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For my last weekly encounter for this class I decided to talk about something that concerns me when I think about my future as a teacher. We have not talked greatly about this in class but I figured it something that most of us in the class think/worry about.
In this article it talks about how in 2019 the average teacher salary decreased by 4.5% over the past decade. If anything I think the the teacher salary should be increasing considering how there will always be schools and kids that need to have teachers. Recently schools have been overfilling and kids have had to go on waitlists and classrooms have been increasing in population, but teachers still continue to get paid around 44 grand a year. Professional athletes get paid millions of dollars to just play a sport while teachers work effortlessly to support their students each year and work even harder with student athletes to make sure they get into the colleges they want to. In the article it also talks about how many teachers have to get side jobs and summer jobs so that they can support their families.
There are so many things to say about this topic but the only think I keep circling back to is the broad question of, "Why?" Why do teachers not get paid more? And the simple answer is because most teachers love their job. They love to see students succeed and follow their dreams, just like they did.
When deciding what I wanted to major in I always circled back to being a teachers because it is what I have dreamed of since I was young. People often ask me why I want to be a teacher when the pay is not great, and all I can say is that because I cannot see myself doing anything else. I want to be apart of program where I show up everyday because I love what I am doing. Hopefully everyone in our TE 102 class gets to be apart of a change in the education system salary and we continue to pursue what we love.

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Amber McCoy, a fourth grade teacher at Kellogg Elementary in Huntington, West Virginia, has 16 years' experience under her belt, but still makes just $44,000 a year. She also has about $40,000 left in student loans to pay off. McCoy has worked as a tutor, pet sitter, and Amazon customer service rep to make ends meet.

In February 2018, she decided enough was enough and joined thousands of her fed-up colleagues across the state in launching a successful nine-day work stoppage.

"[It] was our last resort, but it raised public awareness about persistent low pay," McCoy says.

The average salary in West Virginia is $45,642, one of the lowest in the nation. The national average teacher salary, adjusted for inflation, has decreased 4.5 percent over the past decade, according to NEA Ranking of the States 2018 and Estimates of School Statistics 2019, released this week.

"Across the nation educator pay continues to erode, expanding the large pay gap between what teachers earn and what similarly educated and experienced professionals in other fields earn," says NEA President Lily Eskelsen García.

"Educators don't do this work to get rich, they do this work because they believe in students. But their pay is not commensurate with the dedication and expertise they bring to the profession."

In some states, teachers will never earn professional pay. In 1,025 school districts, even the highest paid teachers, most with advanced degrees and decades of experience in the classroom, are paid less than $50,000.

The 2019 Ranking and Estimates report's findings underscore why the national #RedforEd movement has caught fire. School employees from coast to coast, fed up with living paycheck to paycheck, working two or three jobs to pay the bills, and struggling with work anxiety, sleep deprivation and burn out, have put up a united front in a blaze of red t-shirts and signs.

Over the past year more than 500,000 educators have rallied, walked out, or gone on strike in both red and blue states-including Alabama, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, and California -to demand more funding for education, including higher pay.

The public is behind #RedforEd. Nationwide, nearly 80 percent of public school parents say teachers are underpaid and that they support educators in their communities taking action for higher pay. Some legislators are listening. In April, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, signed into a law a budget will increase starting teacher salaries to $41,000. In his first State of the State address that same month, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, announced that he would boost new teacher salaries from $35,800 to $40,000. Two months later, he signed a bill to make it happen.

Educator salaries are also an issue in the upcoming 2020 presidential election. Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris has called for every educator salary to increase by $13,500 to ensure a middle-class wage and attract more people to the profession.

Most Starting Salaries Are Still Below $40,000

For the past 70 years the NEA Rankings and Estimates report has provided comparative state data and national averages on a host of important public education statistics, teacher salaries, student enrollment, and revenue and expenditures for the most recent school year. This year, NEA collected statistics from 11,675 school districts, which accounts for 94 percent of full-time educators.

The 2019 report shows that starting teacher salaries are still lower than pre-Recession levels. In 2017-18, the average teacher starting salary was $39,249. After adjusting for inflation, beginning teacher salaries have decreased by 2.91 percent since then.

More than half-63 percent-of reported public school districts still offer a starting salary below $40,000. Nearly 300 districts pay first-year teachers less than $30,000 a year.

And it's not just first-year teachers. In some states, teachers will never earn professional pay. In 1,025 school districts, even the highest paid teachers, most with advanced degrees and decades of experience in the classroom, are paid less than $50,000.

In the nation's largest cities, salaries are a bit higher, but not by much.

Denver Spanish teacher Kelsey Brown has nine years' experience, but her salary of $56,000 isn't enough for her to open a savings account, despite her efforts to earn more by coaching lacrosse after school, coordinating an exchange program to Madrid, and participating in a Spanish-language summer camp.

"I am burned out. There are days that I am walking in the building knowing I'll be there until 8 p.m. that night," she told CNN. "There are just days that I don't know how much longer I can do it."

Like many talented educators, she wonders if she should continue in a profession where she is overworked, underpaid, and undervalued by policy makers.

'Professional Work Deserves Professional Pay'

Schools cannot recruit and retain great educators without making a major investment in raising salaries, says Eskelsen García.

"In order to ensure that every student has a qualified teacher in the classroom and caring professionals in schools, we must make a better investment in our educators. It's time to show respect to those professionals who dedicate their lives to students and building the future of our communities. Professional work deserves professional pay."

Financially strapped, many teachers either leave the profession, or move or commute to areas where the pay is higher.

Huntington, West Virginia - where Amber McCoy teaches - is on the border of both Kentucky and Ohio. "I know several teachers that cross the border into those states for higher pay," she says.

McCoy also has friends with similar levels of education who earn a lot more than she does, and some friends with less education who earn more. New research shows that she's not alone.

Nationally, teachers are paid 19.2 percent less than similarly educated and experienced professionals, according to a recent Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report, which found that the "teacher pay gap" reached a record high in 2018. This difference between teacher pay and other college-educated professionals' pay is partly due to the persistent gender gap in wages-across all full-time jobs in the U.S., women earn about 80 percent of men's salaries. Historically, teaching has been a profession made up mostly of women. Today, 76.6 percent of educators are women.

Another EPI report indicates the national teacher shortage is growing quickly -especially in high-poverty areas. Low educator pay and the pay gap are two reasons why.

"There is a growing consensus that the United States faces an unprecedented shortage of teachers," says EPI Research associate and University of California economist Sylvia Allegretto. "More and more teachers are leaving the profession, and fewer college students are choosing a career in teaching. We must undo the teacher wage penalty and begin to pay teachers competitive salaries."

When signing the bill last month to raise starting teacher salaries in Idaho, Gov. Litttle said, "By increasing starting teacher pay, we are sending a clear signal to our teachers and those considering a career in education, that we appreciate and value them."

The complete NEA Rankings and Estimates report can be found here.

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Average Teacher Salary Down 4.5% Over Past Decade | NEA

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Amber McCoy, a fourth grade teacher at Kellogg Elementary in Huntington, West Virginia, has 16 years' experience under her belt, but still makes just $44,000 a year. She also has about $40,000 left in student loans to pay off. McCoy has worked as a tutor, pet sitter, and Amazon customer service rep to make ends meet.

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Talking about politics can be uncomfortable, especially when talking to those who are on the opposite side of you. But what is even more uncomfortable than talking about politics is talking about politics when you do not know what you are talking about, which can also be embarrassing. In this article Larry Ferlazzo talks about how politics belong in the classroom, which I agree with. In this article Ferlazzo says, "Keeping politics out of the classroom does not prepare students for civic life. Placing limits on conversational topics that could bubble to the surface at any point tells these citizens that no one is invested in hearing their opinions. That destroys democracy". Politics that relate to current events and that relate to both sides should be talked about in classrooms so that students are aware of what is going on in the political world. Talking about politics in the classroom could also help many students come more to a conclusion on which side they are on, or if they are more neutral. Most kids get their first political views from their parents, which may not always be what they actually believe in, but since their parents are preaching it they think they they also have to believe it. Having a second source other than parents is important to help kids generate their own beliefs.
Recently in TE 102 we have been talking a lot about politics as well as in my TE 101 class last semester. We have touched on how it is important to hear both sides of politics and to make sure you always listen to the side 'you do not support'. Although you may have not voted democrat it does not believe you do not support some things the Democratic Party believes in, and just because you may have not voted republican, it does not be you do not or not can not support some things the Republican Party believes in.
Talking about politics in the classroom is important for students to prepare them for civic life, or life when they are allowed to start voting. Straying away from talking about politics is classrooms will only leave most students less educated on politics and current political events happening in our world.

