It’s good that the Wichita school district is recognizing the need for every kid to be noticed and appreciated by someone.
As Mark McCormick wrote in a recent column, the district plans to hire six educators to ensure that every high school student has a personal connection to a teacher.
“It’s about relationships,” said superintendent Winston Brooks. “We can no longer allow kids to just fade away in the hallways. There will be a caring adult assigned to every kid in that high school.”
We know how crucial mentors are in the life of a child, and in large schools especially, some kids can feel isolated and invisible.
This is a welcome effort to connect and care.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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32 Comments
When my kids were at Isley (back when it was an open magnet school), something as simple as having every teacher lined up at the door, morning and evening, and making sure each and every kid got a hug that day made a remarkable difference in the learning atmosphere.
Sorry, but oh Christ! I realize that these days teachers sadly often spend more time with a child then either parent does themselves. But to assign a friendship is over reaching, I had teachers I like and some I did not, even as a child you can generally tell a fake smile from a real caring smile. No one can tell you to care, it is either happens or it does not.
Teachers have gone from simply expected to educate our children, to inspire them to want to learn. But now they are expected to be able to detect learning disabilities, mental disorders, health problems, family councilors, career councilors and now to act as a assigned, caring friend?
Sorry but why not just cut out the middle man and once a child is born that is the last a parent see of the child. They will be taken to indoctrination centers, educated, formed, taught the rights and wrongs. Then afterwards place in a assigned occupation that they are best skilled at! Who need parents, a real life friend or a outside influence. There grossly over rated and could be better served by a trained professional.
Life is a journey of ups and downs, climbs and falls, security and uncertainty. It can not be planned or regulated by order and design. A mentor is someone that takes an interest not because of being assigned.It is a two way street of caring and concern on both sides, else it is nothing more than being dictated to.
Dawg,Of course a teacher is expected to care, both about the children in his/her charge, and the subject he/she teaches. If that is beyond his/her capacity, he/she should get the hell out of the profession!When I was in 8th grade, we had a science teacher who won a major national teaching award, and that summer was hired away by a system that paid considerably more. In the scramble to find a replacement for the following year, the school board ended up hiring a young intern at a local hospital to fill in. This guy loved kids, and loved biology. By the second semester every kid in that class was doing college-level work, and loving every minute spent in that class. He challenged us, and we rose to the occasion.The next year in High School, we all enrolled in biology. We drew a bored and boring driver’s ed instructor who had a few hours of basic biology and no interest whatsoever in kids. I have never seen interest in a subject plummet so fast as it did in that class!I also had an English teacher in 8-9th grades whose idea of teaching the subject was rote memorization of the entire Walsh Plain English Handbook, and whose epitomy of great poetry began and ended with Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” It wasn’t until I married a poet that I discovered what poetry could be.If a teacher can be that influential, not just to an individual but to a whole class, we have the obligation to our children to find the best, most caring teachers we can find and pay them enough to keep them teaching and caring!
Over 100 years of government education in this country. Why are they figuring this out now?
Maybe in another 100 years literacy will become important.
Pman,I hope you can manage to last that 100 years, you really need it!
I often ask teachers why students have changed so much from days gone by. Most list some of the following: change in the home situation, no parents in the home, no parents at home in the evening, limited money to pay for even minimal needs, continuous upheaval, lack of moral training, too much time spent watching TV or playing computer games, etc.
Of equal importance, teachers say, is the failure of students to form meaningful connections at school with their teachers, connections with successful students, participation in school activities of some kind. This is why ROTC, school clubs, sports, special classes in automotive, science, pre-engineering are vitally important.
I’m not sure how only six additional teacher-coaches are going to get this job done. I hope they are committed to their objective. In any case, its vitally important that this initiative by Superintendent Brooks works.
at my daughter’s IEP meeting recently, I had created a ruckus about some stuff that had been going badly. We had her IEP written to address these issues when she left middle school, but the high school people didn’t think those supports were necessary…and now they’re finding out how wrong they were. I was NOT HAPPY, and I made it clear that I laid this at their feet for removing the stuff from her IEP in the first place with a big fat “I told you so”.
Her resource room teacher told me “I’d rather have 100 parents just like you than the parents who I can’t even get to talk to me about their children’s needs”.
I know that it happens, I know some of those parents he was referring to. By in large though, I do not think that’s the issue. The schools can work hard against you from time to time. I’ve had a great deal of trouble getting my children’s educational needs met by those who do not want to invest the time or money. So the problem goes both ways. It is the parent’s responsiblity to make sure the school does what they’re supposed to be doing. So this proactive approach is nice. I wish my school district would do it.
