It’s Friday, time for the news roundup.
Despite Urgency, New National Tutoring Effort Could Take 6 Months to Ramp Up (The 74)
The 74 recently reported: “With a third pandemic summer underway, the Biden administration’s new push to recruit 250,000 tutors and mentors is getting a late start in helping students recover from academic and social-emotional setbacks. Organizers and experts say it could be 2023 before families and schools see the impact.”
“Working with colleges, large employers like Starbucks and Target, and established nonprofit organizations serving youth should develop the National Partnership for Student Success into the national tutoring corps that experts have been recommending for several years.”
It’s a good thing to see a national tutoring corps become a possibility in this country. I’d recommend those working on the project look to the millions of retired professionals in this country as potential tutors, in addition to the college kids. Retired Americans are an untapped resource when it comes to helping young learners improve their skills in reading, writing, problem-solving, and character.
The bad side of the penny here is how long it will take our government to ramp up these types of services. It seems like it takes too long to get anything going these days.
It’s Time to Rethink the ‘One Teacher, One Classroom’ Model (EducationWeek)
An article in EducationWeek this week reported that “The last few years have taken a toll on our teachers. The COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing cultural divisions, and the Uvalde, Texas massacre all weigh heavily. Morale is at an all-time low. Now is the time to rethink the teaching profession.”
Authors Irene Chen and Stephanie Banchero, both family foundation professionals, write “Perhaps unsurprisingly, some districts are struggling to find teachers. According to federal data collected in January, 44 percent of public schools reported at least one teaching vacancy, and 61 percent identified the pandemic as a cause. Rural and urban districts are having a particularly tough time, especially finding special education and bilingual teachers. Students of color and those from underserved communities are more likely to have uncertified or inexperienced teachers.”
Chen and Banchero call for major reform to teacher staffing when they write “Let’s address this crisis by reenvisioning the traditional school staffing model, which has not changed in generations. We need innovative, differentiated staffing that creatively utilizes educators and plays to their strengths. This means schools must deploy adults to work collaboratively in response to the needs of individual students, rather than asking one teacher to meet the needs of all students in one classroom. This approach can address children’s specific skills gaps, while also diversifying the workforce, retaining the most effective teachers, and extending great teaching.”
I applaud Chen and Banchero’s thinking, but my experience tells me that teacher staffing has been, and will continue to be, on of the “untouchables” when it comes to school reform. Adults like to receive their paychecks, and any adjustment to existing organizational charts sends a threatening message to those teachers who want to keep their jobs.
In my opinion, in order to achieve Chen and Banchero’s goals, the best adult learning leaders will need to be persuaded to leave the traditional system and enter a new system of learning, where their talents will be rewarded handsomely, and those adult learning leaders will experience empowerment unavailable in the schools they currently teach in.
In Vermont schools, a school year like no other scrambles disciplinary practices (VTDigger)
Vermont educators pride themselves as professionals who use “restorative discipline” instead of more traditional disciplinary practices when it comes to their students. But recently, according to Vermont Digger, traditional disciplinary practices have started to return to the Green Mountain State’s public schools.
“For years, Vermont schools have tried to phase out traditional discipline – detention, suspension, visits to the principal’s office – in favor of ‘restorative practices.’
Those practices, intended as a way to address misbehavior without discipline, can include classroom discussions, mediated dialogue between a perpetrator and victim, and alternatives to punishment, such as cleaning up a mess or helping a wronged student.”
“But, as behaviors deteriorated over the 2021-22 school year, staffing shortages left schools with fewer resources than ever to address them – meaning that restorative practices were at times left by the wayside.”
In order for restorative discipline to be successful, the struggling learner must feel that they have supportive adults and peers around them. In the traditional system, this is tough to do, even during non-pandemic years, because of the costs involved in staffing a school this way. Relationships can be built better and faster if our secondary schools would be willing to copy the staffing models employed on our elementary campuses. Learning coaches, instead of content-specific teachers, would be responsible for building strong relationships with young learners to make sure their social and emotional well-being was addressed. Generalist learning coaches would be responsible for general skill-building in reading, writing, problem-solving, and character, whereas specialist learning coaches would address specialized skills like higher math and science, performing arts, and athletics.
3 Ways to Get Students Engaged in Their Learning (EducationWeek)
EducationWeek recently convened a panel of experts for their periodic “Seat at the Table” webinar series. Jonte Lee, a high school science teacher in the D.C. public schools, Ron Myers, a career teacher and principal in Oklahoma and Texas, and Russ Quaglia, an author and researcher studying students’ self-worth, aspirations, and engagement, were the panelists.
The panelists suggested three ways schools could improve student engagement:
- Student voices being the conversation
- Make social-emotional learning a cornerstone
- Use surveys to find out what students need and want
Here’s a challenge for my friends who lead traditional schools. Figure out a way to spend ½ of everyone’s school day (that’s everyone in the school) working on these three strategies. Then, see what your school looks like and feels like moving forward. And, make a promise never to go back to your previous practice.
How many takers do I have?
I’m riding my bike across Iowa next week. I’ll be back August 1st
I hope. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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