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The new question-of-the-week is:
What are the best ways to respond when teachers are told we should keep politics out of the classroom?
In Part One, Dr. Angela M. Ward, Holly Spinelli, Rocio del Castillo, Ed.D., and Keisha Rembert shared their responses. Angela, Holly, Rocio, and Keisha also were guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

Today, Abeer Shinnawi, Jennifer Hitchcock, Matt Renwick, and Leah B. Michaels add to the conversation....
"Discussing politics is vital" Abeer Shinnawi is an 18-year veteran middle school social studies teacher who is the founder and consultant for Altair Education Consulting, LLC. Abeer is also a member of the teacher-advisory group for the National Museum of the Native American. She, along with three other educators, is also the founder of the Arab American Educators Network-AAEN:

The last year I was in a classroom was the 2015-16 academic school at the height of the Clinton-Trump presidential campaigns. That year I taught 8 th grade American history to a group of highly charged, extremely intelligent students in an advanced academics class, so you all know that these students will be full of questions and ready to debate with anyone who will listen. Due to the polarizing nature of that campaign, students always wanted to discuss what they read or saw the night before. As an educator, I believed my duty was to help students understand the political nature of the campaign but within the parameters of unbiased, unwavering influence.

During my career, I have encountered many teachers who respond, "I never teach or discuss politics with friends or students." My counter to that statement is always, "You have the privilege to not have to discuss politics with friends or in your life because the policies that are being discussed the majority of the time do not affect you; therefore, you believe you are immune." When you are a teacher in any school, but especially a school with students of the global majority, discussing politics is vital for many reasons.

First, students from the global majority are watching intently the adults around them for guidance on how to navigate their own ideas and feelings regarding government policies or practices that affect them. How can you not discuss the Muslim ban to Muslim students who have relatives stuck in other countries? How can you not discuss building the wall to students who are from countries that are direct targets of that rhetoric and discussion? How can you not discuss stripping the medical rights of those from the LGBTQ community when you have students who identify or fear of identifying because of such policies. Discussing politics is vital to helping students navigate the world around them.

Second, how will students learn the divine practice of discourse if they cannot practice that in the classroom. Sure, students will have debates about which American president was most effective in creating American exceptionalism or debate why woman and African Americans should have been written into the Constitution, but learning the skill of debate about a real-life topics that affects students is critical. Students go to school to develop the skills needed to carry them as they transition into adulthood. For our American democracy to be a success, the onus lies on teachers to practice mindful political dialogue with their students, so they are aware of their own perspectives and biases.

Third, discussing politics in class goes beyond a review of each candidate. One of the major skills to develop using politics is the ability to decipher between real and fake news. Political ads and campaigns are always riddled with false, exaggerated, or biased information to win votes. Teaching students how to analyze information allows them to think critically about what they read and hear in the media, which then creates a more well-informed citizen.

Last, the most important aspect to the question for the best ways to respond to teaching politics in the classroom is developing strong relationships with your students when you teach them how to use their voice. Student agency is crucial to childhood development, especially during the late-elementary and middle school years. Students must learn that their voice is valued when they contribute to the larger conversation, but that voice must be respected, understood, and appreciated. That type of environment requires teacher- directed examples, student practice, and continual scaffolding of skills that match the student's intellectual and social growth.

In conclusion, our country was founded on the idea that debate is healthy and that discussing politics reflects the strong democratic ideals we pride ourselves. Stifling such teachable moments would create a generation that will not appreciate opposing viewpoints and live based on fear of reprisal if they speak their mind. Teachers must also not shy away from discussing politics because, again, those who say they do not need to discuss these topics are the ones who show their privilege, which in the end is not conducive to a productive democratic society. These ideals uphold the status quo.

"Any classroom can work to develop democratic skills" Jennifer Hitchcock teaches AP Government and Politics for Virginia's Fairfax County public schools, at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and the district's Online Campus. After 15 years of experience in social studies education, she wakes up each day ready to learn new things and share that enthusiasm with her students:
I am going to say it. Political conversations are bubbling up in every classroom.

Keeping politics out of the classroom does not prepare students for civic life. Placing limits on conversational topics that could bubble to the surface at any point tells these citizens that no one is invested in hearing their opinions. That destroys democracy.

Meira Levinson writes about this in No Citizen Left Behind: We have a civic-empowerment gap. Students do not believe that they can influence the government, which leads to lower rates of political efficacy. Therefore, students with low efficacy engage with government less. This gap flows across our country in predictable ways. Classrooms rich in resources more often participate in democratic classroom activities like debates, mock trials, and discussions about social issues. Yet these types of activities are found to benefit all students, particularly students of color. This matters as it increases the engagement of students in democratic practices like voting, contacting elected officials, and being involved in the community.

There are academic resources to help innovate in civics learning from places like the Civic Engagement Research Group (CERG), the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE), and a huge network of leaders found in places like the Center for Civic Education. CIRCLE's research on improving civic education points toward coursework in civics and government, deliberations of current issues, service learning, student-led voluntary organizations, student voice in schools, and simulations of adult civic roles.

Pause. Do you know if your school does any of this currently?

Yeah, probably most of it ... in a government or civics classroom. However, there is no invisible barrier between my classroom and the course on environmental science down the hall. Students learning to code are engaging in political activities, as their politics are embedded in their algorithms. Politics is always just below the surface and at any point can erupt. Telling kids to ignore the political implications of the content on the table tells students to ignore these skills in the workplace and out in the community. It ignores the practicing of political applications and consideration of intended and unintended effects of such applications.

So, any classroom can work to develop democratic skills. And the response to "leave politics out of the classroom" is "politics are already present in my classroom, regardless of what I teach." The key here is assuring your community that the politics discussed are relevant to your content and not an exposition of your politics.

Perhaps a little innovation and some collaboration with that civics teacher may help overcome this civic-empowerment gap.

Before you jump, know that you have to have a plan. There must be some skill that you employ to help students practice democratic skills. Certainly these skills should be developed throughout the year. Of course, practicing the skills of respectful deliberation is important. Things like close listening, taking notes, learning how to ask questions, and counterarguing are employed all within the boundaries of a respectful and shared experience.

Also, students need to learn the skill of acquiring information without you. This helps take off the pressure of wading into problematic conversations where the teacher takes center stage on political issues. Your students should be the focus of the discussion. Perhaps you start with a close reading of a few selected articles together. Students may be ready to adapt and apply other models like the SCIM-C technique (Summarize, Contextualize, Infer, Monitor, and Corroborate) used in historical inquiry. Maybe you prefer training your students to employ the Stasis Theory in which students investigate the facts, define the issue, determine the seriousness of the issue, and develop a plan of action. Whatever your plan is, continue to develop that plan so students have a road map of how to progress through their journey.

Talking politics can be nerve-wracking, particularly current events. In my own classroom, I tend to stall on breaking news stories for a few classes as stories take time to develop. This also gives students time to familiarize themselves with the issue, to learn about the issue, and draw their own conclusions. Here are some recommended practices to employ in your classroom.

Plan your outcome. Decide in advance key outcomes. How does this connect to your course? What do you plan to achieve? How will you structure and evaluate the experience? How long can you spare? What do you want students to be able to do? Is it appropriate to share this learning external to your class in some way to promote student efficacy? Can you bring in external experts, maybe from your school or community?

Build a foundation. Survey the political issue for firm connections to content, curating the underlying curriculum so that your direct instruction naturally supports further student inquiry. The presentation of that content may be through large-group discussions, recorded lecture, targeted readings, and things of the like.

Allow students to dive deeper. The critical work is that students do their own research. Research is a skill that is necessary from the hard sciences to the humanities. A great resource to use is a school librarian, who may be able to discuss news-literacy skills or present academic databases. In addition to these resources, students may also want to bring news-media or social- media reporting into the discussion to allow for comparison.

Facilitate student ownership. Enabling student dialogue and deliberation is democratic work. Structured debates, interviews, mock trials, fishbowls, and small-group dialogues allow students to process their research in the context of the foundational instruction. Here, reflection is more important than consensus. Students should produce a snapshot of their thinking as it evolves in the student dialogue that may be helpful in directing debriefs.

Consider further action. Democratic skills should aim to terminate in concrete action. This could range from less time-intensive activities like creating informative social-media campaigns or writing a letter to a newspaper or policymaker to far more intensive endeavors. There are many organizations that provide materials to help teachers try these activities in class. Look to organizations like Generation Citizen's Civics Day or Action Civics, the Civic Action Project from the Constitutional Rights Foundation, Mikva Challenge, Civics Unplugged, and Youth As Civics Experts. If this is too far toward a civics class, look to what your students can do inside of your own content that galvanizes the relationship between your class and how it is applied in our communities.

Civics education experts believe that this action is critical in the formation of good citizens. Good citizens are the lifeblood of our communities. While that civics teacher down the hall is doing a great job (or maybe you are the civics teacher!), it is equally important for students to see that the civics classroom is not the only classroom honing skills of a democratic citizenry.

So, say it with me. Political conversations are in our classrooms. We should create environments where they are discussed with an eye to our content. And when we do, we acknowledge that civics education can happen in any classroom to help our democracy thrive.

