Then it goes behind a paywall.
It was written by Caroline Chamberlin Hellman, who teaches remedial writing at City University of New York.
I think you will find it interesting.
Professor Hellman cares about her students.
Here is the conclusion:
All too often we hear the reductive narrative that these students are simply incapable of college-level work. Allow me to be clear: These students have potential. Some didn’t take their placement tests seriously enough, not realizing the repercussions. Some graduated from high schools that emphasized preparation for other types of standardized tests, and so those students had little writing instruction. Some are non-native speakers. Some would probably have passed the initial placement exam had they familiarized themselves with the test format and prepared in advance. And some, it must be acknowledged, will not make it through the class or through college.
Despite the pressures, frustrations, and sometimes feelings of failure, I opt to teach these courses because I believe that if we fail to offer these students a chance, we will have failed at public education. President Obama has spoken about the need to improve access to education, to halt the increasing stagnation of social mobility in the United States. Serving students who are most in need is a crucial component of public education.
The difficult yet uplifting narrative of the remedial-writing course I taught last spring repeats itself, with minor variations, every semester. But those who overcome the myriad challenges of remediation have the opportunity to pursue their degrees. I am thrilled when I glimpse former students in the hallway—a space that has different connotations for them now that they have navigated remediation. Recently I crossed paths with the older veteran who had inspired his classmates to applaud him. “It’s good to see you,” I exclaimed. I meant much more. He nodded, grasping the unspoken import. We shook hands and exchanged news, the hallway bearing witness. Then we parted, off to our respective classes.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is wonderful to see this here. Dr. Hellman is a colleague of mine… and a former office-mate (when I could get into the room through the crowd of students always about her desk).
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I join friend Aaron Barlow in saying Bravo to Dr. Hellman! Would love to teach with both of you. 42 yrs ago I started teaching remedial writing at CUNY and did so for 15 years. In the ’70s, remedial students at my college (Stat Isl Comm Coll/CUNY)were NOT required to take any entry writing exam. We had a non-formal placement procedure. None were flunked into remediation. Each student was free to choose reg comp or remedial writing, choice was not imposed on them via a bogus writing test which amounted to an institutional claim against their rights to be in college. Any student not sure if they would do best in reg comp or basic writing was invited to sit with an English Dept fac member right there at the registration table for a consult. We laid out the differences in the two courses, asked how they did in high school, requested they write a short sample right there about topic of their own choosing, read it, gave advice. This non-insitutional “placement process” left final choice to student, empowerment from the bottom up. First week of class, any student unhappy with choice could switch to the other level without penalty or cost. In that era of mass movements demanding democracy and equality, CUNY had not only Open Admissions but was also tuition-free, an enormous benefit to the working-class students who poured onto campus seeking higher ed. In addition, in those democratic times, remedial students got FULL CREDIT for any remedial class they took, not ZERO credit as it is now in CUNY. Basic writing courses counted as academic credits. Remedial students were also free to take any other first-year intro courses in other depts. like history, art, cinema, anthro, soc., psych, bio, etc.–they were not segregated and quarantined as if they had an infectious disease which could sicken “regular” students. Finally, 1971-1974, all remedial writing classes were taught by full-time faculty, not by overworked, underpaid adjuncts. We all were on campus a lot, available to tutor students in our offices, where students liked to hang out. (One year, some remedial students interested in architecture, built chairs from cardboard and furnished my trailer-office.) 42 yrs of war on CUNY sabotaged the quality of higher education available to our students. remedial and otherwise. Tuition was imposed in 1976; entry tests in writing, reading, and math were standardized and imposed across CUNY in 1978. A long school war opposed these enforced changes, sorry to say the wrong side won. To make remedial writing once again serve the needs of students and teachers, we will have to fight the CUNY Admin for democratic education policy.
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I had a friend who took remedial writing 4 times before he passed it. Plus I tutored him. After 7 years he got a BS degree in Hospitality Management. He only had a 7th grade education and got his GED in prison. Where there’s a will there’s a way. Don’t discourage them.
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Dang, and can she write. Thank you. Yes, pleas don’t give up too early on those that may need modifications, accommodations, and other supports.
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In a discussion about educational policy, I would have started the quote a paragraph before Dr. Ravitch:
Critics pose a simple question: If students cannot write, why should they be in college? My response is that students take remedial writing for three reasons: They were underserved by their previous educational experience; they lack the skills necessary for college-level work; or they did not take their education seriously before college. If we deny students the opportunity to pursue a college degree and potentially rectify any of the above factors, we hold many of them hostage to choices they made (or choices made for them) before their 18th birthdays.
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TE:
I agree. However, I am confused as to what the implications of the story actually are for higher education policy or practice particularly with respect to remediation. For example, were the 5 students who failed graded reasonably or not? Was she able to assess how the papers were graded? Was she surprised by any of those that failed or those that passed? If so, in what ways? How did the accelerated course better prepare the two students who failed and then passed? Should the placement test be changed or positioned differently? Given the level of debt students are assuming, what responsibility, if any, does an academic like Professor Hellman have for clarifying expectations and detailing likely outcomes?
More generally, what changes did Professor Hellman make to how she approached the class as a result of her questioning everything I had done to prepare the students. Because I direct City Tech’s developmental-writing program, I look hard at both my own pass rates and the strengths and weaknesses of our program, while also contemplating the growing national uneasiness with remediation at the college level.
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I proctored the Regents exam at Georgia Tech in 1994 while I was a graduate student. Given that I had time to pass while the undergraduates completed the test, I read their essays as they turned them in. I remember being appalled at the quality of the writing. To be fair, this is primarily a technical and engineering college, and some are not U.S. natives. However, mastery of expression is crucial in any endeavor. Tech is undoubtedly a stellar institution, and students accepted are top of their class. But even then I feared that the deeper education to prepare them was being glossed over.
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Back in the 1980s I attended a lecture by a journalist who had written a memoir about raising a son who would have been labeled remedial today. I can’t remember the father’s name or the title of the book he wrote but I haven’t forgotten his lecture.
He told the audience that after his son started school at age six his son was tested and it was discovered that he had an 80 IQ and was considered severely retarded (this language may be politically incorrect today but it wasn’t back then—I went through something similar when I was seven and my mother was told I was so retarded I would never learn to read or write and then she took things into her own hands but that’s another story I’ve already written about).
Back to that long ago lecture during one authors book tour for his memoir. This family already had an older daughter who was not remedial. The parents decided after much discussion and soul searching that they had to do something for their son so he wouldn’t be marginalized.
What they did was unplug the TV and store it in the garage and replace the hours that were spent watching TV with reading books as a family. The kids rebelled for about six months before the settled down and developed the new routine or reading.
Fast forward to high school graduation where the son took the SAT and scored a perfect grade. The school administration called the father in and told him the boy had to have cheated that there was no way a remedial student should have scored that high. The father protested and said he knew exactly why his son had achieved such a high score on the SAT—because he had read hundreds, if not thousands, of the best books in literature over a period of twelve years with no TV.
But the district’s administration didn’t believe the father and the son had to take the test again in a room alone with two administrators watching him. He scored another perfect SAT.
This young man was accepted to Harvard and at the time of the lecture had already graduated with a degree in engineering.
Lesson learned: we can’t expect any school, private or public, to do everything for every child because the resources just aren’t there, and that’s when the parents are the key. Also turn off the effing TV and replace it with reading books. This is what my wife and I did with our daughter and she’s in her fourth year at Stanford today.
There’s a recent film that could only be propaganda. It was called “Won’t Back Down”. The mother played by Maggie Gyllenhall fights for a charter school to replace the local public school that is depicted as failing. But anyone who knows what’s going on would be shocked at every scene that takes place in the home where the little girl is watching TV and not reading or doing homework while the mother schemes and organized to destroy the public school while she isn’t doing her job as a parent.
That TV should have been off. The daughter should have been sitting at the kitchen table doing homework or on the couch reading books all evening. The mother should have been reading too.
My wife and I went to see that disgusting propaganda film masquerading as entertainment and I was steaming mad.
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Thank you, Lloyd, you are so very right. Turn off the TV, remove the video games and the iPads. Let children earn those technological toys for well spent time reading – and discussing their books. It would make a world of difference.
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Amen.
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When my older son was in high school and still getting mediocre grades, my husband and I decided to unplug the TV and we did. After about six months both he and his younger brother were doing much better in school. The older son went to Stanford and the younger to Harvard. I still can’t believe it!
