Teaching Tuesday: Inclusion

This post was inspired by this powerful post from Lisa at Life As I Know It and the super-long comment I left on it. And also by some conversations I've overheard on the playground and at the gym. So. . .

The only kids who shouldn't be in mainstream classrooms are kids who are profoundly violent. I'm not talking about the first grader who routinely pushes kids out of the way to get to the swings first at recess, I'm talking about the second grader who throws chairs at classmates and bites teachers when they try to restrain him from throwing chairs.

When I taught, I had a non-verbal girl on the Autism Spectrum in my (regular ed) classroom for two years with no aide or helper for her. I had kids who were very developmentally delayed. I had kids who were gifted. I had kids who were dyslexic. I had kids who couldn't sleep at night because of gunfire. I had kids who were in foster care. I had kids who were being abused. I had kids with chronic diseases. I had kids who had been abused. I had kids who didn't get enough to eat. I had kids who had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. I had kids who were so shy that they never spoke in class.

So when I hear about teachers in nice suburban areas who do have classroom aides and parent volunteers and supplies complaining about inclusion, or parents in those same suburban areas complaining about it, I want to smack them. Actually, when I hear any teachers or parents complaining about inclusion, I want to smack them.

The worst-behaved, most obnoxious class I ever had had few special needs students in it. The best class I ever had had the girl on the Autism Spectrum, a kid who was being abused, a kid who had been abused, a foster kid, a kid with a chronic disease, 3 kids who were developmentally delayed and a number of kids who didn't get enough to eat. That class? Also tested the best and a higher proportion of them is still in school than in the worst behaved class. Even though - on paper - they looked like a much more challenging group.

Obviously, my experiences do not a study make. But anyone who assumes that a kid with a learning difference, or a behavioral diagnosis, is somehow harder to teach than a "typical" child shouldn't be teaching. . .or having children. I'm not saying that a kid with, say, ADHD, isn't going to be a challenge in the classroom. But so is a kid whose parents are getting divorced. Or a kid whose parents never make her follow rules. Or a kid whose personality grates on your nerves. And you know what? There's (supposed to be, at least) a support team when a child has an IEP and a diagnosis. Most schools don't have a process in place for kids who don't get enough to eat or are adjusting to divorce or are extremely introverted.

I can hear a parent thinking, "But MY special snowflake is just fine. No learning or behavior differences, no family upheavals, given plenty of food and love. . .why should my special snowflake's teacher have to deal with all these other kids' issues when s/he should be paying attention to my special snowflake?"

First of all, your special snowflake probably doesn't need that much attention. Second of all, as long as there are other children in the room, your special snowflake is going to have to wait for the teacher's attention sometimes, whether the teacher is helping a developmentally delayed student or breaking up an argument over an indoor recess Jenga game, That's the nature of a classroom.

The more important concern here is what kind of person do you want your special snowflake to be? Tolerant? Kind? Open-minded? Ready to serve others? Thoughtful? All of those traits will be a lot harder for your kiddo to develop if everyone in the class has the exact same abilities s/he does. But if there are kids with differences who are accepted, who are assisted, who give assistance - isn't that going to teach your kid a lot more?

I once had a student who was very tough. A mean little girl, really. I tried bribes and consequences and all sorts of things that didn't help much. It wasn't until I had her help my student on the Autism Spectrum that she started to open up. That hadn't been my master plan AT ALL, I just needed some help with one day and tough girl was the closest, but damn if that didn't motivate her to actually be kind to people. She was still tough and it's not like she started doing her math homework, but she stopped bullying the other kids in the room and started looking out for the girl on the spectrum.

That's a win for inclusion right there, trust me. The thing about inclusion is that if the teacher goes into it with the attitude that the kids who are different are somehow making his/her job more difficult. . . .then his/her job WILL be more difficult. If the teacher goes in thinking, "Oh, Kids X, Y and Z have diagnoses and support in place, what a big help, " or "It's so great that I'll have Kid A in my class this year, he has an aide so there'll always be another adult in the room - woohoo, I can pee when I want!" then the teacher's job will just be the basic level of difficult it usually is.

This was not the cohesive rant I meant for it to be. . . . .but I'm posting it anyway. What's your take on inclusion? How did/does your school do it?

Teaching Tuesday: A Quick and Dirty Guide to Reading Components

I used to be a teacher. I don't want to go back to teaching, but I do miss it sometimes. Well, what I really miss is being "The Reading Bitch", which is what some of my colleagues used to call me. I think the actual title was reading coordinator, if there was an official title. Basically, it meant that I know a lot about how to teach reading and I'm not afraid to yell about it. 

The Basic Components of Reading

Exploritude. 

Is totally not a real word. But were you able to pronounce it? That's phonics.

High-dray-shun.

Also not a real word, but if you put the sounds together quickly it sounds like a real word. That's phonemic awareness.

Peter Piper picked a pack of pickled peppers. 

If you read that quickly three times, that's fluency. Also any time you read a word without having to sound it out phonetically.

I was born in a summer month that has 31 days and starts with "J". The sixteenth of that month is exactly two weeks after my birthday. 

If you now know when my birthday is, that's comprehension. Also, logic. They kind of go together.