I often ask teachers why students have changed so much from days gone by. Most list some of the following: change in the home situation, no parents in the home, no parents at home in the evening, limited money to pay for even minimal needs, continuous upheaval, lack of moral training, too much time spent watching TV or playing computer games, etc
I have to agree with the above paragraph. The home life of each child determines their destiny much more than any teacher’s hug at the door.
If Republicans and Democrats alike are serious about making the country’s future brighter, they need to start at the basic family level.
Republicans have been too busy trying to shove the idea of a traditional marriage down everyone’s throat – so they have been useless. Plus, Republicans have fought tooth and nail the minimum wage increase. Never mind that most of these children are being raised by single parents and/or mom & dad working minimum wage jobs.
Just because the economy is booming for the stock investors, it is not booming for the average American trying to make ends meet.
And Democrats tend to throw money at any and all problems. As in this case, hiring 6 additional teachers to be the kids’ friend? How absurd is this idea? To think that in our country who we profess to be such a Christian and compassionate country, we have to hire a teacher to make sure that every kid feels they have a friend. What a sad commentary.
Allow me to express skepticism on the plan. Without going into detail, this was tried at one high school (assigning a teacher to each student to be the student’s “advocate”) and really fell flat. Bluntly, in the large schools, assigning a “teacher” who apparently has no other job than to be the “friend” won’t do what the administration is hoping it will do.
Perhaps the better approach would be to divide the large, comprehensive high schools in USD 259 into smaller “subschools” of some 400 to 500 students each. The same teachers would be teaching the same 400 to 500 students in each smaller school within the school, thereby allowing the teachers to become acquainted with the students personally over time. In this way, the students would not just be a number or a shadowy figure in the hall, but a real person known to a group of teachers who might then be able to intercede when something is perceived to be wrong.
Contrast this with a single person whose real knowledge of the students assigned will likely be a group of statistics, and who will not be able to see/talk with the student daily. Yes, it might work for a few students, who will come in to talk, etc., but the majority will not do so, and the only contact will be of a coercive nature when the teacher “friend” realizes that s/he hasn’t spoken with X for a while, and provides a pass to the student to come and chat so the teacher can say on paper that s/he has met with X recently.
The plain fact is, the more involved parents are with their kids lives and educations, the better those kids will do in and out of school.
As far as “assigning” a teacher to be a kid’s friend…that’s ridiculous, for all the reasons already posted. Different teachers will make connections with different students for a whole variety of reasons.
Hey cat, one doesn’t have to be Christian to be compassionate. What is sad is warped minds like your try to tie all failures to Christianity.
There a hundreds if not thousands of Christian schools in the U.S.
Get a new hate mantra Cat, you’re just pathetic.
I’m just repeating what your leader says about himself – bush the Compassionate Christian…
If you don’t like it, I suggest you tell Bush to stop saying it then.
There are thousands of Christian schools across America and I graduated from a Bible College in Tennessee that was as fundamental as it gets. I know firsthand how their ‘compassion’ is shown. I was in their midst and for the most part, these church leaders are phonies.
There are no bounds to the hatred that is generated by so-called good Christians all in the name of their religion. they will eat their young.
“There are no bounds to the hatred that is generated by so-called good Christians all in the name of their religion. they will eat their young.” -cat
cat dear; it is apparent from reading your bigoted comment whose hatred knows know bounds.
Actually Outlander, cat has a point. A true Christian are people who help the poor.
The Christian’s he is talking about is an exclusive club where well-to-do people have the access and provide networking opportunities for each other. Basically! You will not find a poor person or a mentally handicap person being a part of any Christian organization.
Just because you say you’re Christian and run Christian schools and churches, doesn’t really make you Christian. CINO’s Christ in Name Only!
Basically! You will not find a poor person or a mentally handicap person being a part of any Christian organization.- Joe Williams
??????
My Bible teaches me that Jesus ministered to the outcasts of society – the thieves, lepers, adulterers, homeless and etc.
When was the last time you saw a group of outcasts come out of one of those fancy big churches?
Joe made a valid point. True Christianity is about unconditional love and helping others.
Too many churches today are basically social clubs where people go to network to gain more business, or to feel superior to those ‘outcasts’ because some preacher pats them on the head because they put their money in the offering plate. It’s too bad that God’s name get muddied by the likes of such so-called Christians.
cat: You need to educate yourself about the outreach that Christian churches and organizations do. You do that and then come back. We’ll talk from informed perspective.