When the film Won’t Back Down came out, I was curious about it but did not want to spend my money on it. But when it was on cable TV last week, I decided to watch it. I was absolutely SHOCKED when they showed the “good” teacher teaching in an early scene. She sat behind a desk and looked so “burned out” as her students stared at her in a stupor. This was supposed to be the teacher that the main character wanted for her daughter!!!!
These people are clueless.
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I’m sure there were times when I looked just like the Viola Davis character in that scene where she looks all burned out.
But it wasn’t from burn out.
A quarter of the staff of 100 at the high school where I taught were suffering from sick building syndrome and I was one of them—asthma like symptoms, headaches and sinus infections. I’ve been retired from teaching going on nine years and I haven’t had one sinus infection, headache or wheezing attack in that time—knock on wood—but for the last few years that I was still teaching all I had to do was walk in my classroom and a few minutes later the wheezing started. It would only stop several minutes after I went outside and stayed outside.
But teachers should not leave their students alone unless they are stupid.
And I suffered from several sinus infections each school year that cleared up over the Summer, Winter and Spring breaks but returned to plague me as soon as I walked back the classroom.
We only had ten paid sick days a year so we taught loaded with antihistamines—-sinus sprays and pills—that knocked the energy out of us and we slogged through each day no matter how we felt.
It got really bad the year the district decided to spray paint the school during the school day. When the painting crew reached the building where I taught students were throwing up; having asthma attacks, and I had to evacuate my classroom to the library away from the painting. Then the fumes lingered for days.
Whenever we complained to the district they brought in specialists who would inspect and then say there was nothing wrong. That resulted in several law suits filed by some of the teachers who were suffering.
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Of course there are other reasons why a teacher would be lethargic, but in the film, we’re supposed to think that the Viola character was a “good” teacher with unmotivated kids.
In regard to your situation, I’m glad that some teachers sued. Teachers are generally selfless people who sometimes forget that they have the same rights as everyone else. In our country, money talks.
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@Lloyd Lofthouse: so sorry you had to go through that. Just so you know you’re not crazy: same thing here, working in WTC 2 back in the day– recirculated air…
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While an IQ of 80 is not exactly Leibnitzian it is not retarded let alone severely. The average IQ of the world population is about 90.
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The Bell Curve (1994) stated that the average IQ of African Americans was 85, Latinos 89, whites 103, East Asians 106, and Ashkenazi Jews 113.
The author of the lecture I attended was white and I think he was Jewish.
Looking at the average IQ
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Please disregard anything stated in that appallingly racist book.
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Dienne,
From your response, I think you are reacting from political correctness that pretends we are all equal. The evidence points out that, on average, we are not all equal at birth on man levels. We are equal under the law but not on an evolutionary comparison. For instance, the children of Bill Gates are much better off to survive than my children.
I suggest that you read “Living With Evolution or Dying Without it” by K.D. Koratsky. He clearly points out that while average IQ varies by race, each race has individuals who stand equal to the highest IQ of any other race. Average does not indicate being inferior.
Instead, the cause of higher average IQs may have more, as suggested by Koratsky, to do with the challenges to survive that each racial group faces over the centuries. Those who are at risk and survive due to wars, famines, droughts, etc. tend to have an average higher IQ at the end of it all.
In 1976, The Chinese, for instance had survived the Opium Wars starting in the early 19th century; the Taiping Rebellion that saw between 30 – 100 million Chinese killed; the collapse of the Qing Dynasty early in the 20th century; the Japanese invasion during World War II that killed another 30 million; the Civil war between the Communists and Nationalists that killed millions more; Mao’s failed Great Leap Forward that killed millions more and then the horrors of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, etc.
This history may explain why the average IQ of Chinese is higher because those who died were people not equipped to survive.
For example, the Jews faced persecution and prejudiced for centuries including the horrors of the Holocaust leaving the survivors with a average higher IQ because they were better equipped to survive than those with lower IQs who perished.
In addition, Koratsky suggests that the longer a culture or race is at peace without food and water challenges, the lower the average IQ will become because there are no evolutionary challenges to force the IQ higher.
It has nothing to do with racism. It has to do with survival.
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“We are equal under the law but not on an evolutionary comparison. ”
Please leave evolution out of it, Lloyd.
You clearly do not have a clue.
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Oh my…I feel very gifted…Interesting…Never paid attention to the IQ data.. Where did you find this data?
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Never mind as I see your links below..
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Dr. Hellman exemplifies the true meaning of “teacher.” Every child can learn something. It’s all about the effort of the student, the parent, and the teacher.
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I hit the wrong key and posted the comment before I finished.
Looking at the average IQ by race, let’s compare that to on-time, high school graduation and drop-out rates by race in the US grades 9 – 12:
Drop our rates:
2.3% of whites dropout
5.5% of blacks
5% for Latino/Hispanics
1.9% for Asian/Pacific Islander
6.7% for American India/Alaska Native
On-time high school graduation rates:
White completion rate was the highest at above 90% (was 81% 2007-08)
Black was about 85% (was 61.5% 2007-08)
Hispanic was about 65% (was 63.5% 2007-08 school year)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2900934/figure/F1/
I had to look elsewhere for Asians and found this chart from 2007-08 school year showing Asians with a 91.4% on-time graduation rate.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/graduation-rates-by-state-and-race/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
It seems that in a few years there have been some impressive improvements for all racial groups for on-time graduation rates.
In addition, A new report from the Department of Education dated January 23, 2013 shows that high school graduation rates are at their highest level since 1974. According to the report, during the 2009-10 school year, 78.2 percent of high school students nationwide graduated on time, which is a substantial increase from the 73.4 percent recorded in 2005-6. The report shows that graduation rates were up for all ethnic groups in 2010, and that the rate for Hispanic students has jumped almost 10 points since 2006.
A concluding question: Does the average IQ broken down by race have an impact on success in any school and for on-time high school graduation.
Fact: by age 24, more than 90% of Americans—all races combined—-have earned their high school degree or equivalent. Graduation from high school is usually attained late in night classes or community college for those who are either slower or have less support at home where the environment may be dysfunctional at best.
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Lloyd, all that data is in my book, taken from the US department of Education website. Test scores and graduation rates are at their highest point in history, dropout rates at their lowest.
You need not bring IQ into the discussion. It is impossible to make accurate generalizations, as impossible
as it is to know what part of intelligence can be attributed to nature or nurture.
.
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Precisely. Furthermore, we are currently experiencing a revolution in our understanding of environmental effects on gene expression, and this emerging field of epigenetics completely invalidates those studies with identical twins on which the notion of IQ being highly heritable is based. It turns out that the environmental conditions experienced by the mother affect the conditions within her eggs which in turn dramatically affect gene expression which in turn dramatically affects the resulting phenotype. And, of course, that makes complete sense evolutionarily. For complex traits involving multiple genes, one should think of the genotype not as immutable inheritance but, rather, as a set of switches set in response to environmental conditions experienced by the mother. And that explains why one can get dramatic evolutionary change in very short time frames; in other words, epigenetics is an explanation for punctuated equilibria. All this science is relatively new, and it is revolutionary–paradigm shifting–and popular notions about genetics (including the vast literature of pop and pseudo-scientific evolutionary psychology to which The Bell Curve belongs) haven’t caught up with it. See the following report on a recent epigenetics conference for more information:
Click to access Lester%20et%20al%20Annals%20NYAS%202011.pdf
Folks who talk the Bell Curve line about immutable genetic inheritances and high heritability and folks who spout those IQ by race figures are talking antiquated, now-discredited nonsense. But it’s understandable that they still believe this crap because the relevant disconfirming science, here, is very, very recent. Another good current account:
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You answered my question Diane…I totally agree with you….IQ’s do not determine the success of any person…
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Diane is right, IQ alone is not an indicator of future success because SQ (social intelligence) and EQ (emotional intelligence) play a vital role in achievement of any kind. Without a high level of SQ and/or EQ, the odds of someone with a high IQ doing well in life is poor.
However, there is powerful evidence that suggests individuals with a high IQ, SQ and/or EQ who grow up in middle income [or higher] home environments have a much better chance at future economic success as adults than a child who grows up in an poverty because those who come from poverty usually don’t develop a high EQ or SQ due to the stress that often comes with poverty.
But it can also be argued that the schools, if supported properly (which they aren’t), might be able to teach children who live in poverty to raise their EQ and/or SQ. There have been a number of interesting studies that support the fact that EQ and SQ can be taught and learned but usually not in a home environment mired in poverty.