Teaching students "how to think rather than what to think"
Matt Renwick is an elementary principal in Mineral Point, Wis. He is also the author of Digital Portfolios in the Classroom (2017) and 5 Myths About Classroom Technology (2015), both through ASCD. You can read Matt's most current writings at Read By Example:

An initial response would be to engage in a conversation about their understanding of "politics" with the other person. If we agree that it is the process in which citizens and representatives participate in dialogue and decisionmaking on how best to run a city, state, or country, then it would seem unwise to "keep" politics out of the classroom.

We might also point toward the standards, especially social studies, as a reason for not only bringing politics into the classroom but also enhancing its presence throughout our curriculum. Politics can be a very engaging and relevant topic for students to examine and learn more about. Look at the phenomena of the "Hamilton" musical or the Black Lives Matter movement; they are natural entry points for conversations about the role of politics in society.

My guess is that whoever is telling teachers to keep politics out of the classroom is really advocating for avoiding one-sided conversations in which a political party or an issue is championed over another. That makes sense, and educators should adhere to that request. Yet to not engage in politics leaves out great opportunities for skill development in speaking and listening, critical thinking, perspective taking, and active citizenship.

Teachers and leaders can help ensure that instruction is focused on teaching students how to think rather than what to think by looking at the themes and strands described in our state and national social studies standards. Here are a few examples, found at the National Council for the Social Studies website:
TIME, CONTINUITY, AND CHANGE Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of the past and its legacy. CIVIC IDEALS AND PRACTICES Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of the ideals, principles, and practices of citizenship in a democratic republic.
I would challenge anyone to teach these concepts and ideas effectively without touching on politics during any part of instruction. It is both an impossible and an undesirable task. Done well, teaching about politics gives students the tools and mindset to engage in productive conversations with others about issues that should matter to everyone. To not engage students in politics devalues our society's processes and makes it harder to participate in democracy.

Politics are in the classroom Leah B. Michaels, a national-board-certified teacher, has taught English, ESOL, philosophy, and theory of knowledge to students from grades 6-12 in England, the Bahamas, and several schools in the United States. A proud union member, she is on the board of directors for the Montgomery County Education Association and serves as the English Department chair at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, Md.:
Throughout more than 20 years in the classroom, I've been told periodically that I'm "too political," based mostly on the texts I used in class or my pedagogy. When I was a newer, younger teacher, I took those words as a stinging criticism and responded by consciously staying "neutral," never taking a side. But over time, as I grew in confidence and in content knowledge, the difference between partisan or ideological and political began to crystalize for me.

I had never tried to indoctrinate my students or expressed allegiance to any political party or candidate. I began to ask myself what people calling me "political" were actually saying, and, eventually, instead of responding defensively to "keep politics out of the classroom," I stopped accepting the premise altogether.

Those who say this are revealing much more about themselves than they are about teachers. In English, this advice often comes when a "classic" text is replaced by something more contemporary or written by a BIPOC author-but maintaining the "canon" and defending the status quo is equally political. It is a choice about what, and whom, to value, what to include, what, and whom, to exclude.

Politics is in the classroom, whether people want to acknowledge it or not, just as race matters, even if some like to say they "don't see color." These arguments didn't make sense in the past, but especially in this momentous, turbulent time, it's difficult to even imagine making them in earnest. It is past time for curricula and pedagogy that reflect the full history of the United States and include the voices and experiences, hopes and dreams of all who live here. Anything less is a dereliction of a teacher's duty. I'm not here to teach my students what to think; I'm here to teach my students how to think by exposing them to a wide variety of content and presenting it in ways that promote critical thinking and engagement. If that's perceived as bringing politics into the classroom, that's OK with me.

Thanks to Abeer, Jennifer, Matt, and Leah for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.
Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first eight years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. The list doesn't include ones from this current year, but you can find those by clicking on the "answers" category found in the sidebar. I am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column

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Politics Belongs in the Classroom (Opinion)

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The new question-of-the-week is: What are the best ways to respond when teachers are told we should keep politics out of the classroom? In Part One, Dr. Angela M. Ward, Holly Spinelli, Rocio del Castillo, Ed.D., and Keisha Rembert shared their responses. Angela, Holly, Rocio, and Keisha also were guests on my 10-minute BAM!

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In this article Keith Meatto talks about how racial segregation in school systems is still currently happening in almost every state and how it is important to teach about segregation, rather than push it aside.. Although public racial segregation has been illegal for a little over 68 years, many public schools remain immensely separate and unequal. If the ruling of Board vs. Brown of Education was set to place in 1954 then why are millions of black parents continuously having to think of the best, least segregated, school to send their children to so that they may be treated like all other students, and not as an issue. This article goes to show that even though schools may been racially inclusive, you do not know what goes on behind the scenes or how students of color are treated, unless you are a student of color. Being a white student who comes from an all white family these issues have never even crossed my mind, which goes to show how racial segregation was obviously not taught well in school when I was growing up. Racial segregation needs to be taught in all school, starting at a young. If young kids begin to learn about segregation early on then they will be more educated on the topic when they get older and may experience first hand experiences with it. In either the last class before spring break or the one the week prior we watched a short film about a young black girl who got bullied at school by her teachers. No one around her knew what was going on and neither did her parents. She would come home from school daily sad about school and saying how she did not want to go back. It was not until she ran away from school one day and her parents had to go find her, because the school would not, that they finally listened to her and realized what was going on. If segregation was being taught in her school and all teachers/stuff/students were being education of racial segregation then other students/teachers would have hopefully been more aware of the situation that was going on. Better yet this teacher would never of been hired or hopefully fired sooner. Teacher segregation school wide will educate students and teachers on the past problems with school segregation, how far we have come from then, but also the current problems with school segregation and the steps we all need to take to hopefully diminish all segregation in school systems one day.

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Still Separate, Still Unequal: Teaching about School Segregation and Educational Inequality (Published 2019)

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Although many students learn about the struggles to desegregate schools in the civil rights era, segregation as a current reality is largely absent from the curriculum. This teaching resource uses Times articles and Op-Eds to investigate the issue.

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Starting at a young age I always had this idea in my head that my teachers needed to like me. I would constantly talk to them and try to become 'friends' so that they would like me. I thought that if my teachers liked me then as was well in the world. I could never imagine coming to school and feeling as if my teachers did not enjoy it when I talked to them or if they acted uninterested in what I was telling them. In the book Troublemakers, Shalaby writes about a young boy named Marcus who is having trouble feeling wanted by his teacher. He always wants to talk to her or be involved in other classrooms or even helping out his teacher or others. Often this behavior would get shut down by his teacher. He was told to sit out in the hallway or that he was not allowed to go help out in other classrooms. Marcus just wanted to be heard and seen by his teacher. He wanted this special attention because he was not always getting it at home. I chose to write about this as my padlet this week because something I strive to be as a future teacher is a teacher who teachers all her students with love and acceptance. I will strive to get to know my students home life as well as their school so I get a better understanding of why they act as they do at school. I never want any of my students to feel like I don't hear or see them. In TE class yesterday we talked about teaching with love, Shalaby writes about it in her "Letter To Teachers". I loved this part of her book and will hold the things she talked about in that letter with me forever. Students should go to school and feel excited to talk to their teachers and not be afraid to speak up around them. And ad future teachers we need to be there for our students, ears and hearts wide open.

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In this dazzling debut, Carla Shalaby, a former elementary school teacher, explores the everyday lives of four young "troublemakers," challenging the ways we identify and understand so-called problem children. Time and again, we make seemingly endless efforts to moderate, punish, and even medicate our children, when we should instead be concerned with transforming the very nature of our institutions, systems, and structures, large and small. Through delicately crafted portraits of these memorable children-Zora, Lucas, Sean, and Marcus- Troublemakers allows us to see school through the eyes of those who know firsthand what it means to be labeled a problem.

From Zora's proud individuality to Marcus's open willfulness, from Sean's struggle with authority to Lucas's tenacious imagination, comes profound insight-for educators and parents alike-into how schools engender, exclude, and then try to erase trouble, right along with the young people accused of making it. And although the harsh disciplining of adolescent behavior has been called out as part of a school-to-prison pipeline, the children we meet in these pages demonstrate how a child's path to excessive punishment and exclusion in fact begins at a much younger age.

Shalaby's empathetic, discerning, and elegant prose gives us a deeply textured look at what noncompliance signals about the environments we require students to adapt to in our schools. Both urgent and timely, this paradigm-shifting book challenges our typical expectations for young children and with principled affection reveals how these demands-despite good intentions-work to undermine the pursuit of a free and just society.

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In this dazzling debut, Carla Shalaby, a former elementary school teacher, explores the everyday lives of four young "troublemakers," challenging the ways we identify and understand so-called problem children. Time and again, we make seemingly endless efforts to moderate, punish, and even medicate our children, when we should instead be concerned with transforming the very nature of our institutions, systems, and structures, large and small.