Bad ideal, this is just setting up a punching bag for those with frustrations.I agree with cat on some points about false Christianity, many are glorifying themselves by using religion.Modern church of today to as far back as the Medieval Inquisition is evidence of misuse power of church, if not in an over all scale but on individual accounts.
OH OH OH I happen to KNOW that Cat is right about certain Christian groups, and I mean mainly the baptists. That one guy I worked for briefly (shudder) the one who was always saying women should be subservient…he had a whole network of church businesman friends throughout the city. It was like a flipping business owners church or something.
We had a thread a few months back about how some are justifying their riches and screwing over the poor.
The Catholics…as much as I dislike the catholics, at least they really do good works for the poor. Of course it always comes with a ministry payback catch of some sort. But at least their intentions are good.
The only way to make families better is to get them out of poverty, pay living wages so that the single mom or heck anymore it’s even a FAMILY can survive on just one job.
Take 6 hired friends for a 1500 student high school. That’s a 1 to 250 ratio. Hard to see any likelihood of close connection in that.
Vaughn’s idea has shown past results and promise. I think his daughters’ high school was about that size. I attended a 300-student high school. It offered lots of extracurricular opportunities, and the majority of students were involved in at least one or two.
New York City is moving to small high schools (sometimes a few sharing the same building). It seems to be working.
KIPP academies (Knowledge is Power Program) are publicly-funded not-for-profit charter schools that are making extraordinary differences in minority students’ lives.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-private8may08,1,4126550.story
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FA0F12F63E5A0C758EDDA80994DE404482
(I have a paid premium subscription to NYT online. I’m not sure if this Nov. 06 article is still available for free, I hope it is.)
How does KIPP work? Longer school days. Saturdays. Eleven months. Exceptionally dedicated teachers who have a sense of mission, which often requires working 60+ hours a week. Mostly young, which gives them the energy required for this mission. The KIPP schools take kids who are typically 3+ years below grade level, and through intensive education, they bring them to grade-level and often beyond.
Recently, increasing recognition has been given to the matter that if minority kids are processed to take minimum wage jobs, Social Security and Medicare will crumble. They must have well-paying jobs to support the greying population, because we are going to see, with or without massive immigration, a large rise in the elderly social-welfare population to working-age population ratio over the next few decades.
Everybody here who hasn’t watched “Stand and Deliver” needs to. One extraordinary teacher, Jaime Escalante, turned future Wal-Mart clerks into engineers, entrepreneurs and executives. Over the protests of “old school” personnel who couldn’t see the potential of general-ed-track minority students. Kids who in ninth grade couldn’t pass algebra became AP Calculus aces in just four short years.
KIPP represents Mr. Escalante’s vision writ large. Gold ore just looks like dirt to the untrained eye. It has enormous value, if you invest in it’s refinement.
I decided to see where KIPP is operating in our region: Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Kansas City, Denver, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston.
Not Wichita. Granted, the last “charter” school scheme, contracting with for-profit Edison Schools, whose inventor’s only previous ed experience was putting TVs in classrooms and forcing kids to watch Channel One Coca-Cola ads, didn’t work out. And maybe KIPP’s declination to pay kickbacks, such as declining to make BOE campaign contributions, is unattractive. KIPP doesn’t operate according to “business as usual” principles. No, it hires very talented people, who make sacrifices to advance the next generation.
As I said, OKC, Tulsa, and KC have taken the KIPP experiment, because previous KIPP academies have put would-be dropouts into college. Within this Mid-Continent triangle, it’s really hard for Wichita to find a place. It has the lowest growth population growth rate. It can’t even keep a 3rd-tier AA baseball team.
The idea of inviting an “outsider” into the community who doesn’t put money into the purses of middle-aged “leaders”, but instead directs its “pay-offs” to children, isn’t an attractive proposition to Wichita’s leaders. Strategic vision for the community is above the “leaders’ ” pay grade. Which is a real shame.
What is it that makes our children’s generation so much worse than ours? Back at the beginning of the 2nd century, the Roman writer Juvenal complained bitterly about the morals of the new crop of kids. So has every generation since. That’s a lot of generations. There are two possibilities:A. Those Romans must have been gods for the human race to have degenerated so much since then and still walk on our hind legs.B. Yes, each generation of kids is rotten, but they manage over time to improve themselves enough, and have convenient enough memories that they can complain about kids today and forget what kids they once were.Those of you complaining about how awful kids are, please, go ask your mothers how you were as kids, and don’t be surprised when she tells you how awful little bastards you were.