For instance, parents with a low EQ/SQ probably aren’t going to help their children develop a high EQ/SQ and a low EQ/SQ tends to come with poverty—-on average.
There are even promising studies that show that IQ can be improved because the brain, like muscles, can be exercised through intellectual stimulation in a supportive learning environment [too bad the Untied States doesn’t support its public schools and teachers the way they should] but, like muscles, to keep that increase in IQ one must constantly exercise the brain.
I will be writing a post on this topic soon [next few days] that will appear on my Blog with links to the research.
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And the IQ tests are slanted towards white, middle class families, not minority groups. My two younger children, both with learning disabilities, had IQ tests scoring at 106.
We sat with my daughter for one when she was four. Even the psychologist admitted that some of the questions were outdated. One question: What do you find in a bottle? Correct answer: milk (of course, milk was in a bottle when I was little, now it is in a carton or jug) Her incorrect answer: A note (we had just seen a movie where the main character put a note in a bottle while stranded on an island). There were other questions where her honest answers reflected her life, but not the typical response. Question: what do you find on the ground? Her answer: Money (her sisters both had paper routes and collected their pay in envelopes. After tearing open the envelope, sometimes the change would fall to the floor and their little sister would collect the “money”. – I explained to the psychologist – still wrong).
She was retested when she was older and a different psychologist told me, despite her processing issues, she had excellent reasoning skills.
Everything isn’t about IQ.
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Thanks for all you wrote on IQ. There is always a need to bring it into the discussion. While it isn’t immutable it is measurable and should be used as one of several factors in decision making. Calling it racist has the intellectual heft of a feather.
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“. . . it is measurable. . . ”
He, he he ha ha ha ah ha ha ha He, he he ha ha ha ah ha ha ha He, he he ha ha ha ah ha ha ha He, he he ha ha ha ah ha ha ha!!!!!!
SMTOTS!
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Duane, just about everything is measurable but some methods are better than others. It also depends on what you want to believe. It’s easy to deny any facts that don’t fit a preconceived belief system based on a preferred bias.
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Lloyd,
Perhaps “just about everything is measurable” in your thinking, however, believing and saying so doesn’t make it so. I’ll defer to one whose IQ may or may not have been “larger”, “greater” or “????” than mine who said “. . . However, not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
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And it isn’t Einstein whom I am quoting.
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I taught a college remedial writing class in which there were six gentlemen just graduated from the same high school who did not know proper classroom behavior. My department chair visited the class and told me to throw them out. I didn’t. Instead, I made a speech to the whole class about the value of learning how to write well and ended up by telling them if they were not ready for that, then don’t fall over themselves getting out the two doors. The next session, they had changed their seats and their attitudes. At the end of the semester, they wrote creative term papers and were proud of themselves. The next semester, they all registered for my English 10l class ready to go to work, and woe betide anyone who was not. Encouragement and effort carried the day.
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SWEET!! Love it
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I taught a 9th grade ELA class one summer, with an emphasis on writing. The worst student in the class was the only girl, especially crude. I was kind to her, called her sweet heart (something I bet she had never heard before), and allowed her to stay in the class (even though the principal said I could kick her our). She wrote lovely essays and began to respond. The entire class was a challenge, but they all passed and were allowed to move on to their sophomore year. In spite of their, at times, outrageous behaviors, I grew fond of each one. As the English Professor says – encouragement and effort carried the day.
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Encouragement and effort from an educator often make a huge difference…not solving all the students problems, but helping them achieve considerably more than some of them thought possible. Thanks for being that kind of educator.
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A wonderful post.
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Am I wrong? Did they not say that Einstein had problems early in his life with reading?
Too, like many above.
My father needed a lawyer when I was in college. He got one. The lawyer recognized me but I not him. WE have been in high school together. He said he never knew why he did not get kicked out of high school. His grades were terrible. After bumming around for a while after graduation he took a college class, did well, continued on and got his law degree.
This kind of thing happens over and over and over again.
When I was in college – MANY years ago – our prof told us of European schools where, depending on the nation, kids took a test at 6th grade or just above. If they passed it they went into the college prep classes. If not, into the class to learn how to do mechanical work, welding etc. Their future was decided by the one test at this early age.
This is the direction in which we are heading I fear.
AND
all the things the people preceding this have written will be lost. Children no longer children to be nurtured to their highest potential as human beings but mere cogs for the corporate CEOs.
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Gordon:
In England it was called the 11 plus exam. It did set people on a different course: Roughly 25% went to what were called grammar schools. However, at the time less than 10% of the age cohort went to formal tertiary education, i.e., University or Teachers’ Colleges. While all this was happening there was a relatively robust and rigorous non-University technical program that paralleled the non-University training programs for accountants and, believe it or not, solicitors and other specialized roles including nursing and even actuaries. Many of the aerospace engineers who were recruited during the 60s to the States came through these programs. In addition, late bloomers were able to transfer from technical and secondary modern schools to grammar schools. Anybody so inclined could also take national 16 plus exams or O Levels, which were really the stepping stone for University entrance – followed 2 years later by A-levels. Of the 70 or so boys in my school who started with me at age 12 about 25 went on to University or Teachers’ training College straight from school. Tuition was free and there were means tested scholarships for living expenses.
That was then, I am less familiar with the current set up though it is still built around O Levels and A Levels and over 50% of the age cohort are now in some form of higher education. The expansion of numbers has led to fees being charged for tuition and stricter guidelines on grants for living expenses.
Others here may have different experiences and recollections. Please feel free to add or correct. A similar system also operated in other places in Europe.
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Bernie,
At what age do the students take the 11 plus exam?
Thanks in advance,
Duane
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Duane:
If I recall correctly, it was during the school year you turned 11 – which meant that some takers were actually 10 when they took it, while others were 11.
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An excellent point and this—in part—helps explain why so many earn their high school degrees late. The on-time high school graduation rate is in the 70% range but by age 24 more than 90% have earned one. We don’t learn at the same pace. We also have different learning modalities.
Learning modalities are the sensory channels or pathways through which individuals give, receive, and store information. Some individuals learn better by watching; others by listening; some by doing and others from a combination of sensory pathways.
Memory is also tricky. Even though we sleep at night, our brain keeps working. It sorts through short term memory and decides while our body is sleeping what is important and we are unaware of what it keeps and what it deletes. An entire lesson that was taught in history that day could be gone when the child wakes up because to the child, for whatever reason, it wasn’t important enough to focus on as they fell asleep.
And often what a child is thinking before they fall asleep helps dictate those automatic mental functions while sleeping. If the child watched TV all night, then their thoughts will not be focusing on what was taught in class that day. If the child lives in a dysfunctional home with parents who are abusive in some way and/or are alcoholics or drug users that will also interfere with the process.
Recent studies show that negative experiences impact mental functions because we tend to focus on the negative over the positive therefore sabotaging the brains nightly functions during the sleep cycle.
Studies show that children, on average lose, lose 2.6 months of grade level equivalency in mathematics during the summer break and 2 months of reading achievement for low achievers while students from middle income homes experience slight gains in reading performances over the summer because, on average, those students tend to read during the break while low achievers who often live in poverty don’t read.
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Lloyd, I’m not buying it. Watching television before bed does not make you forget what you learned during the day. If that were so, I would not have been one of the top students in my high school.
And reading has it’s place, but that alone is not enough.
All other things equal, the reason inner city students don’t always do well in school is the fact that they lack world experiences. They lack the “glue” necessary to keep the “wallpaper” stuck to the wall.
I was helping a home instruction student do a fun activity for her gym class. The teacher had given her clues to determine the names of Major League Baseball teams. First I did the assignment so I could assist her. I even printed a list of the teams names. She couldn’t do it. She was not familiar with baseball (you’ll be happy to hear that TV was not too important to her and the only channel they seemed to watch was BET). She was not familiar with most of the clues. I made up new clues – it didn’t help. She had never heard of a pirate. She didn’t know what an expo was. She didn’t have a clue about AstroTurf. Given the clue red or white – she couldn’t come up with sox. A marlin? What’s that? Etc. This girl was eighteen years old. Her world was very limited. I think TV might have actually helped open her eyes to other experiences. I don’t know if more reading would have helped – again no glue. And she wasn’t a stupid girl, just ignorant about life outside her little world/neighborhood. And as an aside, I did read with her and she passed the 11th grade Regents Exam in English during the January Regents week. Unfortunately, she didn’t pass the Global, Biology, or Algebra exams we had also studied. So much for literature making a difference.
You can spout all the studies you like. Until you have interacted with them in their homes on a daily basis for weeks at a time, you don’t have a clue.
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Thanks for the spelling corrections with Blume’s name. I had to be somewhere five minutes before I wrote that—my wife was waiting—and was in a rush so I didn’t take the time to check anything leading to what I now see was a rash of typos. Yes, it was Twilight.
Back to the topic: there are always exceptions, and then there are the denialists—for instance the campaign funded by the Koch brothers to deny carbon emissions are contributing to global warming—and those who fall for their propaganda pay no attention to the fact that they own the largest private oil corporation in America and the brothers’ fortunes only benefit from less stringent rules for cleaning the environment. And thanks to the Koch Brothers’ propaganda, millions have lost sight of the fact that air pollution does cause health problems in people. Instead, those same people who believe the Koch tripe become ardent advocates that fight to rid the world of law that lead to cleaner air and water.
If you refuse to accept the mountain of studies focusing on how memory works and the effects of watching too much TV on the brain, then be my guest. I’m sure that you won’t be alone in your beliefs. There are plenty of people out there willing to deny anything even based on one or a few personal experiences.
Of course, once they gets past that denial, Google may help lead them to the research that proves the exception wrong when it comes to the average person. What works for one person, may not work for everyone or even the majority of people. Most reputable students tend to focus on the average of the majority—not the exception.
The latest research on the brain uses imagery that monitors the activity in the brain and that research also supports the earlier theories that TV inhibits the growth of imagination and messes with memory function during sleep. Too much sugar also has a negative effect on memory function—but more so. Even milk products mess with the brain. Studies show that people who consume milk, cheese, etc. leads to fat in the brain that turns rancid just like milk turns rancid when it spoils. The brain is 70% fat but many people feed their bodies the wrong kind of fat.
You mention working with a home instruction student, I’ve been there too but for a much longer period of time. I worked with a girl was couldn’t leave home because she had brain cancer and was recovering from her first surgery. As a teacher working full time for thirty years, I had a number of students I worked with after school who were home bound for one reason or another. Of course in the classroom, I worked with about 6,000 students over that thirty years and due to the stringent credential qualification in California, teachers are required to stay up to date with the latest information that focuses on learning, the brain, and education. If you don’t keep up and provide proof that you are keeping up, your credential expires and you can’t teach.
And I’m sure that if a child who is illiterate or a non-reader watched educational TV programs, that’s better than TV program that are escapist junk to help the child develop a better perspective of the world. When we did watch TV Sunday evenings for about two hours, that’s the only programs our daughter was allowed to watch. My wife taped those programs during the week and we’d fast forward through the commercials.
And I have no problem with audio books. I probably listen to more audio books these days than read from paper.
I think audio books probably stimulate the brain/imagination the same way reading from the page does because we still have to visualize what we are hearing and not seeing on the screen.
If you haven’t read this before, my dyslexia was so severe that after I was tested about age seven, my mother was told by the schools administrators that I would never learn to read and write. With guidance from my teacher that year, my mother learned how to overcome the dyslexia and teach me at home. That same teacher also told my mother to have my eyes checked. My vision was horrible. The world was nothing but a blur until I put on glasses for the first time. I don’t wear those thick glasses anymore. After I retired, I had laser surgery and now have better than 20-20 vision
You may also want to look up James Bryan Ellison—we taught at the same high school, and I understand he’s still there teaching art. His story puts my experience of overcoming dyslexia and learning to read and write to shame. Jim says, ” My mother taught me two important things; a disability is not an excuse but a reason to try harder.” Click the next link for the sanitized version of his story.
http://www.nogaleshs.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=160496&type=u
Jim and I swapped stories of overcoming the learning disabilities we had as children and my story is nothing compared to his.
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Lloyd – back again.
Your personal story, as well as that of your friend, is inspirational. We all have our crosses to bear, some heavier than others.
I was an excellent student in high school and college. My oldest once lamented that I didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, plus I was an A student. How could she live up to a role model like me (or her father).
I told my second child about your rules for your daughter. Now my kids thought I was strict, some if my oldest’s friends even told her to run away from home. But I was a lot less controlling than you. Anyway, she said that with or without your television rules, your daughter still would have excelled. And I agree.
So, about your television theory. If that were true I would be an idiot (perhaps I am, but I wasn’t in my school years). I was a television baby. I loved TV and watched all the shows. If your theory is true,I wouldn’t have been an A+ student. I also love dairy, especially cheese. When I was little, I preferred a dish of sour cream and cut up banana with sugar sprinkled on top. Sometimes I ordered it when we went out for ice cream. Oops, my brain must be full of crap.
I’m not saying I’m a genius, but I did very well on tests. The key is to pay attention in class, go over your notes to make sure you understand the subject, do the assigned readings and problems, and look over the content before the test. Voila! Not rocket science. No need to eat special foods or give up television. There’s a time and place for everything. Life is about moderation. (In fact, sometimes I think that blogging is becoming too much of an obsession which I need to control).
I have taken numerous inservices and gone to various workshops. That doesn’t mean I accept everything that’s written or is told to me. Just because you say it’s so, doesn’t make it so. I don’t care who you are. Even Einstein made mistakes. I try to see life for what it is, based on my own judgement and experiences.
I also worked with thousands of children over my thirty seven years of teaching. My home instruction was of shorter duration – six years, but I got a good peak into the lives of my students over the two to six months I spent with them. It has been an honor and a privilege to have touched so many lives as they, too, have touched mine.
In the end, even though I reject much of what you say, I respectfully agree to disagree on such topics and wish you well.
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I forgot to mention that I often go to the theater to see films and we usually went as a family when our daughter was growing up. Don’t forget, she got to watch taped TV educational programs for about two hours a week in addition to an outing to the theater about once a week.
Then there were also the VHS/DVD movies. We watched at least one of those at home each week too Friday or Saturday night.
But she didn’t have her own TV and didn’t get to sit around watching hours of idiotic TV daily as the average kid does.
As for milk, I was raised drinking milk and eating cheese. Loved it. Then I quit in 1982 and a lot of health problems I was dealing with went away. Just vanished like a magic act.
My wife drinks milk and eats yogurt but I urge her to only consume organic dairy—since I do most of the food shopping, I buy only organic. It costs more but is a lot safer.
If the dairy products aren’t organic, the odds are that the milk, yogurt, ice cream, etc. are loaded with antibiotics and growth hormones to boost production. In fact, most cows that do not produce organic products are fed corn and that changes the type of fat they produce—an unhealthy fat.
Half of the antibiotics produced in the US are fed to cattle that do not produce organic products.
Grass fed cattle who produce organic products usually means a healthier food source.
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Antibiotic use in our food supply is another abuse fostered by our government.. A valid point.
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Well said!
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Unfortunately, many AIS and remediation courses have been replaced with test prep. Children learn at their own pace regardless of what a curriculum calendar states. We need to give them back their dignity and allow them to make progress one step at a time.
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I always wish my special education director is reading this blog.
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YES!
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Yes!! and Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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“Give them back their dignity”…..Love that thought schoolgal!!!!
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Awesome post. Thanks for sharing. We all deserve second, third, and fourth chances. I know I am only successful due to the all the chances I was given. 🙂
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Today we tested for 8 hours for our benchmarks. THEN we did two hours of night school only focused on writing, until 7 pm, to prepare for the expository writing test for 9th grade that 84% of the state did not pass last year. They need to pass it to graduate high school. Several of my kids were socially promoted and/or are newcomers who have been in the country for about 3 years. One just got out of the newcomer center with barely the knowledge to write a paragraph. The day
before their ELA test with me many were at school until 7 pm for math tutoring. None of us can take this pace anymore. Writing is not something that an DSL student masters in a year or two. I also teach a language as a certified instructor and I understand their dilemma: a timed, “deeply thought” essay in another language is hard to pull off…much less two of them, plus other writing tasks plus all the reading in 5 hours. I don’t think any of us can handle this pressure for much longer. I had a 90% pass on the benchmark and all I heard was that my advanced scores were down (as were the whole districts….). I am so frustrated!
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I know what you are going through which is precisely why hundreds and hundreds of teachers have retired early or retired at 49-50……..
They can not get excited about going into the classroom. Some have told me they would rather drive a truck…work at Walmart…etc…
Some have expressed to me that they get physically sick when they even think of returning to the classroom…..The excitement of teaching has completely disappeared and replaced with a Killing Stress Cloud…and Stress does kill a person….