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Just Because They Are Young Does Not Mean They Forget

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Just Because They Are Young Does Not Mean They Forget

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Personally I have never experienced what it is like to be mistreated because of my skin color, so I cannot relate to this article or topic at all on a personal level, but I can express my feelings about it. Since a young age I have always been told that just because someones skin color is different does make them different, which I mean yeah that is true. But why are we being told this from such a young age. Having this idea in the back of our minds since a young age has always made me wonder why we are taught to not treat colored people differently, and why we are not taught instead to treat EVERYONE, with no name calling, equally.
This article talks about how teachers bias against black students first begins in preschool. Imagine sending your child to school only to find out that their teacher is racist and punishes your child more violently just because of the color of their skin. Imagine how scared some 5 YEAR OLDS are to go to school because of how their first ever teacher treats them. When a student gets bullied because of their skin color they never will forget it. Preschoolers are starting out their school career wondering why their teachers don't like them. Because of that they will most likely always hold a little fear that their teachers will not support them.
This article relates back to the film we watched in class today, Pushout. This film tells the story of a girl who got bullied by her teacher when she was only seven years old. Her teacher bullied her because of the color of her skin. This is what is wrong with some of the current teachers in our world today. As a future teacher my peers and I need to recognize the problems in our education systems and educate ourselves on how to be the best and most supportive upcoming teachers.

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If anyone ever doubted that black children are not treated equally in the classroom, the research released this year surely proved them wrong. In June, studies stated that black students are nearly four times as likely to be suspended as white students, and nearly twice as likely to be expelled. In September, we heard that black preschoolers are 3.6 times more likely to receive one or more out-of-school suspensions.

And a few days ago, new research from the Yale Child Study Center finally pointed to clues as to why these disparities may exist: implicit bias.

Implicit biases take the form of subtle, sometimes subconscious stereotypes held by white teachers, which had been shown to result in lower expectations and rates of gifted program referrals for black students. Yale's study revealed these biases are directed at much younger children than previously thought, and are present in black and white teachers' behaviors.

Footage from the video shown to educators. Photograph: Yale

Researchers led by Yale professor Walter Gilliam showed 135 educators videos of children in a classroom setting. Each video had a black boy and girl, and a white boy and girl. The teachers were told the following:

We are interested in learning about how teachers detect challenging behavior in the classroom. Sometimes this involves seeing behavior before it becomes problematic. The video segments you are about to view are of preschoolers engaging in various activities. Some clips may or may not contain challenging behaviors. Your job is to press the enter key on the external keypad every time you see a behavior that could become a potential challenge.

While the teachers were asked to detect "challenging behavior", no such behavior existed in any of the videos. Yet when asked which children required the most attention, 42% of the teachers identified the black boy.

The participants' conscious appraisal of whom they believed required the most attention closely mirrored the independent results of an eye-tracking technology used by the research team, which noted that preschool teachers "show a tendency to more closely observe black students, and especially boys, when challenging behaviors are expected".

Allison R Brown, executive director of the Communities for Just Schools Fund, an organisation which seeks to combat the " school-to-prison pipeline ", found the report heartbreaking but not surprising.

"Black bodies are policed in the streets and in the classroom ... [Research] demonstrates that black boys are viewed as four and five years older than they are. Research demonstrates that racial disparities in school discipline exist in the most subjective of categories - "willful defiance", "insubordination", "disrespect". Those racial disparities decrease significantly for the most objective of categories: possession of alcohol on campus, possession of drugs with intent to distribute, possession of a loaded weapon.

Brown worries that the study supports what headlines suggest to her: black people are seen as less than human, less deserving of dignity and respect.

Staff tend to observe more closely black boys when challenging behaviors are expected

Yale Child Study Center

The study's findings suggested an underpinning of Brown's anxiety, but found that it wasn't limited to black people. Researchers noted that when teachers were also given information about the disruptive child's home life and family stressors, teachers only reacted more empathetically if the teacher and student were of the same race. Otherwise, teachers rated the students more severely. The report suspects this is because teachers felt powerless to improve the student's situation.

"These findings suggest that teachers need support in understanding family struggles as they may relate to child behaviors, especially when the teacher and child are of different races," Gilliam, the lead researcher, said.

The good news is that teachers are open and willing to do the work. Gilliam pointed out that when he gave study participants the opportunity to withdraw their data from the study, only one subject chose to do so.

To solve this dilemma, Gilliam recommends anti-bias training programs, and suggests consulting the work done by Dr Howard Stevenson of the University of Pennsylvania on racial literacy and racial climate in schools.

Lauren Owen, a white teacher and recent graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Education who wrote a compelling essay on the need for empathy in teaching, says that "race is a category (though a socially constructed one) that we can see, and thereby also in some ways easier to identify with. I think it's tough to get past visual indicators of sameness or different-ness because they are reinforced too frequently, and so it's easier to empathize when we have similar experiences with someone who looks the same as us."

Gilliam offers reasons to be hopeful. He reminds us that educators, who are paid very little, pursue teaching because they love young children. To the parents of black children, he offers this advice: "Don't wait until you are worried about whether biases may impact the relationship between your child and his or her teachers. Be proactive. Get to know your child's teachers, director and staff. In all of my years of studying this issue, I've never seen a case where a child was expelled or suspended from a childcare or preschool setting when the parents and teachers knew and liked each other. Not once."

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Teachers' implicit bias against black students starts in preschool, study finds

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Findings reveal subconscious racial bias of teachers, who directed attention more closely to black boys when 'challenging behavior' is expected

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Students and Teachers Should Have a Healthy Relationship

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Students and Teachers Should Have a Healthy Relationship

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When I think about school during grades K-12 what makes one grade or class stand out to me more than others is when I had a good relationship with that specific teacher. Having a fun and trustworthy relationship with my teachers made my days and classes way more enjoyable. Going into class knowing that my teacher supported me and that we respected each other made me more excited to go to class. The article I linked gives five awesome ways to help teachers establish a healthy relationship with their students. Out of the five ways the two that stood out to me the most were, 1. Establish respect first. I believe that it is extremely important to talk to your students about respect when the school year first starts out. As a student they need to respect you and understand that you have authority over them, but as a teacher you also need to respect all your students and listen to them as well. Your students are there tolerant from you while you are also there to learn from your students. The second point that stood out to me was, 4. Get to know your students. As a teacher it is important to get to know each of your students, not just get ton know them in the classroom but also get to know more about their real life outside of school. Doing this will help your students know that you care about them and that they can trust you and come to you with problems that relate to life outside of school if they do not have another trusted adult in their life. It is important to know more about your students so that you can respect them and help them be their true authentic selves. This article relates back to class today when we did the jamboard activity with the quotes. The quote that I believe relates to this article is, "No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so” (p. 85). If you do not take the time to get to know your students and develop a healthy relationship with them then you are missing out on being able to support them from being who they are. Getting to know your students will give you the opportunity to be taught more about their lifestyles and maybe they will even teach you how to help support them.

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It's not easy to establish a balanced teacher-student relationship. Teachers who are too concerned with being liked can compromise their authority, while those who come off as brusque or uncaring will never get the most out of their students.

Ms. C., a high school math teacher I work with, has achieved such a balance, in spite of the fact that she's only a few years older than many of her students. How can you replicate her success? Here are some ways to establish a healthy, respectful teacher-student relationship.

1. Establish Respect First

A veteran teacher offered me one stern piece of advice when I was first starting out: "Don't smile until Christmas." This advice was misguided (you definitely should crack a smile long before December rolls around), but I now have a much better understanding of the message she was trying to communicate.
Further reading: How to Earn Respect in the Classroom
Teachers who start off trying to appear too nice convey the message that they're not authority figures. Ms. C. smiles constantly (even pre-holidays) and exudes a genuine kindness, but she isn't afraid to drop the pleasantness and be stern when necessary. Her students know she means business and respect her for it. They listen and learn from her because she establishes her purpose and authority from the start.

2. Enforce Your Rules

Watching Ms. C. teach is like watching a basketball referee. During her lessons, she calls out infractions as they occur, barely breaking her teaching stride. Our principal once observed that Ms. C. writes more discipline referrals than many other teachers, yet students consistently report that she's their favorite teacher.

Ms. C. doesn't let students get away with breaking her rules; she knows that not enforcing the rules is like giving students permission to break them. Unruly classrooms can make students feel anxious and insecure, but Ms. C.'s students feel confident knowing their teacher is in control.

3. Manage Cell Phone Use

These days, it's common to see classrooms filled with students using their cell phones during lessons. I've seen students in Ms. C.'s room using cell phones, but almost never while she's teaching. Allowing students to ignore you while you're teaching does not make you a "cool" teacher. It conveys a message that your curriculum doesn't matter.

Ms. C. is not overly strict, but she has established a culture where students understand that it's rude to use their phones while their teacher is teaching. Her lessons are fast-paced, keeping students on their toes so they aren't thinking about their phones. Since they like and respect Ms. C., they put their phones away.

4. Get to Know Your Students

Ms. C.'s students know she cares about them. She devotes time at the end of her class for unstructured conversations, and is often seen with students during her lunch period. The key is that Ms. C. schedules this time; she doesn't let her students disrupt her lessons or pull her off track while she's teaching. Students know Ms. C. cares deeply for them because she devotes the time to get to know them, but they also understand that she cares about their learning. In a teacher-student relationship, bonds grow in unstructured, casual settings. Ms. C. allows this to happen on her terms.

5. Use Good Judgment

Knowing what topics are and aren't appropriate with students can be tricky. Some students will test teachers to see what they can get away with. Others truly need someone to talk to. Students often report that Ms. C. is a great listener. I think it's generally wise to listen more than you talk, but use good judgment if you think the conversation is moving in a direction that is inappropriate. It's OK to tell a student that you're not comfortable with the conversation if the topic is moving into a gray area. As a mandated reporter, all teachers must let students know there are topics-such as self-harm, neglect, or abuse-that they are required to report.
Further reading: Controlling Your Classroom
A healthy, nurturing teacher-student relationship is one of the most rewarding parts of the job. Following the example of teachers who have achieved this balance will help you become both liked and respected.

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5 Keys to Establishing a Healthy Teacher-Student Relationship

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It's not easy to establish a balanced teacher-student relationship. Teachers who are too concerned with being liked can compromise their authority, while those who come off as brusque or uncaring will never get the most out of their students.

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Being a native English speaker I have never had to deal with the frustration of trying to learn English, while going to an English speaking school. In middle school I took Spanish and in high school I took French but those acted more are fun electives. I chose to take Spanish and French because it thought it would be fun to learn a little but about the languages and learn how to speak a little of them.
I never realized how much students struggled with going to an English school when English was not their first language until I went to boarding School. I went t school with many kids who's first languages were Spanish, Chinese, and Russian. Seeing my classmates having to work almost twice as hard as me in class to understand the information the teacher was teaching us, but also having to understand what the teacher was saying in English. Most often it takes ESL students extra time to process what teachers are saying in English.
The article I linked to this encounter gives 12 ways to support ESL learners in the classroom. All 12 points are very helpful but my favorite one is to learn about the cultural background of your students. It is important as teachers to show your students that you care about them and even though you may not experience where they are from and the language they know best first hand. Learning more abut where your students cultural background will show them that you are putting in effort  to help them and that you are trying to understand the frustration they may feel when being in an English speaking school.
This article relates back to class today, 2/2, when we watched the short film about Moises and his struggles in school. Immersing into an English speaking school was very difficult for Moises and not having total support from his classmates and other teachers did not make it any easier.
As a future teachers I will always go above and beyond to make ALL my students feel like they belong. I will treat them with EQUITY and show them that I am here for them.

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
A note on terminology: The acronym ESL is used less often now in schools than it used to be, because we recognize that many students who are learning English already speak several other languages, so English would not be a "second" language. I use it several times in the post because schools sometimes refer to the teachers as ESL teachers, and the term is still widely used as a search term for this topic. My intent in using the acronym is to make this post easier to find online.

You have a new student, and he speaks no English. His family has just moved to your town from Japan, and though he receives English as a Second Language (ESL) support, he will also be sitting in your room every day to give him more exposure to his new language. How can you be a good teacher to someone who barely understands you?

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, an average of 9 percent of students in U.S. public schools are English Language Learners (ELLs); that number is closer to 14 percent in cities. Although many of these students start off in high-intensity, whole-day English programs, most are integrated into mainstream classrooms within a year, well before their English language skills would be considered proficient.

How prepared are you to teach these students? If you're like most classroom teachers, you have little to no training in the most effective methods for working with English language learners (Walker, Shafer, & Iiams, 2004). So that means we have a problem here: Lots of ELL kids in regular classrooms, and no teacher training to ensure the success of that placement.

Below, three ESL teachers tell us what they know about the things regular classroom teachers can do to improve instruction for ELL students. These 12 strategies are simple, they are not very time consuming, and best of all, they will help everyone in your class learn better:

1. Make it Visual

"Avoid giving instructions in the air," says Melissa Eddington, an Ohio-based ESL teacher. "ELL kids have a harder time processing spoken language." So instructions - even basic directions for classroom procedures - should be written on the board whenever possible. Challenging concepts should be diagrammed or supported with pictures. And modeling the steps of a process or showing students what a finished product should look like can go a long way toward helping students understand. "Sometimes showing our students what to do is all they need in order to do it," Eddington says. Not only will this kind of nonlinguistic representation improve comprehension for ELL students, it will help all of your students grasp concepts better.

2. Build in more group work.

"Kids aren't just empty glasses that we pour stuff into and then at the end of the day they dump it back onto a test," says Kim, an ESL teacher who was the subject of my very first podcast interview. "If you really want the kids to learn, they've got to be engaged." That means less teacher-led, whole-class instruction, and more small groups, where students can practice language with their peers in a more personal, lower-risk setting. And if ELL students attend your class with a resource teacher, make use of that person: In most cases the resource teacher doesn't have to work exclusively with the ESL students; they can work with smaller groups that happen to contain these students, helping to improve the teacher-student ratio and give kids more time to practice.

3. Communicate with the ESL teacher.

Mary Yurkosky, a former ESL teacher in Massachusetts, credits much of her students' success to the strong relationship she had with the regular classroom teachers. "The classroom teachers were always talking to me about what they were doing in their classes," she says. "They made it so easy for me to support them: If a teacher was going to be doing a unit on plants, I could make sure we used some of that same vocabulary in the ESL class."

Ideally, this could be systematized, where ESL teachers could regularly get copies of lesson plans or collaborate with regular classroom teachers to build solid back-and-forth support, but "it doesn't have to be that much work," Yurkosky insists. "Just talk to each other. Talk about what's going on in your classrooms, invite each other to special presentations, share what your students are learning, and the words will naturally find their way into the ESL class."

4. Honor the "silent period."

Many new language learners go through a silent period, during which they will speak very little, if at all. "Don't force them to talk if they don't want to," says Eddington, "A lot of students who come from cultures outside of America want to be perfect when they speak, so they will not share until they feel they are at a point where they're perfect." Just knowing that this is a normal stage in second language acquisition should help relieve any pressure you feel to move them toward talking too quickly.

5. Allow some scaffolding with the native language.

Although it has been a hotly debated topic in the language-learning community, allowing students some use of their first language (L1) in second-language (L2) classrooms is gaining acceptance. When a student is still very new to a language, it's okay to pair him with other students who speak his native language. "Some students are afraid to open their mouths at all for fear of sounding stupid or just not knowing the words to use," Yurkosky says. "Letting them explain things or ask questions in their first language gets them to relax and feel like a part of the class."

And this doesn't only apply to spoken language. If you give students a written assignment, but the ELL student doesn't yet have the proficiency to handle writing his response in English, "Don't make them just sit there and do nothing," Eddington says. "Allow them to write in their first language if they're able. This allows them to still participate in journal writing or a math extended response, even if you can't read what they write." There has even been some evidence that allowing second-language learners to pre-write and brainstorm in L1 results in higher-quality writing in L2 in later stages of the writing process (Yigzaw, 2012).

6. Look out for culturally unique vocabulary.

"For most of these kids, their background knowledge is lacking, especially with things that are unique to American or westernized culture," says Eddington. It's important to directly teach certain vocabulary words: "Show them videos of what it looks like to toss pizza dough, show pictures of a juke box or a clothing rack - things that are not common in their own language."

One way to differentiate for ELL students is to consider the whole list of terms you're going to teach for a unit, and if you think an ELL student may be overwhelmed by such a long list, omit those that are not essential to understanding the larger topic at hand.

7. Use sentence frames to give students practice with academic language.

All students, not just English language learners, need practice with academic conversations. Sentence frames - partially completed sentences like "I disagree with what _________ said because..." - show students how to structure language in a formal way. Keep these posted in a highly visible spot in your classroom and require students to refer to them during discussions and while they write.

For this kind of language to really sink in, though, Kim says it has to become a regular part of class. "They won't do it if it's not the norm in the class, because they'll be embarrassed to use it among their peers," she says. "But if they can put it off on the teacher and say, Oh, well, you know, Miss Kim makes me talk like this, then they don't look as hoity-toity as they would otherwise."

8. Pre-teach whenever possible.

If you're going to be reading a certain article next week, give ESL students a copy of it now. If you plan to show a YouTube video tomorrow, send a link to your ESL students today. Any chance you can give these students to preview material will increase the odds that they'll understand it on the day you present it to everyone else. "That kind of thing is wonderful," Yurkosky says. "The kids feel so empowered if they've had a chance to look at the material ahead of time."

9. Learn about the cultural background of your students...

Our second-language populations grow more diverse every year. Taking the time to learn the basics of where a child comes from - exactly, not 'somewhere in the Middle East/South America/Asia/Africa' - tells the student that you respect her enough to bother. Kim remembers one time when she had to set the record straight about the diverse South American population at her school: "I was listening to the teachers talking about the 'Mexican' kids in our building," she says, "and I was like, 'We don't have any Mexicans.'" Not taking the time to at least correctly identify a child's country of origin, much like not bothering to pronounce their name correctly, is a kind of microaggression, a small, subtle insult that communicates hostility toward people of color. Make a commitment to be someone who bothers to get it right.

