Teacher Talk

The New York Times has done an excellent job over the past few years chronicling the importance of Catholic schools throughout the country. Whether it’s St. Anthony’s in Jersey City, Rice High School in the Bronx, or St. Augustine High School in New Orleans, these schools are beacons of their communities. When they close, it’s truly a tragic ending.

Most of the great Catholic school success stories begin in the inner cities, and even those that don’t consist of a high number of minority and poor students filling the classrooms. Whether it’s an escape from a low-performing, perhaps discipline challenged school, or a desire to receive a well-rounded education in a nurturing and disciplined environment, Catholic schools play a very important role in U.S. education.

Which is why it’s so sad to see them go. That’s, again, where the Times comes in, identifying the greatest crisis in American education today: the closing of Catholic Schools.

Victor Cruz, in 2004, when he was a student at Paterson Catholic High School. (NorthJersey.com photo)

When you watch the Super Bowl tonight, you’ll see Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz with his No. 80 jersey, his flair for the dramatic, and yes, his salsa dance. It all got started at Paterson Catholic High School in Paterson, New Jersey, a school that was closed after the 2010 school year, the same year that Cruz made his debut for the Giants. The Times’ Nate Schweber fills us in.

Sister Perez was once part of another now-abandoned kind of Paterson industry: the production of talented, driven students and athletes who, for decades, emerged from Paterson Catholic High School.

“I was heartbroken,” Sister Perez, 69, said of the school’s closing in 2010. “But I knew it was coming, because I did the budgets.”

But the year the school’s doors closed, Sister Perez was treated to a blast from the once-thriving past of Paterson Catholic. A volunteer in the Eva’s Village soup kitchen asked to see her. She walked in and a gregarious man clad in a serving apron embraced her in a huge hug. It was Victor Cruz, one of her former charges at Paterson Catholic, who was then a rookie for the Giants.

Cruz reiterated what I’ve always said all along about Catholic schools, from the classroom to the faculty lounge to the community.

Cruz, in an interview last week, recalled the “camaraderie, the people there, the coaching staff” at Paterson Catholic. “It was like a family,” he said.

High expectations are a trademark of a Catholic education. Paterson consisted mostly of African American and Hispanic students. The school had a clear mission.  

“We tortured those kids, we haunted them with learning,” Sister Perez said. “I knew each kid’s name, and I told them, ‘You have no choice; you will go to college.’ ”

Victor Cruz, in 2012, when he helped lead the New York Giants to the Super Bowl. (AP photo)

And here’s the great, often times untold, story. College coaches recruit the heck out of Catholic school kids. The discipline, work ethic, and focus on character matter to a college coach who is about to put a ton of trust in an 18-year-old.

“Paterson Catholic became a target for college recruiters,” said Kevin Freeman, 33, a 1996 Paterson Catholic graduate who is now an assistant director of men’s basketball administration at the University of Connecticut. “Because they knew that P. C. students had a sense of toughness, of never settling and always working harder.”

Paterson closed its doors for no other reason other than the one that has haunted Catholic schools across the country: the money ran out. Most students attended the school on free or reduced tuition, counting on the generosity of the school, donors, and the diocese to keep the doors open. Democratic congressman Bill Pascrell Jr. (a 1959 graduate of Fordham University), who lives near the school and once was Paterson’s mayor, called the school “an oasis.”

“People only discussed how many more kids are going to have to go to public schools, and how much more their taxes are going to go up,” Pascrell recalled. “But the real consequence of it is you’re missing that family. And it’s projected on our streets.”

Finally, this student, who was attending Paterson before it closed, put it best.

“It was an experience,”[Shelton Stewart] said of his time at the school, “being around people that were going places.”

Paterson’s closing completes yet another sad chapter in American society.

The full article, “Shuttered Oasis Lives On,” from page B10 of Friday’s New York Times, can be found here.

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Looking to attend college in Connecticut? Here’s what it will cost you: http://voices.yahoo.com/cost-comparison-colleges-connecticut-10899151.html?cat=4

Did you read last week’s required reading? This is your test.

In that Mike Lupica column about Michelle Obama and the American Dream, he writes the following:

On Sunday, the First Family attended church services at the Zion Baptist Church, founded in 1864 by African-Americans who migrated to Washington from Fredericksburg, Va. The pastor is the Rev. Keith Byrd Sr., who spoke passionately on this day about King.

“Be a source of hope,” Byrd said to the Obamas — and everyone else in the congregation.

