

Teacher complain that the program is unproductive.

In fact, students and teachers have complained and suggested improvements FOR YEARS!

No assessment of the program has ever been conducted, and most teachers simply go through the motions of teaching a character education lesson each month, believing this is the way it is going to be regardless of what they think.

On Tuesday we taught RESILIENCE, a fitting word for teachers and students who gather each month and go through the motions of learning character in such an unnatural setting.

Like too many things in education, this unproductive and inane activity doesn’t have to be this way.  Teachers could indeed restructure the program and make it meaningful for students, but things won’t change because we have “taught” character this way for over 15 years. It’s the only method that most teachers, students, and administrators know.

Unfortunately, we all know the mantra:  “This is the way we have always done it.” Sometimes routine appears more important than success.

Maybe one month we can add a new character word:  effectiveness!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

Mention English as second language learners to most teachers, and visions pop up of students who work hard but still struggle to learn English. When most of these students arrive in our classrooms, we know they will encounter tremendous obstacles.

What happens to those students the following year?

Or two or three years later?

Certainly, many students who learn English as a second language continue to struggle years later, and we often hear of their low test scores and high drop-out rates.

We don’t, however, often hear about the students who learn English as a second language who not only learn to converse in English; they excel.

I begin each semester with 75-90 high school seniors who take AP English. Most of them are hard working, intelligent, and ambitious kids.

Amid such students, each semester I also know I will have one, two, three, or more students for whom English is a second language. That’s right!  Some of those young students who enter ESL classes as young children, finish their high school careers in Advanced Placement English, the most challenging high school English course. At the end of the year when these students take the AP exam, many of them will also make passing scores and receive college credit for freshman English before they ever set foot on a college campus.

When I think about ESL students, I remember a special student I taught a few years ago. In one of her essays, she reminisced about her struggle to learn English.

Upon arriving in America, I entered second grade. Imagine my shock when my parents introduced me to an education system and environment almost diametrically opposed to what I was used to. At first I could not keep up in school, for I knew no English. Used to getting A’s before, I now got F’s instead, and for the first time, I was at the bottom of my class. When asked on a test, “Where did Columbus live,” I wrote “10 B Daniel Drive,” my address, upon seeing “where-live.” Afterward, I shamefully tried to hide the poor grade from my parents and could not understand why they chuckled in amusement at my answer. Because of the distresses of constant failure, I even resorted to cheating on the bonus word of one vocabulary test: launch. The word has since been etched into my mind, and the incident taught me a great lesson in integrity.

With encouragement and help from my parents and my teachers, I began to dedicate much of my time to learning English, beginning with simple vocabulary that any native three-year old would know, like “cat,” “dog,” and “fish.” My first English sentences were “I’m hungry. I want ice-cream.” I had to put more effort into my education than most other second graders, hours of memorizing hundreds of vocabulary words and practicing speaking. I dissected various textbooks, finding words I did not know and then memorizing them. While rummaging through the boxes, I found evidence of my endeavors: a little booklet with lists of big words in the eyes of an eight-year-old like “appropriate” and “tremendous,” dated June 30, 1994. I continued to improve my vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing skills through constant practice and exercise well into high school. There were times when the daily routine became boring and burdensome, but I persisted, and now, more than a decade later, I have fully grasped my new language and life.

I don’t think any of Chun’s teachers will ever forget her because she was was one of the hardest working and kindest students that any of us ever had the pleasure to teach. She may have struggled to learn English when she first entered an American school, but she ended her career as one of our Class Valedictorians after making straight A’s and achieving a perfect score on the SAT.

That’s right!  She achieved a perfect score on the SAT.

We teach hundreds and hundreds of students during our long careers. Sometimes, however, we have students who teach us and give us more than we could ever teach or give them. I remain in awe of AP students whose native language is NOT English.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott