Ed Week, November 3, 2010

The article that grabbed my attention in this issue of Ed Week is right on the front page.  It is titled "City's Black Males Stay in School", by Dakarai Aarons reporting from Baltimore.  This article was mentioned several times in discussions in our Equity class and I also spent a month in Baltimore visiting my husband who was working for one semester at Johns Hopkins.  The poverty, tenement/slum living conditions, the decaying grandeur of the city of Baltimore, the many poor African Americans in the area surrounding the university made a lasting impression on me.  The article describes an amazing principal at DuBois High School who, together, with other school leaders has started a campaign to keep students in school and on track towards graduation.  The best part of all:  It is working!  Black male students in Baltimore are showing an increase in graduation rates and a decrease in dropout rates.  This, despite the fact that black males are one of the hardest groups to reach.   According to the article the Baltimore Public School System has 82,000 students, 87.8% of whom are African American.  They have been able to increase the district's on-time graduation rate from 51% in 2006-2007 to 57.3% in the 2009-10 school year.  This is a 12.4% increase.  The overall graduation rate in the same time period increased by 10%.  So, how are the Baltimore City Schools doing it?  Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Washington-based Council of the Great City Schools, says that the district has worked hard to build support systems for black males and that they are more concentrated and targeted than in other communities.  Andres A. Alonso, the chief executive officer of the Baltimore schools identifies the following factors in their success.  The district is working hard to reduce chronic absenteeism and out-of-school suspensions.  They are giving students a bigger variety of public school options and working with people in the community.  They seem to be approaching the problems in a systematic way, but are also working individually with each student.  Perhaps the most impressive thing I read in the article was what Jonathan Brice, the executive director for student-support services said: "Someone in the building has to know that student's story".  The district is even sending volunteers door-to-door to coax kids who have dropped out back to school.  They are also employing Facebook and other social media to find students.  With all of these initiatives, the entire culture of the Baltimore City Schools has changed.  It seems to me that the schools are just refusing to give up on these students and that the changing expectations of the adults are resulting in the students changing what they see as possible for themselves.  This Baltimore Approach will hopefully be studied and implemented around the country.

Ed Week October 13, 2010

The article in this edition of Ed Week that caught my eye is entitled "Developmental Science Seen Lacking in Education Schools" by Stephen Sawchuck.  I guess I have been thinking a lot about developmental stages and Piaget ever since we did our podcasts on development in our Educational Psychology class.  According to the article new research from the last 10 to 14 years is giving us new insights into development.  The developmental sciences are truly interdisciplinary.  They encompass the biological, emotional, ethical, linguistic, psychological, and social development of children and adolescents.  A report released by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education argues that we need greater emphasis on developmental science in teacher preparation courses.  Research indicates that teaching methodologies based on developmental science actually increase student achievement.  According to the article, however, many teacher training programs are neglecting the developmental sciences.  The report recommends that teacher prep programs focus on the developmental sciences and that developmental science be woven into existing education courses.  It also suggests that teachers already working in the classroom be encouraged to apply developmental science.  After discussing Piaget's developmental stages and researching play and development myself, I have been thinking quite a bit about how this might even apply in my current college-level teaching.  It seems to me that many of the freshman I am teaching are also in a developmental stage that has to do with gaining independence, learning to take care of themselves and live on their own.  They seem to be trying to establish their identities, find partners, build a circle of friends.  Sometimes this comes into conflict with memorizing their German irregular verbs.  I am not quite sure what to make of this, except that I do not take it personally that they would rather go to the movies than study German.  I have not really read anything scholarly on this and would like to do so.  As I may be teaching at the elementary level, I will try and make it a priority to inform myself about current research on development in the K-5 set.

Ed Week October 27, 2010: Brain Research and Bilingualism

The article "Pathways Seen For Acquiring Languages" reports on the latest brain research and what it can tell us about the cognitive benefits of learning other languages.  Apparently there has been an explosion in research having to do with second language acquisition.  Some studies have been funded by the NSF and several new institutes have been established at universities.  The Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain project was recently launched at Penn State.  It is a five year project with a budget of $ 2.8 million.  This project is a collaboration of neuroscientists, linguists, and cognitive scientists.  They are using technology to compare the brains and mental processes of different types of bilingual speakers, such as a Mandarin- English speaker and a deaf English speaker who uses sign language.  The University of Washington also recently opened the world's first brain-imaging center created to study language and cognition in infants and children.  I find it absolutely thrilling and exciting to learn about this cutting edge research into language and the brain.  In all of the scholarly articles I looked at as part of my training as a German teacher, many of the linguists hypothesized about how language and the brain worked.  Now we have the technology to see, evaluate and measure what is going on neurologically.  This will hopefully translate into effective teaching strategies and research supported curriculum decisions.  In a time of economic crisis the foreign language programs are the first things to be thrown overboard.  This is even happening at the university level in the United States.  Although I have been around long enough to know this is cyclical, as a language teacher I find this disturbing.

One of the academic benefits of bilingualism mentioned in the article:
 Bilingual children have greater cognitive flexibility and can adapt better to changes in rules than monolingual children. Bilingual children demonstrate flexibility in problem-solving.

One interesting and surprising fact I did not know is that the window of opportunity for learning a second language is open longer than we previously thought !  Linguists used to think that after age 7 a child's ability to learn another language shrinks.  By the end of puberty it was thought to be too late. New interdisciplinary research has shown that  this time frame may be more flexible.   This gives me hope that I can improve my Spanish, even though I am 45!  Marty Abbott who is the Director of Education for the American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages, articulated another hope that I fervently share.  She said she hopes this type of research will convince education officials to make second language instruction for all students at the elementary level part of the curriculum.  The research shows that it is not a good idea to wait until high school to start learning a foreign language.  I am also deeply disappointed that it is possible to graduate from high school in Oregon without taking a foreign language.  It is my hope that as new research comes out, we may see a turning of the tides.  Rather than closing college-level foreign language programs we will see the establishment of more dual-language elementary programs.