You are not a Teacher anymore………You are a Tester and a scripted Test Prepper……
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Since an IQ score is no longer seen as some immutable label of intellectual ability, our reliance on it to rank individuals is irresponsible. Test bias, stress factors, socioeconomic background, cultural heritage, second language issues, socio-emotional development, disability effects,… all play a role in an individual’s performance at any one time. Change in this conglomeration of factors can change the score. What we can do and may accomplish is not set in stone nor ever defined by a test score. Thank goodness there are teachers like Professor Hellman who recognize that potential is hard to define without that face to face interaction between a teacher and student and even then may only become clear over time.
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2old2teach:
Where does the IQ issue come in? I still am unsure about Hellman’s position on remediation.
If somebody is paying their own way, they obviously can take the time to develop their potential – whatever that is. But at what point does the time spent and the opportunity cost make such endeavors inefficient and counterproductive? Many have said here that college readiness is not an appropriate benchmark. Yet in reactions to this essay many appear to be accepting exactly that benchmark.
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My point is that our ability to predict what will happen to any one individual is limited, and while we can make recommendations, in the end, it is an individual decision and, in many instances, outcome is dependent on individual determination and the social support they have. As a special education teacher, I have had to rein in unrealistic expectations. It was not easy to redirect a student without destroying his/her belief in him/herself. It is never an easy decision and one I did not make without a wealth of information behind me. There were, however, many more instances where the ultimate path of a student was going to depend on their determination to follow a certain course. They would need remedial help along the way if they chose to further their education on either a vocational or academic path. Determining the cost is difficult, but probably less than having them dependent on minimum wage employment and/or the social safety net, such as it is.
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Diversity..Individuality…..has been thrown out of the Education Equation…..This is disheartening and it is WRONG.. We are dealing with HUMANS ……
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I love this post. It makes me wish I could be a remedial writing teacher…
My youngest bro graduated hs w/mediocre grades in the ’80’s, took courses w/the local community college in butchering et al culinary courses– while working at a Wendy’s. He loved to eat & loved to cook. He was lucky to have a grandfather willing to pay his way thro the CIA in Poughkeepsie NY.
But what he really wanted was a Hotel degree from Cornell (meanwhile working at a local French restaurant). He audited courses & was denied admission twice. (Meanwhile he’d met & married a French gal thro work at a French restaurant, & learned French thro’ a Cornell summer course…) Finally he submitted a formal proposal & was admitted at age 28. The rest is history. He’s a Napa Valley wine-estate man, makes more $ than anyone else in the family…
There are these kids who are late bloomers for whatever reason. Kudos to Ms Hellman & her ilk for paying it forward.
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Passion for what you do, is one of the keys to a happy life. I was watching a stonemason repair an 18th Century foundation on This Old House this evening. It was really hard work with a lot of challenges and puzzles, but boy he looked like he was having a hell of a good time. I would hire him in a second.
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You said a great deal, there, Bernie! Absolutely!
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Ditto Bernie!!! Got to aim for that Passion…and we need to put it back into the field of education……
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Great Story!!!!
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Great Story…I think I posted it in the wrong spot..or did I?
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Thank you for all these stories, I’ve too witnessed prior remedial students/special education students requiring continued support.
If I have to listen to one more admin say ” well if they’re not getting it by now… ”
As teachers, we’re now being asked where/how far we think our kindergarteners will be going. Sad, what’s happening to all of public education, but special education is taking a big hit and I grieve nightly for it’s disappearing act.
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I love the fairy godmother analogy.
When I was little, I used to watch Romper Room. There was a Miss Ellen who taught us right from wrong – be a Do-be not a Don’t-be. And she had a magic mirror which she used to look out into the world to spot us in our homes. I waited each day, hoping she would see me in her magic mirror.
Then I grew up and became that Miss Ellen. I wanted each child to realize that I had spotted them in the magic mirror. Many of them realized I valued them, not just as students, but as unique individuals who I accepted, flaws and all.
My career has given me great joy and my wish is for all children to be seen through the eyes of the Magic Mirror.
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An eloquent & moving essay about a very important subject. This statement notes research that of students entering 2 year colleges who took a remedial course, only 25% earned a 2 year degree within 8 years:
Click to access STATEMENTCorePrinciples.pdf
I’ve traced the study cited back to the original source, and that’s what the study found.
Seems like we should be trying hard to reduce the number of youngsters who take these courses. Helping young people understand that graduating from high school does not necessarily mean you have the skills than many 2 & 4 year colleges seek is part of what needs to be done.
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Cal Poly University at Pomona held a conference (I think it was in the 1990s) with the English teachers of all the high schools in the region that fed students to the university and we were told that more than half of all entering freshman weren’t ready for college work and had to take remedial English/writing classes at the university—classes that would not count toward a BA.
Cal Poly had five levels of these remedial classes. Based on an entrance exam that included writing an essay, students were placed in the level that fit them. Level five was for students who were in the most need of help.
From that conference came writing across the curriculum at all of those high schools. It was agreed that we couldn’t get these kids to read on their own outside of school so the focus was on what we could do while the kids were in school and having every class add a reading/writing element was the result.
Studies show that writing increases literacy skills as much as reading does. Beyond that, there wasn’t much we as teachers could do. Once the kids go home, we lose any control over what they do.
And surveys and studies by the media to discover the habits of consumers have found that outside of school kids read, on average, less than thirty minutes but watch several hours of TV daily; spend too much time texting, playing video games, listening to music, social networking, hanging out with friends—an average of ten hours a day.
Do the math. There are twenty-four hours in a day. The average kid spends maybe five or six hours in school. That leaves 18/19 hours. Subtract ten and we have eight or nine left. We could assume that time is spent sleeping, but that’s wrong, because other studies find that kids are not sleeping the number of hours they need so they may function mentally and physically the next day in school. In fact, kids are staying up late watching TV, social networking, playing video games.
For instance, our daughter—who had to go to bed before ten every day—resented the fact that she couldn’t stay up until two or three AM like all of her high school friends did. She also resented the fact that her friends had smart phones and spent a lot of time texting and she didn’t have a phone. In addition, our daughter wasn’t allowed to watch any TV except for about two hours on Sunday and we watched as a family and controlled what we watched. She had no say. She resented that too because she was left out of my conversations at school with her friends because those conversations were focused on TV programs that she never saw.
Several times through the years, daughter exploded at her mother saying she hated her. Three times during her k-12 years she went off to a week long summer camp and came back resenting us even more after having spent a week with her spoiled peers who had the total freedom to do whatever they wanted outside of school—that freedom included not doing homework or reading school assignments because there was no time for such boring tasks.
But none of her friends were accepted to a top university like Stanford where our daughter is now in her fourth year, and our daughter needed no remedial English/writing classes. As a child and teen, instead of TV, she had to read books for fun and we visited the library weekly.
In addition, we had an essay writing curriculum at home where I went online and downloaded the prompts for all the SAT essays that daughter had to write and then revise until they were acceptable. The added at-home essay writing started in her freshman year in high school and she wrote about fifty of those essays by the time she graduated from HS with a 4.65 GPA—straight A’s all the way from 3rd grade.
To make sure daughter ate a nutritious breakfast designed to feed the brain, I got up early every morning and made it for her. We ate dinner as a family. We tool walks as a family. We traveled as a family. Studies show that the average parent in America spends less than three minutes a week in meaningful conversation with their children. We spent a half our or more daily talking to our daughter in meaningful conversation.
And many of the parents of her high school peers told our daughter that they felt sorry for her because she was being abused by such mean parents. One of those parents even told us that to our face.
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Lloyd:
Good for you, your wife and your daughter.
Two things struck me as I read your story. First the structure, discipline and focus you created is very much what I would expect from an athletic coach who wants to ensure that the students maximize their athletic capabilities. Of course, intellectual capabilities have a much longer half-life and life-long rate of return than physical capabilities. It is a pity more parents do not follow suit.
Second, have you ever asked your daughter how she would raise her own children? If so, what did she say?
One final thought since I know from your blog that you have traced your ancestry. Are you related to the late great English football player, Nat Lofthouse? It was he who scored two goals in the 1958 FA Cup Final that deprived my team – Manchester United – of a miraculous win after the terrible Munich disaster that killed many of United’s players. Despite that, he was an outstanding player for Bolton Wanderers and England.
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All I know about my ancestry—according to my father who’s been dead for more than twenty years—is that we are distantly related to the Lord Lofthouse in the English parliament and the Lofthouse family that once owned Lofthouse’s Fisherman’s friend, a really nasty cough-drop—the original recipe—that works like non other.