Loquacious. Hydroponics. 

Those are cool vocabulary words that don't come up in everyday conversation. But the bigger your speaking vocabulary the easier reading will be.

The Dirty Truth

If your kid is struggling with and/or dislikes reading,  s/he is struggling with one or more of these components. If your kid's teacher can't tell you which one(s) s/he is struggling with and how you can help, then there's a problem with the teacher. Any teacher who can't articulate why a student is struggling with reading shouldn't be teaching reading.

Stop Playing With Your Kids

Not you. I'm sure you play with your kids the right amount. I'm sure your kids can entertain themselves for an age-appropriate amount of time without having to stare at some kind of screen. I'm sure your kids don't rely on you to direct their play. I'm sure your kids are great.

But those other people? Need to stop coddling their children. 

Look, it's no secret that I'm not really into playing with my kids. Unless it involves a sand castle or a soccer ball or this odd game we play at the playground. I've recently had to step back from Legos and blocks, not because I don't enjoy them, but because I get a little too attached to my creations. But I'm not saying this as a parent, I'm saying this as a former teacher. 

Stop playing with your kids.

Recently I did a little Facebook stalking. Don't look at me like that - you've done it too. But maybe not with your now high school and college aged former students. Students that I used to watch play every day (okay, some days) at recess and every Friday during "Fun Friday". Little first and second graders who are now dating and going to college and whatnot.

I'm a little worried about the whatnot, but all the ones on Facebook seem to be hiding the whatnot rather well. Anyway, the kids who were best playing seem to be the most successful now. And by "best at playing" I mean able to take turns with toys, find something to do independently and not beg for the computer the entire time.

One of the boys I remember really well still looks so much the same. He's a kid who really struggled academically and his behavior wasn't the greatest. But when he did get to play at recess or on Fun Friday he was so happy and so capable. Now, even though his spelling hasn't really improved since the second grade, he has a job and friends and hasn't dropped out of school. That's incredibly significant when you check out the statistics on his classmates, even the ones who were more academically gifted than he was.

I know this evidence is anecdotal, not scientific. Here's a slightly more scientific article about motivating your kids. And one about the importance of play. And one about the importance of self-control. And an academic paper about independent play.

The thing is, when a kid relies a parent, baby-sitter or other caregiver for play all the time, the kid doesn't learn. The kid doesn't learn to entertain herself, to wait his turn, to share, to create or problem solve or exhibit self-control. And that makes teaching the kid SO MUCH HARDER. Really.

Plus, you know, someday your kids will have to function in the world without you. Why not let them practice when you're nearby instead of when you drop them off at school or college or their first job?

Gee, Maybe I Am Bitter

So Newsweek published its "Top 100 High Schools" issue this week. Their editorial slant was about the importance of principals. I've never taught high school, but it wasn't news to me. Principals set the tone at every school, for good or ill.

If you are researching schools for your child, talk to principals - and see if you can get staff members to talk about the principals. A great staff can be driven away by a bad principal and there go the test scores.

Principals are the arbiters of discipline, tone and academic standards at a school. They hire the staff. They collect the data for No Child Left Behind. They deal with the problem students (and the problem parents). Their jobs demand brains, organization, kindness and an ability to bring out the best in people. They need to be amazing people.

The first time I got a bad feeling about my former principal was when I met the woman he hired to teach fourth grade. She was the only new hire, as the just-retired principal had made our school a happy place and no staff members had wanted to leave (uncommon in my old district) except for the one who had moved thirty miles away. Anyway, Mr. J chose Miss W.

Miss W, even though she was a brand new teacher, didn't want any help from the veteran staff or from the instructional coach. She was offended by suggestions on how to deal with her more challenging students. She struggled with the fourth grade curriculum (no, really, the math was beyond her). But she especially struggled with classroom management. She had a hard time keeping track of materials, assignments and students. When a student misbehaved, that student was sent to the (unsupervised) hallway. Despite repeated offers from the rest of the staff, she refused to send anyone to our rooms for a time-out. When she was forbidden to use her hallway method any more, she put the troublemakers in the back of the classroom. Because she didn't understand the curriculum, the group of troublemakers grew (they were all bored and frustrated). Eventually, some of them started eating chalk so that they could throw up and be sent home. And home was no picnic for them.

When Miss W was informed that her students were so unhappy that they were making themselves throw up, she stopped letting them go to the office after throwing up. She made them clean it up themselves. Now, some of the kids were very challenging kids, but not one of them was violent or hateful. They were just very, very, unhappy. When all of this came to light, the instructional coach began spending every day, all day, with Miss W. She was forced to send misbehaving kids to other classrooms (and let me say that every one of them who came to my room was well-behaved, diligent and sweet the whole time). The principal and the district bent over backwards to show Miss W how to be a teacher.

It didn't work, and she resigned at Christmas. I'm not saying that Mr.J could have foreseen just how incompetent she was, but he did choose her. By the following school year, Mr. Jones had dissolved all committees except the one required by the district and phased out many of the things that had made our students happy and successful. He began undermining staff members in front of students. He created problems between staff members and resentment between teachers and his superiors. He, and he alone, ruined that school.

So, yes Newsweek, principals are everything.