It is fitting, I think, to be writing this article on Memorial Day, and at the conclusion of Alumni Weekend. The last three days have been about reuniting with family, remembering days gone by, and honoring those who have gone before. Today, I pay homage to something that has recently departed, something that has provided such powerful memories for so many. Today, I memorialize Longfellow Middle School.
Friday was the last day of school. Now, for all the last days of school I have experienced, Friday was special. Yes, it had the usual events, the awards ceremony with the grade school, the end of year softball game with the junior high. We played “Bingo For Books” and we ate sack lunches and grilled hotdogs on the school lawn. I signed a multitude of t-shirts and extended wishes for a happy and safe summer to all.
This last day of school, however, held one ceremony I will never forget. At 11:25, the junior high students assembled in a line that stretched up and down the staircases and through both main hallways of Longfellow Middle School. Faculty and staff joined the line and we all held hands, creating an unbroken chain through the school. We had gathered to commemorate the closing of the building and to listen to the final bell.
The voice of Mrs. Keith, the Longfellow Middle School secretary, came over the intercom. She read a prepared statement, a eulogy of sorts, for our beloved school. She noted the symmetrical design, how one side resembled the other, with matching doors, stairways and connecting hallways. “This building reminds us that no matter where you start from, you can always reach your goals,” she read.
She noted how the massive granite structure “rises tall,” just like the spirit of the students who have walked its halls and learned in its classrooms. She praised the adaptability of the building, how it served both as “Memorial High School” and later as “Longfellow Middle School.” Finally, she remembered the students, the thousands of students, who had filled the building and turned it from a building and into a school. “A school is more than the walls,” Mrs. Keith read, “it is the soul and the spirit of the students who gather within the walls.”
School, she reminded us, is just as much about our past as it is about our future. A school has a life of its own, complete with a rich history filled with countless memories. And while this current group of students perhaps doesn’t fully comprehend the importance of their part in the collective history that makes up Longfellow Middle School, I think most of them understood the sadness involved in the closing of such a remarkable chapter in the history and culture of our town.
At the end, Mrs. Keith acknowledged that the students, faculty, and staff will move on to a new school, to start a new tradition in the new Hill City Junior High as the new Hill City Junior High Ringnecks. However, she said, her voice breaking with emotion, we will never forget our beloved Broncos.
That last line, of course, sent many of us to tears, as we stood hand in hand on staircases and in hallways. The moment of silence planned before the final bell was accompanied by the soft sobs and sniffles of students who fully felt the gravity of this solemn occasion. Then the bell rang, long and heavy, evoking feelings of sorrow with the memory of so many bells that had rung before. As soon as the last echo of its mournful peal died within the walls, we applauded and embraced in a last tearful goodbye.
Needless to say, it was a powerful moment, one that I doubt many students will ever forget. For my part, I was just happy to have been part of the ceremony. I think we, as human beings, need ceremonies like these. Especially on weekends like these. We need to visit cemeteries, we need to be with family, we need to remember, to cry, to say hello, and to say goodbye. I think that we as the last students and faculty of Longfellow Middle School, needed our final bell ceremony. We needed a farewell speech, we needed to hold hands in silence, and we needed the drama and the emotion of the final bell. We needed, and we received, closure.
Now, we can move forward, never forgetting our past, but ready, willing, and able to embrace our collective future.
Assessment Pride (05-18-09)
We have much in which to be proud of our schools Every day we educate our students in a variety of meaningful ways and for our efforts we can point to many outstanding results.
From kindergarten, where our students learn to read fluently, to high school graduation, where most go on to be successful in post-secondary education, the signs of our success are abundant. Our grade schoolers produce amazing projects that line the walls of the grade school, and our high schoolers bring home award after award from state and national contests in every conceivable area. We have scholars, and athletes, and musicians, and thespians, as well as artists and journalists and future business men and women. We produce doctors and lawyers, teachers and journalists, and engineers and mechanics, not to mention the most productive farmers the world has ever known.
Small schools are able to produce these results because we are able to get involved in a positive and meaningful capacity in the lives of our students. We form relationships that have a profound impact in the way our students develop and in the potential they are able to reach.
This week, I reviewed and analyzed our 2009 state assessment data. I compared our current scores with those from previous years, and compared our scores to criteria for the Kansas Standard of Excellence. Considering the abundance of evidence of excellence in our school district, the scores were not surprising. However, our tremendous performance on these state assessments is certainly worthy of our attention and pride.
Let me break it down:
Grade 3-8 are tested every year in reading and math, and the students are tested in these areas once in high school. I will focus on the scores for grades 3-8.
Each class is tested in both reading and math, meaning there is a total of twelve assessment scores (6 in reading, 6 in math) to examine. Last year, we reached 100% proficiency in two of the assessments – 7th grade reading and math. Now this would be an un-heard of achievement for a large school. It is extremely difficult to get everyone in a class to score at proficient or higher. Again, we have an advantage because we know every student and we work with every student. In the words of the federal government’s education mandate, in our school few children are “left behind.”