Once you have the country straight, take things up a notch by learning about students' religious and cultural practices. If he is a practicing Muslim, he should be told if one of the pizzas you ordered for the class party has sausage on it. If she comes from a culture where eye contact with adults is viewed as disrespectful, you'll know not to force her to look you in the eye when she's talking.

10. ...but don't make a child speak for his entire culture.

In her podcast interview, Kim shared a story about watching a teacher ask a new Iraqi student how he felt about the war in his country, right in the middle of class. "That's not cultural inclusiveness," she explains. "I've seen teachers do this and then pat themselves on the back. The students' English is limited so they can't express themselves very well, and they don't want to 'represent'; they just want to be there." If you anticipate a theme coming up in your class that's going to be relevant to one of your students, have a conversation with them in advance, or check with your ESL teacher to see if they think it's appropriate for in-class discussion.

11. Show them how to take themselves less seriously...

By modeling the risk-taking that's required to learn a new language, you help students develop the courage to take their own risks, and to have a sense of humor about it. "I tried to say the word 'paint' ( pinta) in Portuguese and instead I said the word for 'penis' ( pinto). They all roared with laughter while I stood there with a What?? look on my face," Yurkosky says. "When they explained what I'd said, I laughed so hard! I told them that laughing was fine because sometimes mistakes are really funny, but ridicule is never okay."

12. ...but always take them seriously.

One of Kim's pet peeves about how teachers interact with English language learners is the way they often see students' efforts as 'cute,' missing the whole point of what the student is trying to say. "A student will be desperate to communicate, and the teacher will get distracted by the delivery and miss the message," she says. "That's painful for me to watch." It bothers her when teachers mistake a lack of language for a lack of intelligence or maturity. When a child can't express themselves as well as they would in their native language, it's far too easy to assume the concepts just aren't in their heads.

"It breaks my heart when I hear teachers say (ELL kids) don't know anything," says Eddington. "These are brilliant kids and they know a lot. They just can't tell us in English yet." Make a conscious effort to see past the accent and the mispronunciations and treat every interaction - every student - with the respect they deserve.

"They're doing twice the job of everybody else in the class," Kim adds, "even though the result looks like half as much." ♦

Further Reading

The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide is one of the highest-rated books on teaching English-language learners available. In addition to offering an overview of the research on second-language learners and best practices in teaching ESL, it also includes a whole section on teaching ESL in the content areas and another specifically geared toward teaching ELL students in mainstream classrooms.
References:
Walker, A., Shafer, J., & Iiams, M. (2004). "Not in my classroom": Teacher attitudes towards English language learners in the mainstream classroom. NABE Journal of Research and Practice, 2(1), 130-160.

Yigzaw, A. (2012). Impact of L1 use in L2 English writing classes. Ethiopian Journal of Education and Sciences, 8(1), 11-27.

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12 Ways to Support English Learners in the Mainstream Classroom

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Advice from three ESL teachers on the things regular classroom teachers can do to help English language learners thrive in mainstream classrooms.

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Classroom chairs should be filled, not slowly becoming empty

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Classroom chairs should be filled, not slowly becoming empty

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When I think about my time in school before college I think about classrooms filled with smiling kids laughing and joking around before class began. Going to my favorite class would always brighten my day because I got to sit next to my best friends and just talk about our weekend plans and the current gossip.
For this weeks encounter I chose to write on an article that talks about immigration enforcement and how it is leaving countless students fearful that one day they will come back and some of their classmates will not be in their chairs because they got deported or even that they themselves or their family will get deported. One thing that really stuck out to me in the article was when the reporter said that a 6th grade student and his mother cannot get healthcare because she is undocumented. Her kidneys are failing and since she cannot get healthcare here she struggles everyday with deciding whether or not she should go back to Mexico to get the healthcare she needs but she fears that if she leaves she will not be able to get back to America to be with her son. I cannot imagine being a mother who moved herself and her son to America for safety and to make a better life for her son, but not be able to get the proper care that I need. No child should ever be in fear that one day when they go to class the classmate they always sit next to is gone because their family got deported late last night. No child should ever be in fear that their parents will get taken away from them.
This article relates back to class today when we talked about equity and immigration in education systems. We talked about how equity is not the same as equality and when we become teachers that we need equity in our classrooms, not equality. Equity is giving each person what they specially need, what accommodates to their needs, while equality is giving everyone the exact same things. Equity is important in classrooms because what works for one student may not work for another students. Equity ties into immigration because if you have a student who you know who's family is here illegally, but for the better, you need to be an advocate for them and you may even need to stay with them after class while their mom works late, or bring them an extra snack because money has been tight at home. Bringing this student a snack lets them participate in snack time with their friends which is equity, everyone gets what they need but in the way it accommodates to their needs. While other students see this students getting 'special unequal treatment', you need to remind them that things you do to help benefit other students may not be things that all students get because certain students need more help than others.

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WASHINGTON - Teachers and educators across the country say President Donald Trump's strict stance on immigration has created palpable fear in the classroom, with students missing classes, letting grades slip and exhibiting emotional and behavioral problems amid fear of losing family to deportation.

The findings were contained in a report released Wednesday by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, which surveyed more than 730 schools in 24 districts in 12 states about the impact of the administration's immigration enforcement measures on teaching and learning.

Researchers found that 64 percent of the 5,400 teachers, administrators and other school personnel who responded said they had observed students who were concerned about immigration issues that may affect them, their families or people they know.

"We have one student who had attempted to slit her wrists because her family has been separated and she wants to be with her mother," one Maryland teacher told researchers, who promised anonymity to respondents. "She literally didn't want to live without her mother."

Another teacher told of checking up on a student who was not eating or talking. The girl's friends said she had come home from the prom "to find her mom deported and never had the chance to say goodbye or anything," according to the report.

Experts elaborated on the findings of the research in a news conference on Wednesday.

The report notes that 88 percent - almost nine in ten - U.S. children with at least one immigrant parent are American citizens. For children under 5, the share goes up to 94 percent, according to research by the Migration Policy Institute.

Patricia Gándara, co-director of Civil Rights Project, said researchers started the survey after increasingly hearing from school personnel about problems in schools stemming from the administration's talk and action on immigration.

The hardest-hit schools are already struggling with achievement gaps and often are the poorest, according to the survey. Although they weren't targeted, 82 percent of the respondents are associated with Title 1 schools - those with high numbers or shares of poor children.

"The schools that are the most vulnerable in this country are also the ones being hit hard with the unintended consequences of this immigration enforcement," Gándara said, "and until we do something about that, those schools are going to continue to suffer."

Schools in the South were most affected. More than one of seven educators in the South and one in eight nationally, reported that students' learning was significantly affected because of their concern over classmates' being deported.

"This is affecting everybody," Gándara said. "Other kids in the classroom, in the school, these are their friends, and their classmates are walking into the classroom and seeing empty chairs."

Justin Minkel, who was Arkansas Teacher of the Year in 2007 and teaches first-graders, said all of his students are immigrants, with some documented and some not. About 99 percent of students in his school are poor, he said.

"There are a lot of heartbreaking cases," he said.

One of his students this year is 6 and his mother can't get health care because she is not here legally. Her kidneys are failing. She struggles daily with whether to go back to Mexico to get care and risk being able to return to her child.

Students feel the effect of the president's rhetoric on immigrants at a "visceral" level, he said. One young student he found crying soon after Trump's election told him she and her mom would have to put their things in a bag that night in case they were forced to leave.

"I always kind of think our job is to help kids live the lives they dream. It goes so far beyond teaching, reading and writing and math. It's making them feel safe," Minkel said. "There is a real feeling of not being safe."

He said the school superintendent has been supportive and has told the district personnel that where the children come from doesn't matter, because "once they walk through the door they are our children."

Lupita Ley Hightower, superintendent at Tolleson Elementary School District in Tolleson, Arizona, said teachers often call her about how to console or counsel students "in crisis" over immigration because she was once undocumented herself.

She said her school has a number of programs to help ease fears, including working with parents to provide information about their rights, connecting students seen as anxious or depressed with an individual "caring adult," training teachers and encouraging children to "time travel" to see themselves in reaching their future dreams. She said they refer to their children as kids at hope, rather than kids at risk.

Her school district is more experienced in dealing with the effects of immigration crackdowns having experienced former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and SB1070, a law the state passed that widened local officials' immigration enforcement powers.

"We really try to create the safest atmosphere in school for parents and the community," Hightower said.

Dan Domenech, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, said the immigration enforcement fallout is being raised at association meetings.

Children come to school in tears, worried that their parents will be taken away and that immigration officers are going to come into the school and arrest them, Domenech said. Children are also dealing with backlash from other students who taunt them, he said, such as chanting "build the wall," which was often heard at Trump's campaign rallies and speeches.

"The atmosphere in school is certainly affected and charged," Domenech said. "Students are very much being impacted by this. They live in fear."

