Teach for America in Cobb County? A Mistake!

Earlier this week, I heard that the superintendent of Cobb County Schools, Michael Hinojosa, wanted to hire 50 teachers from the Teach for America program.  The school board was supposed to vote on the issue at tonight's meeting.  I felt shocked, to say the least.

When I graduated from Vanderbilt, I seriously considered applying to Teach for America.  It is a wonderful program that sends recent college graduates to school systems where no one wants to teach - mainly poor, inner city schools and poor, extremely rural schools.  Notice the common factor of  "poor".  By sending teachers to these areas, Teach for America helps students who might not get an education otherwise.

But we have teachers here in Cobb County.  In fact, I recently read that we had thousands of applicants last year - thousands of people who are qualified teachers looking for a job.  And Cobb County is one of the richest counties in metro Atlanta (I daresay in Georgia, but I don't know the facts for the rest of the state so I cannot make that statement with enough certainty.)  So why is our superintendent looking to hire from Teach for America?

To make matters worse, the Cobb County School Board announced at the last meeting that they would be removing teaching jobs due to budget cuts. (To read in between the lines here, they are firing teachers.)

So how could anyone justify bringing in outside teachers to a county with enough money to hire teachers and a plethora of teacher applicants?

And which poor school system will suffer even more because they won't have enough teachers?

Happily, Superintendent Hinojosa pulled the vote for hiring teachers from Teach for America off this evening's agenda.  I hope that the issue stays off the agenda, because no good can come from this course of action.

How To Be Your Child's Advocate

It is the job of every parent to be an advocate for their child or children - this message comes across in society through media and adult peer pressure.  But rarely does the message contain how to be an advocate.  Do you stand up for your child in every circumstance, always believing every word your child reports to you?  Do you stand next to the teacher, never believing what your child tells you?  What exactly does "being your child's advocate" really mean?

As a mother who has had a child in Cobb County schools for a combined total of 19 years, I learned how to be an advocate for my children the hard way, through trial and error, blood, sweat, and tears.  This is what I learned, in a nutshell.

For 180 days, you, your child, and your child's teacher work as a team with the goal being a happy and productive school year for your child.  That means that if a problem arises, all three of you need to work together to fix the problem.  The team works the best when no one is trying to assign blame to another team member, but everyone accepts responsibility for their own actions.  You will need to role model accepting responsibility for your child, since you are one of the biggest, most important role models in your child's life.

For 180 days, this team exists.  But only you and your child move on to form a new team next year.  This means that you are the only adult continuously on this team, privy to knowledge both of your child and past history at the school.  This is why you are your child’s advocate.

Now, what I’m about to tell you is the secret for being an advocate - the knowledge that most of us had to learn the hard way.  The crucial job as your child’s advocate is to communicate with the teacher and the school both proactively and reactively, and to not stop communicating if an issue is not settled to your satisfaction.

That’s it.  It really is that simple.  But let’s go over two examples of being your child’s advocate.

First, proactively communicating with the teachers.  One of my children learns spelling words by either saying the letters out loud, or singing the letters.  So at the beginning of every year, I always sit down with the teacher and explain this.   Every year, my child’s spelling homework changes to accommodate her learning style.  

Second, reactively communicating with the teachers.  Let’s say your son comes home and declares, “My teacher hates me!  She picked on me in the hallway for talking and completely ignored everyone else talking!”  First you must discount what your child tells you.  Or as a teacher friend of mine says, “I promise not to believe everything your child says about home, if you promise not to believe everything he says about school.”  

Children, especially young children, see the world from a very me-centric viewpoint.  That means that your child can tell you the absolute truth from his perspective and still leave out important information.  If your child ever comes home and says something outrageous,  question him for more details if you are worried.  Personally, I would worry about this situation, because regardless of the teacher’s behavior, your child may not feel safe in the classroom. Feeling safe is important for your child’s success, so I would call the teacher and talk to her.  

Let her know that you merely wanted another perspective on the situation.  Chances are there has been a miscommunication somewhere, or your child misunderstood what was happening.  By communicating with the teacher, not only can you clear up this particular situation, but may prevent future problems as you, your child, and his teacher get a better understanding of each other.

99% of the time, when you speak with the teacher, you’ll discover that your son was yelling, or that she did tell everyone to stop talking.  99% of the time you’ll be happy after a phone call or email with the teacher.  Then you can sit down with your son, explain what happened, and work it out.

But that leaves the 1% of the time that you are not happy.  The teacher might start harping on how loud your son is, raising an internal warning flag.  Or the teacher might blow off the incident, saying your son needs to just be quiet and not worry about the other children.  (Note:  This might sound logical, but it does not exist in reality.  Everyone worries about themselves in relation to others.)  Here is where the tough part of being an advocate kicks in.  You need to schedule a parent/teacher conference with the teacher to further discuss the situation.  If you cannot resolve it with the teacher after a conference, then and only then do you escalate to the administration.  

I hope that you never get to the place where you must involve the principal.  But if you do, make notes and take them with you about the situation.  Schedule an appointment with the principal including the teacher, and present your concerns.  If possible, present what you feel are reasonable solutions to your concerns.  If the situation gets resolved, wonderful.  But if you still are not happy, do not let up.  Even if it gets to the point where you want your child moved to a different classroom, you need to keep going.  

To be honest, this is an extreme case.  In my experience here in Cobb County,I have only had to move a child once.  And the vast majority of my friends never had to go that far.  A simple conversation with a teacher covers almost any situation 99% of the time.  But as your child’s advocate, you need to be willing to go as far as needed.  