That’s a great message for teachers as we (at least at Greenwich High School) begin the second semester of the school year. We talked about the pastor’s words yesterday in Public Speaking class while evaluating the president’s State of the Union address which we had watched one day earlier.

Want to know more about how important it is for teachers to live the Rev. Byrd’s message every day in the classroom? Take a look at Nicholas Kristoff’s column two Sundays ago in the Times. It’s about the power of books, teachers, and – today’s theme – hope.

If you want to understand how great teachers transform lives, listen to the story of Olly Neal.

In the late 1950s, Olly Neal was a poor black kid with an attitude. He was one of 13 brothers and sisters in a house with no electricity, and his father was a farmer with a second-grade education. Neal attended a small school for black children — this was in the segregated South — and was always mouthing off. He remembers reducing his English teacher, Mildred Grady, to tears. Read more

Not much time for blogging these days. As I’ve always said, this is the busiest time of the year for me, and the same is true for other teachers as well.

A week ago the second quarter ended. That was followed by four days of exams. And today, new classes began. That means I have second quarter papers to grade, quarter grades to calculate, and about 80 exams to correct, all while getting ready for three new classes - two of which started today with one more beginning tomorrow - and preparing for two classes that carry over from first semester. For those keeping score at home, grades are due Wednesday. Bet you didn’t know we worked this hard, now did you?

To the school’s credit, the administration has done a good job recognizing the demands placed on us as teachers and has shown respect for the time we need to fulfill our many responsibilities. More on this upcoming.

In the meantime, here’s a sampling of my latest Yahoo! article on a cost comparison of colleges in Connecticut:

I urge everyone to read the Hartford Courant article on the proposed new teacher evaluation system for Connecticut that places heavy emphasis on student achievement. (I linked to the article in my original post on this story.) 

Here’s a breakdown of how a teacher would be evaluated under the new proposal created by Connecticut’s Performance Evaluation Advisory Council. (This information was included in the Courant article, and was emailed to union members by the Connecticut Education Association.)

1. Multiple indicators of student learning will count as 45% of the evaluation.  Half of that 45% weight, specifically 22.5%, will come from a standardized test, which would be either the CMT, CAPT, or another valid, reliable test that measures student learning.
2. Observation of teacher performance and professional practice (process yet to be determined by PEAC) will be weighted at 40%.
3. Other peer, student, and parent feedback will be weighted at 5% with professional activities counting for 10%.

As you might imagine, the student achievement piece – a direction you knew we were heading in – has grabbed most of the headlines. As I said before, what about teachers who teach subjects that are not included in standardized testing? And, how do you fairly evaluate all levels - from honors on down – when considering test scores. As far as the observation piece, I guess Greenwich is ahead of the game with TEPL, a rigorous teacher evaluation system now in its third year. And you’re going to have to sell me on the student and parent feedback piece.

Welcome back to the No Spell Zone. Round 2 is upon us. (Click here for Round 1.)

Media outlets have been all over this story since the New York Post first reported earlier this week on a misspelling of the word “school” outside Marta Valle High School on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. “SHCOOL X-NG” appeared instead. In classic Post style, the caption underneath a photo of the botched spelling read, “Painter needs to go back to school.” I’ll say.

Have some fun with this one. But not too much fun. It’s a true story.

(New York Post photo)

The lead story in today's Hartford Courant. (Newseum.org)

Governor Malloy wasn’t kidding when he said that 2012 would be the year that the state tackles education reform.

The first big story hit the front page of the Hartford Courant this morning with news of a new system to evaluate teachers that places heavy emphasis on student achievement.

Forty-five percent of an evaluation would be based on various measures of student achievement, with about half based on standardized test scores. Other indicators of student learning could include portfolios of student work.

Fifteen percent of an evaluation would derive from feedback from peers, students and parents; at least a third of that would come from how well an entire school is performing and on student feedback. The panel’s members noted that this 15 percent also is closely tied to student performance.

Finally, the remaining 40 percent would be based on observing teachers at work.

A few random, incomplete, and raw thoughts right off the bat:

1. Keep in mind that Greenwich already has in place a very rigorous, demanding, and reflective teacher evaluation system (TEPL).

2. What about teachers who teach subjects that are not included in standardized testing?

3. How are you going to evaluate honors vs. college level vs. lower level student achievement?

4. Feedback from peers? students? parents?

5. What will the reaction at all levels (districts, schools, unions, etc.) be to this proposal?

We’re going to be hearing a lot more about this in the upcoming days and months.