That adds to the litany of issues educators are dealing with, including school shootings and anxiety over loss of health care. Although Congress eventually funded the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, potential cuts to Medicare funding have put about $4 billion in funding for special education in jeopardy, Domenech said.

Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, said at Wednesday's news conference that a second grade teacher from Colorado sought her advice on explaining the behavior of one of her students to his classmates.

"She said one of my students comes to school every day - this is a kindergarten student - with what he calls 'all my special things in case they come to get me.' She said 'How do I explain to the other kindergartners what he is afraid of?'"

She added later, "For the first time in history, the children of our country are afraid of our president ... it's why they are turning to us, it's why they are turning to their teachers, to someone they can trust," she said.

Gándara said the survey found teachers, counselors and administrators are also feeling stress and anxiety because of what their students are facing and the atmosphere they're trying to educate in.

Many respondents said they had students with family members who had been deported and the deportations were known to the entire class and community, which reinforced fears about students' own safety or of their friends.

Educators also said one or both parents of some students have been deported or lost a job because of their immigration status, making things even worse for some students.

"I want to tell them things will be all right, to make them feel better, but I know I cannot truthfully say this," one teacher said in the survey. "Things may not be all right."

Additional findings from the survey include:

Eighty percent of respondents said they had seen behavioral or emotional problems in students as a result of stepped-up immigration enforcement. The problems were usually described as crying, being unable to speak, being distracted or feeling depressed.

A clear majority (57.4 percent) of respondents said they are seeing increased absenteeism, which can affect school funding. Respondents reported students hiding for days while news of raids circulated. By skipping school, some children miss the only meal they may get that day.

More than 60 percent of respondents reported some decline in academic performance in students, although they also reported notable resilience in spite of the circumstances. Teachers reported seeing grades plummet among students who had been high achievers or had been working toward college.

Students are going to work to help support families or take on a missing parent's duties. For example, one fourth-grade teacher in the Northeast told researchers that her student "told me that her mom is teaching her how to make food and feed her baby sister in case the mom is taken away."

More than 85 percent of teachers and administrators reported increased of their own anxiety and stress over what their students' are going through. They also reported a sense of helplessness. One elementary school administrator told the researchers he found himself "lying awake at night over whether I should offer to take temporary custody of a child or children in the event that their parents are deported unexpectedly, and that is emotionally exhausting in an entirely new way."

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Report: Immigration enforcement has students fearful and depressed

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WASHINGTON - Teachers and educators across the country say President Donald Trump's strict stance on immigration has created palpable fear in the classroom, with students missing classes, letting grades slip and exhibiting emotional and behavioral problems amid fear of losing family to deportation.

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"Never Change Who You Are For Someone Else" -Said No Indian Boarding School Ever

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"Never Change Who You Are For Someone Else" -Said No Indian Boarding School Ever

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When thinking of boarding schools I think about my three year experience (10th, 11th, 12th grade) at my boarding school, Culver Academy. My three years at Culver were filled with sports, academics, meeting new friends, traveling every weekend across the country for my hockey games, and many many more amazing memories made with friends that will be a part of my life forever. So, when I first heard "Indian Boarding Schools" Brought up in class today I though, 'No Way! I wonder if the kids had fun like I did!' Boy was I wrong. These Indian boarding schools were horrid. Children were forced to be sent to the boarding schools. The whole idea of these boarding schools were to make the Indian children more American and to learn about the American way of life.
The people running these boarding schools basically wanted to get rid of any way of the Native Indian way of life. They though that the American way of life was just so much better that they were going to force young children, who were not even born as Americans, to become American. The people who ran the boarding schools gave all the children new 'white names', cut off all the long braids any children had, gave them uniforms, got rid of any tribal life the children brought with them, any traditional Native foods were abandoned, and all the children forbidden to speak their Native languages. These boarding schools practically brainwashed the children into becoming American and living the American way of life.
This topic of Indian Boarding Schools related back to class today when talking about colonization. Colonization is the action of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people(Native Americans). The owners of the Indian Boarding schools established control over the Native Americans and let them have practically no say in how they wanted to live or even where they wanted to live now that their land had been settled upon when it was their land first.

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The boarding school experience for Indian children began in 1860 when the Bureau of Indian Affairs established the first Indian boarding school on the Yakima Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. These schools were part of a plan devised by well-intentioned, eastern reformers Herbert Welsh and Henry Pancoast, who also helped establish organizations such as the Board of Indian Commissioners, the Boston Indian Citizenship Association and the Women's National Indian Association.

The goal of these reformers was to use education as a tool to "assimilate" Indian tribes into the mainstream of the "American way of life," a Protestant ideology of the mid-19th century. Indian people would be taught the importance of private property, material wealth and monogamous nuclear families. The reformers assumed that it was necessary to "civilize" Indian people, make them accept white men's beliefs and value systems.

Boarding schools were the ideal instrument for absorbing people and ideologies that stood in the way of manifest destiny. Schools would quickly be able to assimilate Indian youth. The first priority of the boarding schools would be to provide the rudiments of academic education: reading, writing and speaking of the English language. Arithmetic, science, history and the arts would be added to open the possibility of discovering the "self-directing power of thought." Indian youth would be individualized. Religious training in Christianity would be taught. The principles of democratic society, institutions and the political structure would give the students citizenship training. The end goal was to eradicate all vestiges of Indian culture.

By the 1880s, the U.S. operated 60 schools for 6,200 Indian students, including reservation day schools and reservation boarding schools. The reservation day school had the advantage of being relatively inexpensive and caused the least opposition from parents. The reservation boarding school spent half a day teaching English and academics and half a day on industrial training. Regimentation was the order of the day and students spent endless hours marching to and from classes, meals and dormitories. Order, discipline and self-restraint were all prized values of white society.

The boarding schools hoped to produce students that were economically self-sufficient by teaching work skills and instilling values and beliefs of possessive individualism, meaning you care about yourself and what you as a person own. This opposed the basic Indian belief of communal ownership, which held that the land was for all people.
"Kill the Indian, Save the Man"
At this juncture, it was felt that reservation schools were not sufficiently removed from the influences of tribal life. In the eyes of assimilationists, off-reservation boarding schools would be the best hope of changing Indian children into members of the white society. For Col. Richard Henry Pratt, the goal was complete assimilation. In 1879, he established the most well known of the off-reservation boarding schools, the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. As Headmaster of the school for 25 years, he was the single most impacting figure in Indian education during his time.

Pratt's motto was, " Kill the Indian, save the man." Pratt believed that off-reservation schools established in white communities could accomplish this task. By immersing Indians into the mainstream of American life, the "outing" system created by Pratt had students living among white families during the summer. He hoped Indian youths would not return to the reservations but rather become part of the white community. Carlisle was the only off-reservation boarding school built in the East; all others were built in the West.

Carlisle and other off-reservation boarding schools instituted their assault on Native cultural identity by first doing away with all outward signs of tribal life that the children brought with them. The long braids worn by Indian boys were cut off. The children were made to wear standard uniforms. The children were given new "white" names, including surnames, as it was felt this would help when they inherited property. Traditional Native foods were abandoned, forcing students to acquire the food rites of white society, including the use of knives, forks, spoons, napkins and tablecloths. In addition, students were forbidden to speak their Native languages, even to each other. The Carlisle school rewarded those who refrained from speaking their own language; most other boarding schools relied on punishment to achieve this aim.

At the better boarding schools, students could attain a reasonable degree of English literacy in a relatively short period. At other schools, the method of teaching - an object card such as CAT shown to students, then written, pronounced and traced - failed to produce a comprehension of those words that had no equivalent in their Native tongue.

The Indian boarding schools taught history with a definite white bias. Columbus Day was heralded as a banner day in history and a beneficent development in their own race's fortune, as only after discovery did Indians enter the stream of history. Thanksgiving was a holiday to celebrate "good" Indians having aided the brave Pilgrim Fathers. New Year's was a reminder of how white people kept track of time and George Washington's birthday served as a reminder of the Great White Father. On Memorial Day, some students at off-reservation schools were made to decorate the graves of soldiers sent to kill their fathers.

Half of each school day was spent on industrial training. Girls learned to cook, clean, sew, care for poultry and do laundry for the entire institution. Boys learned industrial skills such as blacksmithing, shoemaking or performed manual labor such as farming. Since the schools were required to be as self-sufficient as possible, students did the majority of the work. By 1900, economic practicality became the goal and school curriculum slanted even further toward industrial training while academics languished.

The Carlisle school developed a " placing out system," placing Indian students in the mainstream community for summer or a year at a time where they could learn skills other than farming. While monitored carefully at Carlisle, other outing programs were often exploitive. At the Phoenix Indian School, girls became the major source of domestic labor for white families, boys were placed in seasonal harvest or other jobs unwanted by white or immigrant laborers and the students were unsupervised, learning very little from their outing experiences.

The Carlisle and Phoenix schools also had football teams, and Phoenix had a band that performed at summer parades and festivals. These activities were meant to support the idea that Indian people were capable of competing with whites.