Here is the second secret about being your child’s advocate - parents wield immense power in the school system.  You have several rights and responsibilities.  According to the Board Administrative handbook (available http://www.cobbk12.org/), the school is responsible  for “...Providing particular attention to situations in which the educational welfare of  students may be jeopardized.”   Emotional security is an intangible part of the classroom  environment, but without it a child will not succeed.  So if you feel that the school administration will not listen to you, pull out the handbook and force the issue.  

I can tell you that I have never had to push the local school administration to handle a problem.  

Never. Ever.  

The school administration wants everyone to be satisfied with the solution, because in the end that will lead to more success for the student.

That is the nutshell version of how to be your child’s advocate.  Please let me know if you have any questions, and I will try to answer them.

Homework, Homework, Everywhere...

As the school year progresses, the dread of homework creeps upon us.  I am certain that you’ve heard (or will hear) whining and complaining along the lines of, “This is too hard!” or “I don’t want to do homework!” So how can you help your child do homework without starting a knock-down, drag-out fight over it?

I’ve written a series of articles on homework based on research in neurology, how the brain learns, and personal experience.  The articles cover:

• How much should you help
• How to set up a homework friendly environment
• How to help your child without doing the homework yourself
• Where to find online resources for both you and your child
• How to be your child’s advocate over homework

The first thing you must determine is how much help your child truly needs.  Like most things in childhood, the younger the child, the more you need to be involved hands on.  This means that in general, younger children need more parental involvement that older children.

Kindergarten through First Grade:  You’ll need to sit next to your child during homework, giving her instructions such as “Write your name at the top of the paper” every night and offering encouragement.  Plan on doing homework at approximately the same time every afternoon, to teach your child the habit.

Second and Third Grade:  At the beginning of the year, you will still need to sit down with your child.  But within the first few weeks, stop sitting down and let you child tackle his homework on his own.  Just be available during homework to answer any questions and give encouragement.  

I suggest you still sit down and go over the homework with your child in second grade in detail.  But by third grade, a quick question of “So how much homework do you have?” will suffice.   The point of either activity isn’t to give you an idea of the homework, but to give your child an idea of how much he has at the end of the day.  This step moves him along the path to independently done homework.  

Fourth and Fifth Grade:  You finally reached the point where you can say, “Okay, it’s time to start your homework.”  Your child now knows:

• How to do homework,
• Where to do homework,
• Where you keep supplies,
• How to gauge the amount of homework, and
• When to do homework.

You will need to teach your child how to schedule projects, since most school do not hand out big at-home projects before fourth grade.  I suggest you pull out a calendar and discuss how to divide the amount of work reasonably over the available time period.  Then have your child write down the results so that she can track them independently.  

Sixth Grade and Up:  Here’s where the rubber meets the road.  Sometime during your child’s middle school years, you need to stand back and stop doing homework.  Stop asking your child how much homework he has, stop arranging time for his homework (unless he requests the time), stop everything.  This is the moment you’ve been waiting for (or dreading) - your child now can independently do his homework.

At the beginning of my son’s sixth grade year, we gave him a choice.  Either we would still schedule his homework for him and sometimes check his work for completion, or he could take over and be responsible for his homework.  He choose the latter; that meant that he needed to manage his own time after school to get his homework done.  

How did that experiment turn out?  

Wonderfully!  My son ran into trouble a few times, as he learned how to manage his time.  But we kept our noses out of his homework, and he made honor roll twice in sixth grade, and remained in his advanced classes for seventh grade.  

Was it easy for me to give up control?

No!!  While I told my son that I had every confidence in his capability to handle homework, inside I feared the nightmare  - a report card full of Ds and F with a child who learned nothing.  I feared behavior problems, arguments over computers and chores springing up randomly, meteors falling out of the sky onto our house, heavy rains of cats and dogs, earthquakes splitting the ground open to form a volcano in downtown Marietta...

But none of that happened.  To forestall any arguments over video games, we gave my son a timer and a set amount of computer time per day.  He can use the time whenever he wants, so long as he does not go over his allotment.  Not only did arguments over chores not appear, he now chooses to take out the garbage over starting homework - an unforeseen bonus that leaves my house smelling that much cleaner.  As for the cataclysms?  There is still a dearth of active volcanoes in our area.

I know that someone out there reading this will think, “But my child isn’t ready for the responsibility.” Let me tell you a little story.  Back in the mid-1990s, some parenting experts started recommending that no one potty trains their children until the ages of 4 ½ or 5.  The experts said that waiting allowed the parents to have more meaningful conversations with their children on the subject.  Sounds logical, right?

Wrong.  Waiting on potty training taught the children to pee and poo in their pants.  Children’s brains are wired to learn certain activities at certain ages, and you don’t have much of a choice about it.  A child will walk when he’s ready, talk when he’s ready, learn to read when he’s ready, and learn to use a toilet when he’s ready.

Your child also learns responsibility at a certain age.  She learns to dress herself, feed herself, pick up her toys, put her dishes in the dishwasher,...  Learning to be responsible for homework is just another stepping stone on the trip from infant to independent adult.

I know several parents who gave up the reins of homework, and enjoyed their children’s school years more because of it.  I also know several parents who did not hand over the responsibility, and these people paid for it in middle school and  high school.  Their children had learned not to be responsible for their own homework, not to think about it or schedule for it.  Epic battles occurred in their homes over homework, and nobody won.

One final note to my story - I still help my son when he asks for help.  Sometimes he gets a big project and needs help figuring out the schedule.  Sometimes he needs unusual school supplies.  And sometimes, he needs to be excused from a family activity.  The message here is that I still support my son.  But I let him tell me what he needs instead of my butting-in and looking for what I can do.