Eliminating Bells...Which Leads To Another of My Ideas: Getting Rid of Cafeteria Seating!

Schools should do away with cafeteria seating and students should eat in the classrooms. This seems inconvenient, but I'm pretty sure it would be very beneficial to students. One reason I say this is because lower-functioning students often do not have appropriate social skills. Violence and gang activity are more prevalent in lower-income neighborhoods. Violence is much more likely to occur when students are in large groups and staff supervision is limited. Eating lunch in the classroom will increase the level of safety for students and staff. It will also help to synchronize the daily schedule.

I know this is easier said than done because now we have to figure out a way to get the lunch from the cafeteria to the students. I have thought up a solution to this. Get the students involved. Let several students from each class take on the responsibility of bringing the classroom lunch from the cafeteria. They can take student orders and be responsible for retrieving the meals. This can be considered job-skill training. Giving responsibility to the students will increase their confidence and self-worth.

It's just an idea, and it may be impossible, but for now it sounds good. Thoughts on this?

Second Issue: Asynchronous Bells

My main overall goal is to lessen the amount of chaos that is present in urban school systems. The first way to do that, which I described in a previous post, is to cap each classroom to a max of 20 students. The second way to do that is to eliminate bells.

Visualize this scenario. It's the middle of the day, I'm teaching an 11th grade English class at a not-so-great public high school, and a bell rings. This bell is not for my students. It is for different students and it is signaling that it is time for them to go to lunch. My class now completely loses concentration as they watch their friends walking by, heading off to social time. Suddenly my students decide that this is the time when they urgently need to use the restroom. They cannot refrain from poking their heads into the hallway to say something to their friends or siblings. I cannot fully regain control of the classroom until the halls have cleared.

Having bells ringing asynchronously is detrimental to student learning, as it presents an unnecessary disturbance. If every bell sounded in the school throughout the day was meant for every student, this would lessen the chaos. I'll take it a step further and propose that bells be eliminated completely. It would take some creativity to pull this off, but I have some recommendations that I will suggest in my next blog to make this idea work.

Cities in Crisis

I found an interesting report on America's graduation rates. It focuses on the most populous cities in the country. It is called Cities in Crisis and is published by America's Promise Alliance. Page 10 gives a chart of the graduation rates for school districts serving the nation's 50 largest cities. The report was recently published and the web address is:
http://www.americaspromise.org/uploadedFiles/AmericasPromiseAlliance/Dropout_Crisis/SWANSONCitiesInCrisis040108.pdf
It shows that there is a pretty huge disparity between the cities and their surrounding metropolitan area. Detroit City School District comes in last with a 24.9% graduation rate. Baltimore City doesn't fare all that much better, with a 34.6% graduation rate. The chart on page 12 of the report shows that the suburban districts of Baltimore have an 81.5% graduation rate. How is it that 34.6% of city kids are successfully graduating while 81.5% of county kids are graduating? We have to figure out a way to do better!

First Issue: Too Many Students Per Classroom

Let me now begin with the first problem that I would like to discuss. There are simply too many students per classroom. The community college I teach at caps enrollment at 20 students per class. This is a fair number and should be applied to middle and high schools.

Before teaching remedial college reading and writing courses, I taught 11th grade English at Woodlawn High. This is an under-acheiving school with a population of 90% African American students. The student population totals at 1,877. I taught an honor's English class first period that had 31 students on the roster. Sometimes we had to ask to borrow a desk or chair from a neighboring classroom. It didn't help that this wing of the building didn't come equipped with an air conditioning system.

When I first started, an administrator went from classroom to classroom, going over the student handbook. She told the students that they weren’t stupid, they just acted stupid. She told them that when other schools looked at their A’s, they saw them as C’s. She also emphasized that the students should not get into fights, and if they do, they definitely should not hit the teachers. Don’t hit the teachers. That point was stressed more than once.

Looking at the quality of my honor students’ work, I can see why the administrator told them their A’s appeared to be C’s to more prestigious schools. Their honors class is the equivalent of an average high school’s, well, average class. What I’m getting at is that the honor students in this particular class really are not that particularly brainy. They may have a stronger desire to do things like go to college or impress their parents than their peers in non-honors classes. This should give the teacher an upper hand. There is one excellent way to ruin the success of this honors class. Pack 31 of these students together in the same room. Yup, that’ll do it.

The solution here is quite simple (I know it is not as simple to implement as it is to figure out). Schools that fail to meet academic standards, such as Woodlawn, should not allow more than 20 students per classroom. While Woodlawn did manage to meet AYP goals for 2008 according to the 2008 Maryland Report Card, they are still only showing 59.6% of students are proficient in reading and 54.8% are proficient in mathematics. I find these percentages to be unacceptable and know schools can do much better.