It’s so horrible that while you are waiting for it to dissolve in your mouth, you forget your sick. It helps to use it every time you get a cold or sinus infection to get used to it. That is if you survive the first experience.
The Lofthouse family has roots going back to the time of King Alfred the Great, more than a thousand years. I understand that there’s even a village in England called Lofthouse that once belonged to the Earl of Lofthouse—I don’t know if that last part is true. The Earl part.
I do know that there are a lot of Lofthouses in Ireland but that’s not because we are originally from Ireland. A Lord Lofthouse was once the Governor General of Ireland when the British Empire still ruled that entire island. I think he may have played around at a time when the British aristocracy had the power to bed any women they wanted.
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“Second, have you ever asked your daughter how she would raise her own children? If so, what did she say?”
Sorry, I forgot to answer the question.
From a few conversations on this topic, I think our daughter may be a tough parent—similar to Amy Chua of “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” infamy. Regardless of all the criticism heaped on Chua, it is obvious that she loves her daughters and the family spent a lot of quality time together.
As she has matured she has come out and told us that she now understands why we did what we did and she wants to be a stay-at-home mother if possible to make sure she is there for her kids as they grow up.
Even though I went off to work to teach 180 days of each year, my wife was at home working and Anchee is a successful author with her work translated into more than thirty languages. She walked our daughter to school every day and was there waiting outside the gate when school ended to walk home with her. This practice didn’t end until Lauryann asked us to stop half way through the ninth grade school year. Her friends were making fun of her because her parents walked her to school. By ninth grade I was retired and joined the daily walk to and from school. Her friends made fun of that too because I have a head full of white hair. They asked why her grandfather was walking her to school, but my hair started to turn white in Vietnam when I was nineteen. It’s genetic. My mother had a head full of white hair by the time she was in her thirties.
Until she has children there is no way to tell what kind of parent she will be but she can be tough when she wants to be. That toughness displayed itself when she took up Pole Vaulting as her sport in high school and catapulted herself [literally] to the top five girls in her age group in the State of California breaking league records in competitions. Once she broke the Northcoast league record and in the next jump broke her own new record.
She also had a former U.S. Marine help raise her and she can cuss and spit like a Marine—something that started when she was seven—that got me into a lot of trouble with my wife.
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Lloyd –
I had four children. We had rules, we ate together as a family, they did their homework, I provided them amazing experiences outside of school, and my daughters all graduated from college (not Stanford, but a decent college). Plus, I let them watch TV (we watched it together) and play video games (I sucked at them, but I took my turn).
Although your stringent rules were in the best interest of your child, in some ways you did her a dis service. Yes, academics are important, but so is feeling a sense of belonging in your peer group. I can understand your daughter’s angst as she explained why she could not be a part of the culture of other teens.
My father died when I was young and I was one of four children. We didn’t have much money, yet I attended an upscale high school. When the TV broke, we went without. We had no car and I rarely got to hear the popular music. I didn’t own the right clothes. I was an excellent student, with or without television or rock or style, but I had a hard time fitting in with my peers. I would have given anything to be accepted. It is hard enough to be a teenager, without feeling like an outcast. I just hope your daughter was not mocked, as I was, for never fitting in with the others.
That us why the parent chastised you. I know you did what you felt was right and provided your daughter with some wonderful experiences. I just wish you could have found a happy medium so she could have been a part of the best of both worlds.
(An aside: My husband has anxiety issues so we have had a cell phone since the mid eighties. It can be a useful tool – even for teens. I like the fact they can contact me if there is a problem – and there have been issues over the years.)
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What I shared is not the whole story. Our daughter was involved in academic decathlon; pole vault; some science competition thing; ballet; ran for student body office and won, and she had tons of friends. In fact, she’s a super extrovert. Her school days starting in 10th grade often started an hour or more before school and ended at 8 PM. That was high school. Between the end of school and pole vault practice she often volunteered in the library to tutor kids who needed help in just about any subject.
Take a walk with her on campus, and just about everyone we see says high to her by name. That was true at the high school and at Stanford. She graduated from high school a scholar athlete. My advice to her was to take that route because then she would have a better chance at getting into a top university.
She may have gone without a mobile phone, video games, a TV and internet connection in her bedroom, but she read books for fun. She loves the Lord of the Rings and read it three times—saw the movie probably more than three times. She even introduced me to that vampire human love story that sold millions of books and then was made into four films. Can’t think of the name now.
There are other choices to fill your life with that offer a better quality of life besides watching TV, testing, playing video games, etc.
She also stays in contact with a huge number of teachers going back to third grade. She’s friends with former grade school principals. In place of TV, she made lots of friends of all ages. She the most social person I’ve ever known.
For instance, one time when she was nine or ten we went to a literary festival held in the Florida Keys near where Hemingway used to live, and she was just as social with Pulitzer Prize winning authors, etc. By ten she’d read most of their books and the classics and could hold her own in a conversation with any of them talkign about plot, theme characterization. She met Judy Bloom and charmed her too.
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Lloyd – FYI: it’s Judy Blume, not Bloom, and the book with the vampire love story was Twilight.
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Lloyd, you daughter sounds like a remarkable young lady. She would have been incredible, with or without your restrictions.
I was also an avid reader, but my father would not allow me to read comic books (which his friends wrote and I could have gotten for free). He died when I was nine – and, I’m ashamed to say, I went out and bought two comic books in rebellion. I still read good literature, but an occasional comic book allowed me to keep up with the current pop culture without harming my education.
I’m sure your daughter has an amazing career path ahead of her, no matter what direction she chooses. Being “people smart” and having the degree of showmanship and talent necessary to be an athlete scholar can only enhance her life. You have reason to be proud.
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Lloyd –
I have one brief comment.
I raised three beautiful daughters and a handsome son (not just my opinion, but those of outsiders).
You are lucky that television was your only issue to fret about. Television was the least of my worries during their teen years.
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The teen years are a challenge for most parents—more so with sons than daughters, on average. It’s even worse when the parents are fighting over how to raise the kids.
For instance, I have an older son from a previous marriage (his mother and I were married before I left the Marines—we divorced a decade later). I almost seventy. That’s means I’ve lived more life than most people.
Today my son is almost 40 and to say that my parenting style clashed with his mother’s would be an understatement. I’m a tiger parent. She was a self-esteem boosting parent.
She won physically custody—-as usual in the US—and she constantly praised him and allowed him to barely pass his academic classes. I know there were drugs in the home after she remarried, because I saw the evidence when I came to pick him up for my weekends with him.
My mother, who was still alive, urged me to take him to Disneyland and have fun with him. I refused. Instead, he did homework while I usually was correcting my student’s work or he helped me with chores around the house or in the yard.
If he said he didn’t have homework, his only option was to read a book. The TV stayed off. So, he read a lot of books. At home with his mother, the TV was seldom off.
During his childhood, there was an investigation for child abuse to determine if his drug using, unemployed step-father beat him with a belt. I was ready to step in and fight for custody if the investigation found the allegations were true but they didn’t prove the child abuse, and the cost to go to court was more than I could afford so my son stayed with his mother who was a hard drinker; smoker and probably smoked the dope his step-father smoked and sold on the side. I did see a lawyer and he told me it would cost thousands and we’d probably lose because the courts tended to side with the mother no matter what the lifestyle was like in the home. That was about thirty years ago.
Out of anger after the investigation that was caused by one of my son’s public school teachers reporting the suspected child abuse, my former wife pulled our son out of that public school district and placed him in a private school. A few months later, the private school threw him out due to the class disruptions he caused and my ex called and asked if I could get him into the school district where I taught. By then, my son was in 8th grade. I agreed but only if she stepped aside and let me be in charge of his education 100%. The self-esteem obsessed mother agreed and the tiger father stepped in.
But several years later she broke that agreement. Because she had physical custody granted to her by the courts during the divorce, she had the final say, by law. There was nothing I could do but refuse to pick him up and drive him to school.
Before that moment, for several years, I went out of my way to pick him up at his mother’s house and drive him to school and then drive him home. He was attending the same schools where I taught—schools were surrounded by poverty and violent street gangs that today are considered so-called failing schools by the critics of public education and Washington DC.
During those years in the evenings, his mother would call and ask me to tell him to do his homeowner because he refused when she tried to make him. So, I would get on the phone with him and tell him to do his homework. Then he would break down in tears. When I picked him up in the morning, he had to show me he did the homework or I wouldn’t’ drive him to school. His mother would have to drive him. She only had to drive him a few times. But she never could get him do to the homework without threatening to call me or call.