Jed, I don’t need to ask; my memory is rather precise on that issue. :-)
Juvenal notwithstanding, choice B., above seems correct.
The issue as I understand it was hiring six educators as “friends”. A bit of thinking causes me to wonder if this is one “friend” for each comprehensive high school? If so, there needs to be seven (East, West, North, South, Southeast, Northwest and Heights). There needs to be a bit more detail provided; putting one “friend” in East, with enrollment >2200 (IIRC) seems to be worse than useless. Quaere: are these “to be hired” educators in supplementation of existing programs?
Threads regarding education are always entertaining to me. Always the same. Many people have solid ideas to improve educational systems. However the central problem is never addressed. None of the changes proposed are even considered by those in a position to do something.
Why don’t they really ever change? Because schools do not have to change. Guaranteed students are coming in the door. The funding is not dependent on the service provided in any way, shape, or form. Why would schools change when it does not matter? The school itself does not see any benefit from doing a superior job.
Many of the ideas given here are very good. However we have to change the basic structure of the education system to make it react in a timely fashion to the rest of society.
For those interested, USD 259 high school graduations begin this evening (Monday):
Metro-Meridian @ WSU Hughes Ctr.North High Sch @ Koch Arena
TUESDAY EVENING, 5/15/07
West High Sch @ Koch ArenaEast High Sch @ Ks ColiseumNortheast High @ WSU Hughes Ctr.
WEDNESDAY EVENING, 5/16/07
South High Sch @ Century II
THURSDAY EVENING, 5/17/07
Southeast High @ Ks Coliseum
I believe all begin at 7 PM.This information from Sunday, Wichita EAGLE.
Graduations are very inspirational. They provide the opportunity for our high school graduates to step up and display their best results for four years of high school education.
It might be a time of redemption for that long deceased but often quoted critic, the old Roman writer, Juvenal, mentioned in a comment several entries above.
I would urge all who attend a high school commencement ceremony to act appropriately, keep the silly string and air horns at home, kind of like you and members of your family have been there before.
Vaughn,If that’s the case, I would agree with you. However, my understanding is that the six to be hired are to be administrators of the program. It seems to me that if we hired the really great teachers instead of scraping the bottom of the barrel on the cheap as we’ve been doing, such a program would not need administering; it would simply occur as a natural part of the teaching process.
P-man,”Why don’t they really ever change?”I have been watching my grandchildren progress through school, and it’s almost unrecogizable as school compared to when I went through it. In fact, most of the facts taught today weren’t even conceived back then. Teaching methods have changed too; they’ve had to, since there is so much more to teach today. When I was in school, a computer was a room-sized arcane mechanism that nobody I knew understood or had a use for. In fact it was considerably less powerful than today’s palm pilot, but then it was way forward of cutting edge. DNA had recently been discovered then (although nobody in my school seemed to know of it’s existence), but again, nobody had a clue about the implications to our society.Today’s teacher has to cope with the vast increase in general knowledge that’s occurred since I graduated. They’ve changed, oh lord have they changed!
It just occured to me that I forgot to include Wichita Heights High School, which I believe will graduate on Wednesday evening, May 16th.
Because I included Metro-Meridian High School on my previous list(where I will be attending this evening), I should have also included:
Metro-Midtown, May 16th, Wednesday evening, at WSU Hughes Center, and
Metro-Boulevard, May 17th, Thursday evening, at WSU Hughes Center.
There are several other smaller specialty high schools and, of course, a number of private high schools and suburban schools. I didn’t start out to do this list but now that I have, I hope it is correct.
Jed,
Knowledge changed.
The school’s are relatively the same.
P-man,And when was the last time you actually walked the halls and sat in on a class? And when was the time before that? Let’s get an idea of the timespan we’re talking about.
I hope the graduation ceremony last night for Metro-Meridian students was half as inspirational for the 41 graduating students as it was for the adoring crowd in attendance. Tears in a lot of eyes and hankerchiefs.
The ceremony was great, casual but sufficient. Congratulations to the graduates whose speeches told of working hard to overcome diversity to reach their seemingly impossible goal of high school graduation.
So, now its onward and upward to set and achieve new goals. Good luck Metro-Meridian High School graduates.