Students cannot concentrate in a packed classroom. The more students per classroom, the more opportunities the students have to misbehave. Teachers cannot efficiently utilize their time if they are constantly disciplining a large group of students. Placing more than one teacher per classroom is not the answer. When I taught at Woodlawn High, I had an English class that had about 8 IEP (special needs) students. Because these students were integrated into a class with non-IEP students, I had an assistant teacher always in the room with me. We faced a lot of disciplinary issues in the class and ended up dividing the class in half. I took half of the students to another classroom, and had much better results with behavior management.

A chaotic classroom presents unneeded disturbances for teachers and students. It sounds ideal to cap each classroom roster at 20 students. I understand that questions arise. Where will we find the room to accommodate all of the students, now that we will have less kids per classroom? Once we disperse the students, where will we find the money to hire additional teachers to cover new classes that will be created? We cannot stop at these questions and use them as excuses for not changing things. If we do not change things, our schools will not improve.

We must make efficient use of the school building. Classrooms should never be empty unless the school is able to accommodate 20 students per room and still have empty classrooms. If there are not enough rooms to accommodate the kids, then the building must either be expanded or the classrooms redesigned and sectioned off into separate, smaller rooms. If money is distributed wisely amongst the school districts, capping rooms at 20 students should be possible.

How do we find enough teachers without going over the allotted budget? First, as I previously said, we split the teachers up into separate rooms instead of having two teachers in the same room with more than 20 students. Another viable option is to implement a volunteer program. Many classrooms with 20 students will still need additional staff. School districts should partner with local community colleges and four-year colleges to create a volunteer program. School districts should educate the general population on the crisis that urban schools are facing. Students are graduating high school without the ability to read and write, and they need help!

If we push volunteering, I know that many people will step up to help out. College students as well as citizens of the community who are passionate about improving local schools will be happy to help if they are aware of the problems. I will end on this note. I look forward to receiving feedback on these ideas. Any criticisms or suggestions are highly appreciated.

Urban School Systems Aren't Giving Our Kids a Chance

Hello. I have decided to start writing blogs about the dire need for reform in our nation's public schools that serve urban populations. I live in Baltimore and have personally experienced and witnessed firsthand the failures of today's public schools. I worked at Woodlawn High as an English teacher. Those familiar with Baltimore may be aware that this school has a record of very poor achievement and the population is 90% African American. There are so many things that are wrong with this school.

Some people like to say that this urban population does not have the capability to achieve success. These kids cannot be successful because their parents didn't read to them when they were little, their parents didn't speak correct English around the house, their parents didn't have an advanced vocabulary, and their parents didn't teach them appropriate social skills. I disagree with this argument, and instead believe that it is the schools that are failing the kids. I understand that the kids face adversities that are beyond their control, but I also believe that schools can do much more to provide a more effective learning environment.

It is time for parents and community members to address this urgent issue. We cannot rely on school officials, board members, and scholars to adequately fix the horrible mess that our educational system has become. If citizens step it up and begin voicing their opinions and offering solutions, we will begin to see change.

In my future blogs, I plan to address the shortcomings of public school systems and offer my solutions. I invite readers to critique my ideas and express their own original ideas. I am convinced that the reason our educational system is in such bad shape is because the people in charge of our country are not really interested in fixing it. Our middle-class and upper-class students are receiving a half-way decent education. It is our lower-class, poverty stricken students who are being disadvantaged by receiving a very poor education.

Students are graduating high school without being able to read and write. I teach remedial college reading and have a student in my class who cannot pronounce the word absorbed. He says abser-bed. When he reads it like that, he has no clue what the word means. The scary part is that he has a high school diploma. He is a high school graduate. Now let me explain the other scary part. The Baltimore City Public School System is graduating 34.6% of its students on time. That means that the remaining 65.4% are taking longer than 4 years to graduate or are not graduating at all. Those statistics alone make the city schools appear to be in terrible shape. We haven't even taken into account all of the students with diplomas who can't even read well enough to be able to digest a newspaper article. How will these students function in society when they need to do essential tasks such as signing a leasing or purchasing contract?

Something must be done to help these students. The school systems need a major overhaul and I have many ideas that I believe can be successfully implemented. I look forward to sharing my ideas and opinions, and also look forward to receiving readers ideas and suggestions. I am hoping to hear from people across the country, as this is a national issue. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Everyone who contributes will be doing a great service to our country's youth.