I handpicked his teachers—the toughest ones. all tiger teachers like me, and had him meet daily after school with the best school counselor selected by me.
Everything improved until his mother started to overrule my decisions regarding the fact that he had to earn a C or better in his academic classes to stay in chorus and drama, the classes he loved most.
A few years later when he was in his third year at the high school (after he lost his Honors classes because he let the grades drop below the requirement to stay in those classes and I pulled him out of drama and chorus), his mother broke our agreement that I would be in charge of his education and she had to pull him out of the school (Nogales High School where I taught—I was never one of his teachers) where he had been improving and then put him back in the public school district she had yanked him out of after the child abuse investigation—a district that wasn’t mired in poverty with schools surrounded by street gangs.
Today, Claremont High School has only 7.37% English learners and 29.6% are socioeconomically disadvantaged. My son barely graduated on-time from that high school with less than a 1.0 GPA.
His GPA was almost twice as high at Nogales, and he qualified to get into those Honors classes he later lost. His mother never went beyond high school but she was an honors student in high school with a tough father who made sure she earned high grades.
She rebelled after graduation and refused to go to college. Instead, she went to work as a teller in a bank and eventually become a secretary and I have no problems with that. She had a steady job and stayed out of poverty after we divorced. I never missed a child support payment even though I didn’t approve of how she spent the money. My son’s step father was out of work more than he was in work so that child support helped support him. That never sat well with me.
Anway, Nogales High School in Rowland Unified, where I taught—for a comparison—currently has 25% of its students as English learners and 75% are socioeconomically disadvantaged.
But my son was improving in that school environment because his teachers were doing their jobs—-teaching and his parent, this SOB tiger father, was doing his job too. The reason he earned so many low grades is because he wasn’t doing his job—learning.
When schools end up on the so-called fail list, it’s usually because of parents—not the teachers.
Even after the divorce when my son was three, his mother continued to practice what I call self-esteem boosting parenting—meaning that her focus was to let the kid feel good and have fun. If he wasn’t happy, give him what he wanted. She did that often and he had a lot of fun as a child that didn’t include homework or studying.
My son barely graduated from Claremont high school and he didn’t go to college.
Today, almost forty, he’s a bartender in Las Vegas—I think—because it’s a challenge to keep up with where he lives. He’s like a gypsy moving from city to city and state to state. I know that he went through rehab for drinking or drugs at least once because he wrote about it on his Facebook page.
And you are right. Once our children grow up, its their life to do with as they want and there is very little a parent can do to change that no matter how destructive the child is with their own life.
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Too bad your son couldn’t internalize your values. Sounds like his mom was trying to compensate for his situation with his step dad. Again, everything in moderation – on both sides.
At least your son is self supporting and functional. Lots of kids today live that nomadic lifestyle. My four have stayed in the Buffalo area and we meet often as a family. The two younger are still finding their way. They’ve all had all sorts of jobs up until this point in their careers. I think that is a good thing, but I hope the older two stay put since they both have excellent jobs.
I hope you keep the lines of communication open with your son and accept who he is, as he is, and continue to love, not judge. He has had a tough life in many ways.
Best wishes for your continued health and long life. And keep blogging.
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Thank you. I think our children start to decide their own path in life about the time they reach adolescence. If parents keep an open line of communication with them early on, maybe that will help forge a mature relationship where they stay in touch.
We have a neighbor who seems to have that sort of relationship with her daughter and son—both are college educated and both have good jobs. The son earned a PhD in alternative sources of energy; the daughter earned her degree in fashion and she works for a large department store chain as a clothing (fashion) buyer. But I’m not so sure how secure the daughter’s job is because the chain is Sears.
The mother once told me how she raised her two children and she said she let them make their own decisions: picking clothes, etc.
But, along that path, the mother was always in charge of what the choices were. She didn’t let them make all the decisions without help. She offered a list of choices for her children to choose from and they could only choose from that list. For instance, when it came to clothing, the mother offered them the choices she had picked instead of letting them buy what was the most popular clothing worn at school by the other kids. Sort of like: “Here are five shirts I can live with, which one do you want.”
After they were in their teens, she stopped offering the list of choices but by then their values were pretty much formed from within the family and not from TV or other kids.
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A wise mom. She trained her children well.
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Now, I get to the real reason I wanted to respond to this site – my son.
OK, he was excited to go to a community college after he passed his GED. Yes, he’s dyslexic, and yes, his writing has spelling and grammatical errors (his thoughts, actually, are quite complex), but he wants to cook, not be a writer.
He worked in a restaurant. He could follow recipes, he could complete the orders for items needed the next day, he knew the ingredients and what they were used for, he could manage the entire restaurant, and yet, since he couldn’t write well enough, he couldn’t take the core courses necessary for a culinary degree.
What nonsense. Let him cook, then add in the additional coursework necessary for the degree. He tried it out and became discouraged, dropping three of the five classes which supported the curriculum or re mediated. He completed the other two, but only the computer component. Going on campus had become a chore.
There must be institutions out there which are hands on instead of reading and writing. I’m sure there are others like my son who have something to offer, but can’t get their foot in the door. Often, it’s not even due to ability, it’s the structure which does them in.
If you aren’t “book smart” and aren’t the traditional “good student” then higher education will be a mill stone, not a path to nirvana. I loved college, my three daughters graduated, one who had an iep throughout high school, yet my son just did not fit into the model.
And Lloyd, he was not much of a television watcher – preferring educational programs to fluff. And, although he couldn’t read, I read to him, plus we were avid listeners to books on tape. Just because he couldn’t read the age appropriate books, didn’t mean he couldn’t experience them in other ways. And now he can read – thanks to exceptional teachers, and email/texting which helped him with his writing. He’s good enough and smart enough, and people honestly like him, but, for some reason, higher education, with its stringent rules, has shut him out.
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Ellen, I can’t speak about New York, where I think you live. But in many states, publicly funded 2 year colleges will admit students who don’t have strong academic skills. And some of the courses that they offer don’t rely on really strong reading skills.
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It was the fact that he couldn’t take the real cooking classes until he passed the writing test, that bugs me. Those were the courses which interested him. Once he started, I’m sure the rest would have followed. Instead he got discouraged and quit trying.
This was at Erie Community College in NYS
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Sorry to hear this.
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Try the local community college. When I was discharged from the Marines in 1968, that’s where I started. I spent two years in a community college where there are two tracks: academic and vocational. The vocational tracks lead to certificate of completion in hundreds of vocational skills.
Those two years in community college were the most difficult years I had in college, because I had to learn how to be a good student. To give you an idea of what kind of student I was in high school, I graduated with a GPA that was less than 1.0. I cut a lot of classes and barely managed to qualify to graduate on time. Instead of doing school work, I was reading an average of two books a day and working a part time job washing dishes thirty hours a week. I think most of my high school teachers passed me with a D – because I was warming a seat in the class, because I know for a fact that I didn’t do most of the work. Then there is the fact that maybe the felt sorry for me because my student records probably had a report that I was so retarded I would never learn to read. LOL
When I left the community college for a four year university, my GPA was about 2.5.
But in 1973, after spending three more years in college and changing my major twice, with financial help from the GI Bill, I graduated with close to 4.0 in my major (journalism) on the Dean’s Honor Role.
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Oh Lloyd – that was then this is now.
My son tried the two year school on the vocational track. He had to pass the writing class before he could take the hands on classes. The colleges all make extra money on the remedial courses – which no longer get counted as credit. They’re just extra money in their pocket.
And if you went to school now, you might not have graduated. In spite of your back ground, I’m sure you were smart, but could you have passed five Regents exams with little to no class work and frequent absenteeism? There are no more school diplomas – the new buzzword is rigor. I’m sure you would have passed your GED. (That’s in NYS, but other states have jumped on the bandwagon.)
And a 2.5 is what you need to transfer to a four year school. It’s also the average you need to be a TFA, so get your application ready.
My husband, who is a genius in math and science, had a slow start like you. His inconsistencies kept him from medical school, even though he had completed two years of coursework with all As. He was from a blue collar family – the first to go to college. He taught Statistics at UB for a while, and his dad, who didn’t even make it through eighth grade, proudly called him professor. However, It took a long time for my husband to adjust to a middle class lifestyle and I am still slightly uncomfortable when we visit his family. Even after forty years.
You can be proud of your accomplishments – you’ve earned it.
