City School Stories

Teacher Stories

Submitted by Teacher Man on November 29, 2011

My principal recently made it very clear to me that the only written works produced by my 7^th and 8^th grade students worthy of display, are their constructed responses.  In the Philadelphia School District and in my school especially, children are regularly expected to write these limiting and repetitive responses per the direction of our central leadership.  According to my principal, it is vitally important that students score the maximum amount of points allowed for the opened-ended responses on the PSSA test. He says that students who do well on the constructed response portion of the PSSA are the ones who obtain the highest overall scores on the test.  This reasoning allows administrators like him to believe that putting enormous amounts of educational time and energy into teaching and writing constructed responses will help students achieve the highest scores possible. Read the rest of this entry »

Teacher Stories

Submitted by Serena on November 22, 2011

Teaching in Philadelphia these days at a time of high-stakes testing requires educators to think beyond our administrative leaders’ expectations of an effective teacher.  The Administrative District Teams that walk through our school buildings and classrooms are understandably anxious that students perform well on the standardized state test, but they do not ask the tough questions about how we are truly meeting the needs of our students, and whether or not authentic and deep learning is taking place.

Teacher Stories

Submitted on November 18, 2011 by Timothy Boyle

As I sat with our 4th grade teachers during a recent professional development, which introduced the Magnetism and Electricity module, I realized that I had figured out some important things about being a teacher. In my previous role as a science teacher, I had been successful. I attribute much credit to the well-crafted curricula by folks at Lawrence Hall of Science at Berkeley for helping me to help my students to do well in science.

During most of my time as a science teacher I created an experiential learning environment for my students. I would throw up my focus question, explain the materials and how to use them, and let the kids go. I developed some good instincts for when kids might get stuck on something, and more importantly when to let students figure something out on their own. After three years I knew when to be the tee, and when to be the pitch.

When you start playing baseball, you hit off of a tee. The tee holds the ball in place so that a hitter has a chance to practice making contact with it. We use tees because little kids need a lot of scaffolding to learn how to hit.  This won’t happen if there was a pitcher. Expecting a five year old to throw strikes to another five year old is unrealistic. Children at this age lack the motor skills and general body control needed to pitch with any consistency. Read the rest of this entry »

Teacher Stories

Submitted by Joy of Teaching, on November 10, 2011

As a reading specialist, one of my duties is to identify students who are in need of reading intervention during the school year.  In the primary grades (K-2) this is done through teacher observation, review of student work, the student’s ability to work independently and a DIBELS benchmark assessment. However, in the upper grades (3-8) identification relies solely on the results of ONE standardized test.  The test was administered in March of the prior school year.

If a child scores below the 50^th percentile, the child is determined to be eligible for intervention.  The students who score in the bottom half are then ranked from lowest score to highest score.  Those with the lowest scores are chosen to receive services by a reading specialist, math interventionist or attend an extended day program.

What I have found in reading, and important to note, is that the primary grade students who have had a thorough review of their ability are those who are in need of services.  These students have skill gaps that need filling and are easily distracted in large groups.  When they work with me, they are where they need to be to make improvement.

When they work in a small group, they have the opportunity to learn skills and strategies practice their new learning and receive immediate feedback from the reading teacher.  On the other hand, Read the rest of this entry »

Teacher Stories

Submitted by Frank Murphy on November 7, 2011

Taking a School Walk Through was an activity that I often engaged in as a school principal. By making regular short visits to the classrooms in my school, I accomplished a number of objectives.  Of greatest importance to me was the familiarity I acquired regarding the activities that were taking place in my teachers’ classrooms.   Additionally, the information I garnered during these visits helped me to identify the teachers who needed extra support.  It also helped me identify teachers who were capable of providing assistance to their struggling colleagues.

I started to bring teachers who were members of our school’s leadership team along with me on these walks.  This happened over a period of time, as the staff became more comfortable with the idea of other adults frequently visiting their classrooms.  When we entered a classroom, we would look for evidence of the practices we as a school team had agreed to implement school-wide.  For example, the members of our school-based walk through team would pay close attention to how often students were writing during an instructional period.  Encouraging students to use writing throughout the day as a way to make apparent their thinking, was a priority objective in our school improvement plan.  The walk through team would gather data that could be used to assess how well our school community was addressing this objective.

In making our observations, we were attempting to answer a variety of relevant questions.   Did the students use writing journals?  Did the teacher ask the students to respond in writing to important questions?  Was there an abundance of student writing on display?  Was there a writing portfolio for every student?  Did students’ writing show improvement over time?  This process was quite useful in helping us to monitor and adjust our instructional practices.  We identified what we were doing well and we pinpointed what needed to be improved.  The data we gathered was particularly useful in identifying the professional development needs of our staff.  This information also helped us to customize the type of assistance that was offered to individual teachers. Read the rest of this entry »