This year was even better, with SIX assessments showing 100% of scores in the proficient category or better. And the “or better” categories of “exceeds standards” and “exemplary” are where the majority of the students scored on ALL the assessments. Rather than the expected “bell curve” where the majority of student scores fall in the middle range, Hill City has a Nike Swoop, where the majority of the scores fall in the highest range.
Last year, out of the twelve assessments in grades 3-8, our scores earned us the Kansas Standard Of Excellence rating seven times. This earned our grade school a Building Wide Standard of Excellence rating in Reading and Math, and our middle school a Building Wide Standard of Excellence rating in Reading.
This year, I anticipate that our scores in ELEVEN out of the twelve assessments will earn the Kansas Standard of Excellence, and that we will earn Building Wide Standard of Excellence ratings all around.
If you examine these scores over a five-year period, one can see obvious evidence of growth and sustained excellence. In anyway you look at it, our schools are helping students perform consistently at the highest levels.
Take a moment to thank our educators. And take a moment to be proud of your schools.
From kindergarten, where our students learn to read fluently, to high school graduation, where most go on to be successful in post-secondary education, the signs of our success are abundant. Our grade schoolers produce amazing projects that line the walls of the grade school, and our high schoolers bring home award after award from state and national contests in every conceivable area. We have scholars, and athletes, and musicians, and thespians, as well as artists and journalists and future business men and women. We produce doctors and lawyers, teachers and journalists, and engineers and mechanics, not to mention the most productive farmers the world has ever known.
Small schools are able to produce these results because we are able to get involved in a positive and meaningful capacity in the lives of our students. We form relationships that have a profound impact in the way our students develop and in the potential they are able to reach.
This week, I reviewed and analyzed our 2009 state assessment data. I compared our current scores with those from previous years, and compared our scores to criteria for the Kansas Standard of Excellence. Considering the abundance of evidence of excellence in our school district, the scores were not surprising. However, our tremendous performance on these state assessments is certainly worthy of our attention and pride.
Let me break it down:
Grade 3-8 are tested every year in reading and math, and the students are tested in these areas once in high school. I will focus on the scores for grades 3-8.
Each class is tested in both reading and math, meaning there is a total of twelve assessment scores (6 in reading, 6 in math) to examine. Last year, we reached 100% proficiency in two of the assessments – 7th grade reading and math. Now this would be an un-heard of achievement for a large school. It is extremely difficult to get everyone in a class to score at proficient or higher. Again, we have an advantage because we know every student and we work with every student. In the words of the federal government’s education mandate, in our school few children are “left behind.”
This year was even better, with SIX assessments showing 100% of scores in the proficient category or better. And the “or better” categories of “exceeds standards” and “exemplary” are where the majority of the students scored on ALL the assessments. Rather than the expected “bell curve” where the majority of student scores fall in the middle range, Hill City has a Nike Swoop, where the majority of the scores fall in the highest range.
Last year, out of the twelve assessments in grades 3-8, our scores earned us the Kansas Standard Of Excellence rating seven times. This earned our grade school a Building Wide Standard of Excellence rating in Reading and Math, and our middle school a Building Wide Standard of Excellence rating in Reading.
This year, I anticipate that our scores in ELEVEN out of the twelve assessments will earn the Kansas Standard of Excellence, and that we will earn Building Wide Standard of Excellence ratings all around.
If you examine these scores over a five-year period, one can see obvious evidence of growth and sustained excellence. In anyway you look at it, our schools are helping students perform consistently at the highest levels.
Take a moment to thank our educators. And take a moment to be proud of your schools.
Movie Review (05-04-09)
This week marks another first for this little column of mine: I am going to write a movie review. Of course, it won’t be a typical review. Rather, it will be a “how this movie reinforces my perspective about education” review. Go figure.
This weekend my wife and I watched Freedom Writers. The move depicts the story of teacher Erin Gruwell and her remarkable success with a group of struggling inner city students. The movie is based on the book The Freedom Writers Diary, written by both Ms. Gruwell and her students describing not only how this amazing teacher reached a group of “unreachable” students, but also chronicling the hard lives of a group of kids trying to survive the gang wars of Long Beach, California.
The film begins with Erin taking her first teaching job in a large public high school that recently underwent “integration”, meaning that hundreds of low-income minority students are now bussed to this once “A-list” school. The older staff are understandably bitter about the transformation, as the new students are violent, disrespectful, and generally have run off the school’s best academic achievers.
While Erin is excited to face challenges of integration, she quickly realizes that she is completely unprepared to teach the freshmen students assigned to her, most of whom belong in one gang or another, and many of whom wear court-ordered ankle bracelets, having chosen education over jail.