My son has different issues. I also was told he would never read, etc. I did everything in my power to make sure this didn’t happen. I tried lots of experimental programs. Yes, he can read. And he is very bright, just not in the typical way. I’ve taken him as far as I can – now it’s his turn. At 22, he has a lot of choices to make and I will back him up every step of the way, but they need to be his choices, not mine. And that’s where we currently stand.
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Back then—I’m not sure about now—I think combat veterans were handled differently regarding college admissions.
I know that when I applied to a four year college after two years at the community college I was told that because I was a veteran I was moved to the front of the application list and handled differently than kids coming out of high school.
You see, after high school graduation, I went straight into the Marines and that summer the Vietnam War took off. Out of boot camp, I was shipped overseas to Vietnam in 66.
I left the Marines in 68 and went to college on the GI Bill. I wasn’t one of the freshman coming right tout of high school at 17/18. I was 23, married and a combat vet.
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Lloyd – thank you for your service to our country. Combat vets deserved a leg up for what they endured in the name of freedom. You obviously put this opportunity to good use.
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Thank you.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but does your son want to be a chef? If so, there are private schools. I know they can be expensive but …
Here’s a list I found: http://www.edinformatics.com/culinaryarts/culinaryschools.htm
Where there’s a will, persistence and discipline with well defined goals, there is almost always a way depending on the goals. I think becoming a chef who love cooking is a goal that is doable.
For instance, I had a student who escaped poverty by joining the air force after HS graduation and earned her degree on-line through a state university in California that offered on-line degrees in the field she was interested in. She served in the first Gulf War under the 1st Bush. Her job was on a Patriot missile battery. She went on to serve in Japan, South Korea, Germany and eventually became the recruiter in the area around the high school where I taught. She also kept increasing her technical skills in the military in the field of electronics and software.
That’s when she dropped in for a visit and shared her story with me because it was in my English class that we talked about this path as a way to afford college. She said as long as she was serving while working toward her masters, the air force picked up all the costs of her college education. Her plans were to stay until she achieved her goals and then she would leave the service for the private sector.
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My son needs to figure out what path he wants to lead. While book and paper classes are out, hands on approaches look good. I personally liked the culinary course in Italy, but son has to decide what’s next.
Thanks for the info, Lloyd.
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I understand. I was a slow bloomer and a slow learner.
And I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do to earn a living until I was in my thirties and switched from the private sector to teaching. Even then, teaching wasn’t my first choice but my first choice wasn’t going to pay me enough to buy water.
When young, I think many dream of a lifestyle that is unrealistic.
No matter how unhappy we might be if we can’t achieve our dream life, if we want to live we have to find a way to earn money or find someone willing to support us so we can do whatever we want to do even if the person supporting us doesn’t agree with what we are doing.
For instance, someone who wants to create video games for a living but they just can’t sell their ideas to anyone or even find a job in that sector. To continue down that lifestyle path, that person needs a parent, partner, wife or husband willing to sacrifice their dreams for them and support them financially.
My wife and I watched a Lady Gaga video called, I think, The Monster Ball, and throughout the concert (if we can call it that) several times between songs she’d encourage the tens of thousands of fans in the audience to follow their dreams just like she did, and one day they would be on that same stage performing for their fans.
Another person I can think of who also fallowed her dreams out of high school was Amanda Hocking. She wanted to make her living writing books so she stayed at home and pretty much let her mother—who nagged her relentless to get a job causing many arguments between them—for almost a decade before her work went viral and earned her millions. The year before her breakout, Hocking earned about $3,000 from her writing.
I’ve never read or heard that Hocking has encouraged her fans to follow the same life path as Lady Gaga did.
Let me ask this: Is it realistic for the thousands of people in Lady Gaga’s audience to think they can all achieve their dreams the same way Gaga did? Is Lady Gaga being misleading to even suggest they can all make it if they don’t give up?
Isn’t that the same as going to Las Vegas with every penny one can save, beg, borrow and steal and then plop all that money down on the roulette table for one roll of the dice?
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If you ask a young, inner city, black male what they want to do with their lives – they will tell you they want to play professional basketball. A dream that few can attain, yet the basketball champion, Bob Lanier, went through the same Buffalo Public Schools.
My son, in middle school, was going to be a professional baseball player. His back up plan was minor league. We explained to him that he needed to be the best of the best. He also wasn’t the right build or weight. We did let him dream for awhile. (ironically, he does have the skill to be a professional golfer – but he doesn’t have the “drive”.) My grand daughter mentioned she’d like to be a pop star – I chimed in “So did I!” She’s an excellent singer, but it takes a little more than that to be successful – even when you have the talent. But we’ll let her dream a little.
Dreams are great. Unfortunately, they are rarely the be all and end all. Any profession involving fame requires skill, luck, and excessive determination. Without these one just has to resort to their dream job becoming their favorite hobby. My son still loves to play golf, for fun with his cousin. I sing in the church choir and sometimes dabble in semi professional groups, for my personal enjoyment. Some of my former students played basketball in college – a few were even Orangemen at SU.
It’s not so much the fact that we dream, it’s how we use our dreams to reach achievable goals which help us find fulfillment. And sometimes, when the star align, even the most outlandish dreams do come true.
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I remember those young dreams well. A year didn’t go by that I didn’t hear from boys and girls who refused to do any school work because they were going to be famous and rich: the baseball; football; basketball; golf; super models; singers; actors, etc.
A few even made it from the high school where I taught for more than half of my career as a teacher. But those few could be counted on the fingers of one hand while the high school continued to graduate several hundred kids every year decade after decade.
In fact, my brother’s oldest daughter married her high school sweetheart who was drafted into the Dodgers because of his pitching arm. To celebrate he threw a huge party that got out of hand and a fight broke out ending in someone hitting him over the head with a baseball bat ending his dream before it started. He ended up making good money as a plumber but also fell into a deep depression followed by drug addictions. The marriage didn’t last.
I hate to call anyone a failure as long as they set goals and stay on that journey toward their dream whatever it is. Hopefully it’s a reasonable dream that can still be achieved at eighty.
As a child, I also had dreams and most of them were totally unrealistic. I think growing up in poverty led to my first childish dreams. I wanted to grow up and be a millionaire. That dream sort of faded away as it became obvious to me that I was unwilling or unable to follow that dream. It wasn’t until 1968 that a more realistic dream grew in my head, and I set out on a path to achieve it. Realizing I had to earn a living if the dream didn’t materialize and earn me enough money, I went into the private sector in middle management for a few years and eventually ended up in the classroom as a teacher at thirty where I stayed for thirty years.
Teaching was not my dream but it paid the bills and put food on the table while I continued to set goals and work toward achieving my dream.
I think as long as we still have a chance to achieve our dreams, we are never a failure as long as we don’t’ give up. Giving up may be one explanation for the number of people who are alcoholics or drug addicts.
For instance, the wife of one of my close friends dreamed of becoming an actress working in TV or movies. She also had stunning beauty on her side. How to describe it—she could have had a shot at becoming a Victoria Secret Model. She was that attractive.
She gave up on her acting dream in her late thirties and let her health go. She gained a lot of weight; then got thyroid cancer. She survived the cancer, but she gave up on her dream. If she had stayed on the path that was her dream, she could have worked in regional theater and continued to act on stage in small productions. She could have started her own YouTube account and filmed drama with others who didn’t make it big but didn’t want to surrender. Together, they may have been able to promote their work and gained an audience.
Just because we don’t make it BIG, doesn’t mean most of us have to give up.
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Lloyd – I told my son about the list of culinary schools you sent me, especially the one in Parma, Italy. He shared that a co worker had participated in that program and really liked it. I’ve saved the entire list just in case he shows an interest. My nephew went to the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park and he owes $100,000 in student loans. Ouch!
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$100,000 to attend the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park!!! Wow! That sent me to Google and the website for the site and that led to a double take when I saw the acronym: CIA
The Culinary Institute of America calls itself the CIA? LOL
They even have an “About the CIA” page. I wonder how many people end up there while looking up info for the other CIA.
http://www.ciachef.edu/about-the-cia/
I went to the admissions page and they do offer grants and it says the program is 15 months.
Here’s the page I found for the tuition and fees:
http://www.ciachef.edu/tuition-ny/
To run up a debt of $100,000, that means attending for 6.56 semesters.
I wonder how much the 15 month program would cost. It says they offer more than one degree program, and they have four campuses: New York, California, Texas and Singapore.
And they offer an accelerated culinary arts certificate program at the California campus.
http://www.ciachef.edu/tuition-ny/
Here’s the cost: $31,625
http://www.ciachef.edu/tuition-ny/
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