But as far as teaching and learning goes, if all the people who taught before Deborah were as effective as they needed to be, her students would come to her (despite being from young parents) in a much better position. My concern is two fold.

Let’s say that Deborah is an amazing teacher who is able to reach kids and move them along despite their risk factors. They may or may not catch up, but they make more than a year’s worth of progress with her.

1. How the heck do we encourage Deborah to hang in there. How do we, as a city, provide her with something that says, “We value your work and recognize you are going above and beyond”. By being with you, they are heading in the right direction. How do we keep her from going to some other district where they make more money with better working conditions.

2. How do we get the teacher(s) who consistently under-prepare their students to exit the profession altogether or simply find them a place more suitable to their skill set (Orinda, anyone?)

How can we do both these things without being drowned out by the voices of dissent: We want to keep and reward great teachers. We want them to stay. We shouldn’t allow ineffective teachers to undermine the chances of students with such thin margins of error.

Money is not a cure all. It isn’t a guarantee to make people stay. But if teachers are key in developing the metric used to award such bonuses… it can be figured out. I also think tenure is a problem

OUSD needs to figure out the human resource part of things before any program or initiative will be successful.

As it stands right now, everything seems to be on the principal. They have to see and hear through walls. The current system allows some teachers to play cat and mouse with the principal. In the current system, OUSD has got to have top flight principals or everything will fall apart.

What is OUSD doing about that? There’s the annual attrition list that Katy posts that says who leaves and arrives each year. Does OUSD have any plan at all to prepare principals for this unique situation. No. What a joke.

Who were the best 10 principals in Oakland Unified over the last 5 years in the hills or flatlands. Find out what they did that worked. Find out how they navigated this broken system. Find out how they kept their best teachers and ejected their non-effective ones (maybe they developed them instead of getting rid of them, but I’d like to hear that from them).

I’ve read more on education in the last week than i had in years. Thanks Katy for this forum. Thanks Deborah for your vulnerability and willingness to share from your experiences. Thanks Dave, Weinberg, Danning, Seen it before, Teaches in Oakland, et al.

We need more conversations like this.

Jim, what’s with the Russian? That was kinda out there.

I agree with you that lack of family planning–planning in general— are the roots of the failure in education in much of Oakland’s classrooms. However, I hesitate to blanket that as solely teenage mothers when I see the children who are behind at our school (not a Title 1 school, but with a significant low income population) some are children of teenage moms but ALL are children of broken homes where mom didn’t finish school be it high school or, more often than not, higher learning. In other words, the women managed to escape teenage pregnancy only to have children still very young and without supportive fathers.

and then there’s the lack of living wage jobs for anyone with a high school education or less.

One of the best pieces of advice I got early on was “do not go to the teacher’s lunch room – no – no – no”

I don’t usually – I take 15 minutes for myself, then work with my students. I tutor, and we talk about problem solving strategies in school and in life.

Homework is about 10% of a grade. Which means if you aced all tests and you NEVER turned in a piece of homework there is a high liklihod you’d never earn an A. However with 20% of the homework – even 50% of the homework not turned in, it is still possible to get an A.

I make the homework a small portion of the overall grade because nearly all of the 12 original students I discussed are parenting their younger siblings and/or cousins at least four hours a day. Homework help? Only one of the 12 challenging students has one parent who got a GED. None with high school diplomas. From our conversations at conferences, I doubt that many could complete half of the work themselves that their children are required to do.

I believe that if Oakland wants to change their culture as a city there needs to be a comprehensive plan to reduce teen pregnancy, particularly in third generation families in which one or more parents did not complete high school. After looking at data of over 5,000 students in Oakland over a decade, this is the one factor that stands out among all others in students who do not complete high school – they are born to parents who did not complete high school, parents who are in early to mid teens when the first child is born and are the third generation to have no parent-grandparent relationship to a high school graduate.

I sincerely wish that teachers, principals and district administrators would look at the data (as we are told to do at nearly every school meeting) and determine whether the link of low achieving student follows the trend above. If it does, we need to meet with Jean Quan to get a task force, get grant funds and pay teens to delay having children until they have graduated high school.

