Thanksgiving in Claremont: Tolerant tradition or demeaning display?

Parents are protesting this morning outside Condit Elementary School in Claremont, the site Tuesday of a decades-old tradition involving kindergartners dressing up as pilgrims and Native Americans and sharing a Thanksgiving feast.

After a handful of parents objected to the children's hand-made construction-paper head-dresses and bonnets, district officials decided to eliminate the costumes and go forward with the meal and the songs. Parents are not pleased. To read more, click here.

-- Seema Mehta

Photo provided by Kathleen Lucas

Parent-teacher conferences

 

Tim Schlosser, a teacher at Southeast Middle School, writes:

Parent conference nights are held in the Los Angeles school district several times per year -- teachers open up their classrooms for about two hours, parents sign in and wait their turn to talk with the teacher. 

Almost invariably, parents are interested in their student's grade above all else.  If the grade is good, the parent is happy.  At my school you rarely hear about parents getting cantankerous over curriculum or "Catcher in the Rye." If the grade is bad, the parent usually chastises the child, whose "I don't have any homework" refrain is now revealed.  I hear that sometimes parents go after the teacher for a child's low grade, claiming that the teacher has it out for their child, but I haven't experienced that yet.

Parents do sometimes make a fuss when they have to wait too long for their turn.  I can't tell you how many different ways administrators have told me to "move them along" -- the furtive glance at my waiting line, the hand-on-shoulder conference, chatting up the line to keep everyone happy -- but it's hard to say, "Yes, your daughter is an interesting case, but two-minutes interesting, not five." I understand their concern, though. I started 10 minutes early and stayed 20 minutes after, but I still didn't get to speak with every parent who had signed in.

 

Let's hear it for fun-raising!

Erin Shachory, a parent at Riverside Drive Elementary School in Sherman Oaks, writes:

Last Sunday, Riverside Drive Elementary held its fifth Annual Fall Festival, the biggest fundraiser of our school year.  As a vice president of our parent organization, I was heavily involved in the planning and logistics of the event, which included a haunted house, bouncies, bumper cars, food vendors, silent auction, live entertainment, game booths ... and lots and lots of pleas for money, both direct and indirect. 

"Wow! The games are only one ticket each!" I overhead a second-grader say to a friend. Both smiled because they had tickets in their pockets -- only their parents knew that each ticket was $1, hard-earned in this tough economic time.

Last week, as I hyperventilated and sweated the small stuff, my husband asked why I was so nervous.  "What if we don't raise as much money as last year?" I asked, thinking of the more than $100,000 that the parent organization raised in the last year and the budget that was designed around that figure to pay for computer education, drama, teacher aides. My head was swirling already, and I knew that other schools in Sherman Oaks were holding their own Halloween fairs over the same weekend.

My husband laughed. "Isn't it about fun? Won't the kids and the community have a good time? Even if you make 40 bucks, isn't it a success?" 

I stopped my shallow breathing. He had a point. It's not always about exceeding our financial goals; sometimes, the tradition and good old-fashioned fun are enough of a reason to have a party.

So, on Sunday at around 2:30 p.m., when I had trouble walking through the crowds to get from one end of the school to the other, I smiled. My kids ran with their friends from booth to booth, accumulating face paint, hair streaks and fake tattoos. I don't know what our numbers are yet, but I know that one of our teachers supervised the toddler bouncy for two hours. Nearly 100 parents volunteered to set up and run the festival. Our principal helped clean up. Fifth graders manned the haunted house. Kindergartners sang. 

In uncertain times, maybe we can't measure success by dollar signs. Maybe it's just the taste of cotton candy and the sound of laughter on a sunny Sunday in October.

Parents of high school students frustrated

Mary Najera's son was "failing horribly" at his Los Angeles junior high school. The principal told her he had to move on "regardless of whether he was prepared to compete" in high school, she said.

"I was a desperate mom," Najera said today at a news conference discussing a new report on parental involvement in high schools.

According to the report, parents of students in low-performing high schools say their schools don’t give them what they need to be more effective in helping their children succeed.

Najera's family found a solution in a Green Dot charter high school, where her son thrived and is now a college student. Najera credits, in part, parental involvement.

The report -- called “One Dream, Two Realities: Perspectives of Parents on America’s High Schools” -- "disproves the prevailing myth that low-income parents are not interested in their children’s academic success," said John Bridgeland, president and CEO of Civic Enterprises and co-author of the report.