Conversion to Christianity was also deemed essential to the cause. Indian boarding schools were expected to develop a curriculum of religious instruction, placing emphasis on the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes and Psalms. Implanting ideas of sin and a sense of guilt were part of Sunday schools. Christianity governed gender relations at the schools and most schools invested their energy in keeping the sexes apart, in some cases endangering the lives of the students by locking girls in their dormitories at night - meaning they could not get out, even in the case of fire. There were, however, ritualized social activities such as dances and promenades.

Discipline within the Indian boarding schools was severe and generally consisted of confinement, deprivation of privileges, threat of corporal punishment or restriction of diet. In addition to coping with the severe discipline, Indian students were ravaged by disease at boarding schools. Tuberculosis and trachoma ("sore eyes") were the greatest threats. In December of 1899, measles broke out at the Phoenix Indian School, reaching epidemic proportions by January. In its wake, 325 cases of measles, 60 cases of pneumonia, and 9 deaths were recorded in a 10-day period.

Naturally, Indian people resisted the schools in various ways. Sometimes entire villages refused to enroll their children in white men's schools. Indian agents on the reservations normally resorted to withholding rations or sending in agency police to enforce the school policy. In some cases, police were sent onto the reservations to seize children from their parents, whether willing or not. The police would continue to take children until the school was filled, so sometimes orphans were offered up or families would negotiate a family quota. Navajo police officers avoided taking "prime" children and would take children assumed to be less intelligent, those not well cared for or those physically impaired.

Indian parents also banded together to withdraw their children en masse, encouraging runaways and undermining the schools' influence during summer and school breaks. An 1893 court ruling increased pressure to keep Indian children in Boarding schools. It was not until 1978 with the passing of the Indian Child Welfare Act that Native American parents gained the legal right to deny their children's placement in off-reservation schools.

Some Native American parents saw boarding school education for what it was intended to be - the total destruction of Indian culture. Others objected to specific aspects of the education system, the manner of discipline and the drilling. Still others were concerned for their children's health and associated the schools with death. Resentment of the boarding schools was most severe because the schools broke the most sacred and fundamental of all human ties, the parent-child bond.

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Native American History and Culture: Boarding Schools - American Indian Relief Council is now Northern Plains Reservation Aid

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The boarding school experience for Indian children began in 1860 when the Bureau of Indian Affairs established the first boarding school on the Yakima Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. These schools were part of a plan devised by...

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Students should NOT be scared to go to school. 

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Students should NOT be scared to go to school. 

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For this weeks encounter I am choosing to talk about the fear many students now hold when going to school because of recent school shootings.
To start things off I should say that no child should ever be afraid to go to school. Schools are supposed to be a place where you learn and a place that is filled with your best friends and teachers who support you and make you feel safe. Being at school feels like a safe haven to many students who do not have a great at home life, but now how are these students supposed to feel when they hear that a kid shot up his own school and killed kids who he went to class with everyday?
The most recent school shooting in Michigan was the Oxford school shooting. What is most scary about this shooting to me is not only that the shooter was a current student at the school, but that he proceeded to plead not guilty in court. After killing innocent students he stood up at court and said that he was not guilty, knowing he took the lives of multiple classmates.
During our first class on Wednesday we did not talk a whole lot about certain topics but more talked about what we will be doing over the course of the semester. Being a future teacher one thing that I constantly think about is how I am going to keep my students safe. There is the obvious things like going over certain drills and keeping doors locked but in reality how would I protect my students from a real threat? Thinking about this scares me but I want to be a teacher who always makes my students feel safe, and be a teacher who never stops trying to make schools and classrooms a safer place. Safety is currently a huge issue in education and something I strongly care about. I hope in this class we will get the opportunity to talk about current school safety issues and talk about our fears for safety when becoming a teacher.
This relates more back to my TE 102 class when talking about white privilege in schools and in disciplinary cases. Ethan Crumbly was not shot or hurt by police, while many African American people are shot and hurt by police for doing a way less serious crime than a school shooting, or no crime at all.

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Six weeks after the massacre, school shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley pleaded not guilty Wednesday to killing four students at Oxford High School in a rampage that devastated an entire community.

The plea was entered through his lawyer, who said Crumbley would stand mute to the charges and requested a not guilty plea be entered on Crumbley's behalf. Standing mute has the same effect as pleading not guilty.

Crumbley, who is being charged as an adult and remains locked up with no bond, made a brief video appearance in Oakland County Circuit Court, where a judge scheduled a status conference for Jan. 19. The arraignment was held via Zoom, with the 15-year-old suspect looking on from the Oakland County Jail, where he is being held.

The defense had previously asked a lower court judge to transfer the teenager to a youth detention center, though the judge denied the request. Crumbley's lawyers have cited a federal statute that says juveniles held in adult jails - even those charged as adults - cannot be within "sight" or "sound" of adults. That's not possible at the Oakland County Jail, they argued.
More: More: Prosecutor: Oxford school shooting suspect texted mom about 'demons' in the house Oxford school officials accelerated Ethan Crumbley's timetable for murder, lawsuit says
That same statute also requires that a juvenile's incarceration be reevaluated every 30 days, so the argument for removing Ethan Crumbley to a youth detention center will likely come up again.

Three weeks before the massacre, the teenager allegedly brought a bird's head to school in a mason jar filled with yellow liquid and left it on top of a toilet paper dispenser in the boy's bathroom, according to the lawsuit. School officials knew the sophomore had done this, the lawsuit states, but told students and parents there was nothing to worry about.

School officials also knew the teenager showed up with bullets to class on the day before the shooting, the lawsuit alleges - this in addition to researching ammunition on his cellphone that same day. School officials also knew about a gun he had drawn, and a tweet he posted on Twitter on the eve of the shooting: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. See you tomorrow Oxford."

More: Fieger: I deserve to know about headless bird detail in Oxford school shooting case
Wednesday's arraignment comes after new details emerged in a lawsuit about Crumbley's actions in the weeks before the Nov. 30 shooting. The lawsuit seeks to hold the school responsible for the massacre, alleging many missteps were made by multiple school officials who allegedly ignored numerous red flags that Ethan Crumbley was spiraling out of control.

Among those red flags:

Tim Mullins, an attorney for the Oxford School District, declined to comment on the latest allegations in the lawsuit, citing the ongoing criminal case. But he did say that the lawsuit contains "untrue" claims.

"Right now the priority is that justice be done," Mullins said. "The prosecutor has asked me not to comment as to details ... but there are lots of allegations that will be shown to be untrue."

Crumbley is facing terrorism and first-degree murder charges for allegedly opening fire in a school hallway on Nov. 30 with a gun that his parents bought him as an early Christmas present just four days prior.

The teen is accused of killing four people - Hana St. Juliana, 14; Tate Myre, 16; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; and Justin Shilling, 17 - and injuring seven others, including a teacher.

His parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, are facing involuntary manslaughter charges for what prosecutors have described as poor parenting choices that they believe contributed to the four students losing their lives. Prosecutors have accused the couple of ignoring a child who they say was troubled and spiraling out of control. And rather than get their son help, prosecutors have said, they bought him a gun and failed to properly secure it.

James and Jennifer Crumbley also have pleaded not guilty.

Ethan Crumbley was arrested five minutes after the gunfire started when he reportedly surrendered to Oakland County sheriff's deputies who had responded to the shooting. His parents had been called to the school office that morning over what prosecutors have described as troubling behavior: He had drawn a gun in class along with the words: "The thoughts won't stop. Help me."

The parents were told to seek counseling for their son or the school would report his behavior to Child Protective Services within 48 hours, but they refused to take their son home, prosecutors have said. The teen was allowed to return to class with his backpack, which was never checked and which police said they believe contained the weapon used in the deadly attack. Within hours, police said, video evidence from inside the school showed Ethan Crumbley emerging from a bathroom and opening fire with the 9 mm Sig Sauer handgun his parents had bought him.

More: Prosecutor: Oxford school shooting suspect texted mom about 'demons' in the house

According to the 15-year-old's attorney, there's a "definite possibility" that Crumbley could enter a guilty plea down the road.
Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com
"I do think there's a possibility (of a plea)," the teen's lawyer, Paulette Michal Loftin, told Fox 2's Charlie Langton last week. "It is too early. We haven't reviewed all of the discovery yet; there is still some forthcoming. I think it's too early to jump to that phase, but that is a definite possibility."

James and Jennifer Crumbley also have maintained they are not guilty, saying they had no way of knowing their son would use the gun to shoot up his school, and that they had properly secured the gun.

James and Jennifer Crumbley also are being held at the Oakland County Jail, each on a $500,000 bond. The family members, however, are prohibited from communicating with one another.

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Oxford school shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley pleads not guilty at arraignment

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Six weeks after the massacre, school shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley pleaded not guilty Wednesday to killing four students at Oxford High School in a rampage that devastated an entire community. The plea was entered through his lawyer, who said Crumbley would stand mute to the charges and requested a not guilty plea be entered on Crumbley's behalf.