One of my jobs as an English teacher - one of my most enjoyable and important responsibilities - is to talk to my students about what I’m reading, to make recommendations to them about what they might be interested in reading, and to encourage them to become lifelong readers.

That being said, I frequently post my Book Talk recommendations on this blog. Tonight, I’m introducing a new feature: Teacher Talk’s Required Reading.

I’ll start with Mike Lupica’s wonderful piece on Michelle Obama in the New York Daily News last Monday. Lupica captured the truly inspiring story of the First Lady, focusing on her achievement of the American Dream, something that would make the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. very proud.

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama grew up in a two-story house on Euclid Ave. in Chicago’s South Side area, in a second-floor apartment her parents rented from her aunt. The father was a water plant employee, and the mother had a job at Spiegel’s, and later the girl’s round-trip commute to a magnet school on Chicago’s West Side took her nearly three hours.

Her great-great-grandfather was a slave in South Carolina, and all this time later, in a life that began less than five months after a speech from the Rev. King that was like a hymn to the possibilities of America, she has gone from Euclid Ave. to Princeton to the White House, where she celebrates her 48th birthday Tuesday as the First Lady of the United States.

Sorry, Mariano, there’s no better closer than Lupica.

On Sunday, the First Family attended church services at the Zion Baptist Church, founded in 1864 by African-Americans who migrated to Washington from Fredericksburg, Va. The pastor is the Rev. Keith Byrd Sr., who spoke passionately on this day about King.

“Be a source of hope,” Byrd said to the Obamas — and everyone else in the congregation.

You don’t have to want a second term for Barack Obama. You don’t have to like him, or his wife, or his politics. But on Martin Luther King Day 2012, you better know that the America that King spoke of so eloquently so long ago, the one he saw from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, that America is one where you start out black on Euclid Ave. in Chicago in the ’60s and celebrate a birthday in the White House nearly a half-century later.

We should be teaching this story in our schools over and over again.

Inspiring news coming out of UConn today as head men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun announced he will host a fundraiser to raise awareness and money for families confronted with autism. “The Jim Calhoun CardioRaiser – and Workout for Autism Speaks,” will take place on Sunday, February 26 in two Connecticut locations. The Hartford Courant’s Don Amore posted the press release on his Courant blog:

Jim Calhoun with his granddaughter, Reese, who has autism. (courantblogs.com/uconn-men)

UConn men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun today announced The Jim Calhoun CardioRaiser – and Workout for Autism Speaks, presented by Farmington Bank, to help raise important dollars for the autistic community.  This family-friendly fitness event will take place on Sunday, February 26, 2012 at Cardio Express in Manchester and Southington from 9:00AM to 3:00PM.

Participants will be able to choose from a variety of cardio activities including Zumba, spinning, running or walking on treadmills, stair climbing, elliptical training, or riding a stationary bike.  No matter the fitness level – there will be an activity for everyone.  Panera Bread will be on site at both locations providing breakfast during registration, lunch during the day and food for the closing celebration at 3:00pm.

“I am deeply committed to the cause of helping families confronting the many challenges of autism,” Calhoun said. “It is my hope that this event will bring Connecticut families together to raise dollars so important to all those facing this complex neurobiological disorder. I am extremely grateful for all of the community support we have received thus far – presenting sponsor Farmington Bank, Cardio Express, The River 105.9, Country 92.5 and Panera Bread.”

The dollars raised will go to the Connecticut Chapter of Autism Speaks and be used to fund global biomedical research into the causes, prevention, treatments, and cure for autism; to raise public awareness about autism and its effects on individuals, families, and society; and to bring hope to all who deal with the hardships of this disorder here in Connecticut.

Lauren Joyce, director of Autism Speaks/Connecticut, said:

“With Autism becoming a world-wide epidemic and Connecticut statistics of 1 in every 99 children being diagnosed even higher than the national CDC average, it is more important than ever to spread awareness, education and raise funds for research and family services. Autism Speaks in Connecticut is grateful to Coach Calhoun and Farmington Bank for their dedication to this mission.  We are hopeful all Connecticut families will support this wonderful event.”

Registration is open to anyone 14 years of age or older.  To find out more or to register visit the event’s website or call the event office at 860-674-1500 today.

Certainly an important cause worth noting. Autism made its way back into the news last week, but it’s something those of us in education - and families everywhere - confront on a daily basis. Calhoun is one of the state’s most influential and powerful voices. Good for him for leading this effort.