What does a teacher do when people around them arent cutting it, whether because of burn-out, incompetence, or unwillingness to do what’s required?

Surely it varies by school, but I want to say this:

If a teacher sits idly by and says nothing when they KNOW poor teaching is occurring in the building. If a teacher is so disconnected that they dont stand against negligence among their peers – then they are part of the problem.

Dont understand how people can remain silent when it directly impacts the difficulty of their job and the kids they claim to love.

Probably this was interpreted as such: >> None of them has come to school one full week with their homework complete.<<

Dave asked why a teacher who can't handle the situation you describe (since its a yearly pattern), would choose to work in that situation. That's an important question to ask. You seem to rise to the challenge because you're willing to differentiate. Not everyone does, though, and yet they stay in the environment. Confounding.

Here's the question. If year after year kids are coming into 5th grade 2-3 years behind, why the heck aren't people asking some tough questions of the 1st-4th grade teachers. It would be different if the students all transferred into the school before 5th grade every year… but i think its safe to assume they're usually not new transfers.

One thing is sure, it's easier differentiate and support in grades 2-4 than it is in 6th-8th.

Debra, some believe that the teachers below you are all doing an excellent job but, since the kids are poor, there's nothing they can do to learn. They believe you're wasting your time and your family's money by chasing fool's gold.

Others say the kids can learn and the teachers in grades 1-4 need to step it up.

Truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Do you ever talk to teachers in previous grades about the student levels? How much harder is your job because kids arent learning basics before your class?

Most classes have kids coming from a couple different teachers. You see patterns. Mr Jones' kids are always good at division, for example. Is there a class or two where kids usually exit unskilled? If so, what do you do about it? What does the principal do about it?

How dare you suggest, without asking about my practice accuse me of not doing my job.

You ask about my practice after you state that 40% of my students are unresponsive to my teaching styles. At the age of 10 – 13 – the age range of the students in my class, there should be some responsiblity for reading 20 minutes per day, free writing 10 minutes in a journal and completing 10 math problems that they have demonstrated in class that they know how to do. I am teaching four to five grade levels of math.

Please do not ass-u-me with out asking questions first. It gives the appearance of intolerance.

I am in my classroom and have it open to students by 7:30 every morning. My class is open to students until 4:30 three afternoons per week. I am available by phone to my students and their families until 6:00 pm and then again from 7:00 to 8:00 pm. I eat dinner with my family from 6 to 7.

I do teach differently for those students who are behind. I use pictures. As I sit now I am building the vocabulary list for the class set of novels I purchased with my own money along with the post-it notes with my own money so that students can write the definitions on post-it notes and put it in the novel on the page (also listed) so that they will understand the words as they are reading them. I have purchased 18 iPod shuffles (yes, again of my own money) and an audio version of the book (own money) so that students can listen to the book and follow along before they attempt to read the book themselves.

I differentiate my classroom into four different groups low, low-middle, high-middle, and high and have purchased textbooks (math, novels, social studies and science) (own money) to meet the needs of the various groups.

I have applied for scholarships to allow students to have art experiences in our classroom and I have invited in people of color to explain their career paths and the struggle and successes in getting there. I feel like being an educator is a calling.

All of that said I have three students who are out of special ed this year for the first time because they are not getting their needs served in special day classes. Not aid, not parental involvement – not sainthood or anything close, just the facts as I live them day to day.

I stress to my students every day the importantance of being prepared for school, life and their choices. I have taught them to use planners so that they learn to plan long-term assignments.

However, the 12 students I first discussed have not lived one day of their lives above the poverty line. Life is difficult for them. They have not learned to value themselves, others, planning or the things that I buy that I have chosen to take money from our family to buy.

It is great to have my class. I have to say I really care about each and every student. And it is very, very hard, every day.

Wouldn’t assume thge ones in the middle are anything but a mixed bag.

Sounds like a normal classroom in Oakland.

If a teacher can’t deal with that reality… why would they teach in such an environment?

Also, the teaching standards says she’s suppose to differentiate. I won’t even touch that one.

Teaching standard 4.5
http://www.ctc.ca.gov/educator-prep/standards/CSTP-2009.pdf

Then again, maybe teaching standards are meaningless.