She finally reaches the students when she abandons the traditional curriculum and begins to find meaningful lessons to which the students can relate. She begins by teaching about the holocaust, as most of her students know what it is like to be shot at, be discriminated against because of their ethnicity, and have experience watching family members be forcibly removed from their homes by the police.
Erin finds no support within her school, so she works three jobs during evenings and weekends to earn extra money to buy the kids reading books and to fund field trips. The most powerful thing, though, that Ms. Gruwell does, is give each student a journal, in which they can write anything they want. She only reads them with permission and in the strictest confidence. The writing liberates the students of their terrible experiences, and they share with their teacher their real stories of violence, poverty, and despair.
Eventually, her class assemble the stories into a book, which earns them international acclaim and attention.
After the last frame, there is a postscript describing how Ms. Gruwell resigned as a high school teacher upon the graduation of “her kids” and that she took a job at a local college in order to further follow many of her students who continued their education there.
I found the postscript to be very important. You see, this is not a story about systemic change. This is not a story about making public education better for all kids. It is not even about the rise of a school from failure to success.
Freedom Writer’s is about the relationship one teacher builds with one set of students, a relationship so deep that when the kids graduate, the teacher quits in order to remain in their lives.
In my perspective, positive relationships between educators and their students is the bedrock of successful education. Whether you’re teaching in the inner city, or in a small country school, students must believe that they are loved, respected, and that they are safe under the guidance of their teacher.
While the main emphasis in both the book and the movie is on the students’ writing, and on the freedom the students gained through their writing, to me the real freedom came from the positive bond between child and adult. Psychological research tells us that everyone needs to belong to something. The students had turned to gangs to gain a sense of belonging. Yet one dedicated and talented teacher provided the students with a new identity, and a new way to view the world. By building strong, positive relationships, the teacher gave her students the greatest freedom of all - the freedom to learn.
I warned you that this wouldn’t be usual movie review. However, I will end by saying that I give Freedom Writers five stars and two big thumbs up!
This weekend my wife and I watched Freedom Writers. The move depicts the story of teacher Erin Gruwell and her remarkable success with a group of struggling inner city students. The movie is based on the book The Freedom Writers Diary, written by both Ms. Gruwell and her students describing not only how this amazing teacher reached a group of “unreachable” students, but also chronicling the hard lives of a group of kids trying to survive the gang wars of Long Beach, California.
The film begins with Erin taking her first teaching job in a large public high school that recently underwent “integration”, meaning that hundreds of low-income minority students are now bussed to this once “A-list” school. The older staff are understandably bitter about the transformation, as the new students are violent, disrespectful, and generally have run off the school’s best academic achievers.
While Erin is excited to face challenges of integration, she quickly realizes that she is completely unprepared to teach the freshmen students assigned to her, most of whom belong in one gang or another, and many of whom wear court-ordered ankle bracelets, having chosen education over jail.
She finally reaches the students when she abandons the traditional curriculum and begins to find meaningful lessons to which the students can relate. She begins by teaching about the holocaust, as most of her students know what it is like to be shot at, be discriminated against because of their ethnicity, and have experience watching family members be forcibly removed from their homes by the police.
Erin finds no support within her school, so she works three jobs during evenings and weekends to earn extra money to buy the kids reading books and to fund field trips. The most powerful thing, though, that Ms. Gruwell does, is give each student a journal, in which they can write anything they want. She only reads them with permission and in the strictest confidence. The writing liberates the students of their terrible experiences, and they share with their teacher their real stories of violence, poverty, and despair.
Eventually, her class assemble the stories into a book, which earns them international acclaim and attention.
After the last frame, there is a postscript describing how Ms. Gruwell resigned as a high school teacher upon the graduation of “her kids” and that she took a job at a local college in order to further follow many of her students who continued their education there.
I found the postscript to be very important. You see, this is not a story about systemic change. This is not a story about making public education better for all kids. It is not even about the rise of a school from failure to success.
Freedom Writer’s is about the relationship one teacher builds with one set of students, a relationship so deep that when the kids graduate, the teacher quits in order to remain in their lives.
In my perspective, positive relationships between educators and their students is the bedrock of successful education. Whether you’re teaching in the inner city, or in a small country school, students must believe that they are loved, respected, and that they are safe under the guidance of their teacher.
While the main emphasis in both the book and the movie is on the students’ writing, and on the freedom the students gained through their writing, to me the real freedom came from the positive bond between child and adult. Psychological research tells us that everyone needs to belong to something. The students had turned to gangs to gain a sense of belonging. Yet one dedicated and talented teacher provided the students with a new identity, and a new way to view the world. By building strong, positive relationships, the teacher gave her students the greatest freedom of all - the freedom to learn.
I warned you that this wouldn’t be usual movie review. However, I will end by saying that I give Freedom Writers five stars and two big thumbs up!
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