"The opposite is true. Parents, especially those with students trapped in low-income or low-performing schools, desperately want to be involved and want their students to succeed,” Bridgeland said in a statement.

"Many are seething with frustration," he said today in a news conference.

According to the survey:

• Forty-seven percent of parents with students in low-performing schools said that their schools were doing a good job in encouraging parents to be involved, compared with 85% of parents with students in high-performing schools.
• Twenty-five percent of parents with students in low-performing schools say that their school informed them about academic and disciplinary problems, compared with 53% of parents with students in high-performing schools.
• Less than 20% of parents with students in low-performing schools said schools do a very good job preparing their students across four categories: preparation for college; helping students develop confidence, maturity, and personal skills; developing a special talent; and preparing them for a good job. Half of parents with students in high-performing schools said this.

Each year, more than 1 million students fail to graduate from high school on time. Research shows that when parents are involved, students perform better and are less likely to drop out.

"The good news is that schools do not have to convince parents" that their involvement is needed, Bridgeland said this morning.

The report is a follow-up to the 2006 report, “The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts” -- which noted lack of parental involvement as one of the key reasons dropouts gave for leaving school.

“Unfortunately, parents of students trapped in low-performing schools -- those who need the most support -- are the ones that are least likely to be engaged by their children’s schools," said Geoff Garin, president of Peter D. Hart Research Associates, which conducted both surveys. “But we know there is a clear pathway to help improve student achievement in these low-performing schools, and that is through schools and parents working together to create opportunities where parents can play an active role in their children’s academic success.”

Among the changes parents said they want: daily communication, being integrated into academic assignments, homework hotlines, one person at school to be the contact, notification about progress and attendance.

Get up just a little earlier ... and walk to school

Mark Johnston, president of the PTA at Carpenter Avenue Elementary School in Studio City, says that 25 years ago 80% of kids walked to school and today 80% come by car.

No wonder then that on any morning, outside many schools, there are kids darting between parked cars, drivers making questionable U-turns and parking nightmares.

Except perhaps this morning. Hundreds of students walked to Carpenter today, taking part in International Walk to School Day.

"You can really experience life by walking," Johnston said as he and his third-grade son, Zachary, crossed a footbridge on the way to school, as they do every morning. It's a habit they developed when they lived in London, where walking to school is the norm, he said.

Caroline Keefer walked her children, thinking "how lovely" an experience it was. Daughter India was among the fourth-graders who are wearing pedometers for the next eight weeks to track how active they are and to see if they can improve. She had already walked 1,315 steps before 8 a.m.

(See more pictures here.)

Meet two Johnson students trying to get it right

Idalia had a knife; Amancia had an issue with a gun. But that was then.

Each of the 100 students at Johnson Community Day School in South Los Angeles has had serious problems at their middle or high schools--run-ins that include truancy, drug use or brushes with the law.

That’s why they ended up at Johnson.

(Amancia Westby, 16, looks over her assignment at Johnson.)

Now, they face an additional challenge, getting to a new campus in another part of town. Their current school is being torn down to make way for a new 2,000-student high school.

But their presence at Johnson means they’re still trying. Read on for the stories of Idalia and Amancia.

Students as people; it takes time

Tim Schlosser, a teacher at Southeast Middle School, writes:

My students always start out this way: a group of anonymous middle schoolers in blue pants and white polo shirts.  Looking at my classes for the first couple of days, they seem more like a homogeneous group of "kids" than like individuals with unique talents, families, wounds, and dreams. But this uniformity begins to evaporate as the days go by. 

There's a seventh-grade boy, I'll call him Luis, who argued on his classroom job application that he should be responsible for welcoming visiting adults to our room. "I'm never afraid to be talking to a person of higher power," he wrote.

My student survey asks whether students like to read for fun at home. An eighth-grader, Francisco, wrote, "I don't usually read anything if I don't have to. I'm a very busy person and I have social occasions to attend to." Another says he will "read anything." But then he qualifies that: "Anything that includes modified cars."

A seventh-grade girl describes herself as happy, smart, and confident. She wants to be a pediatrician.  A boy in the same class likes break-dancing and wants to study volcanoes when he grows up. Another acts morose and depressed. He says "I don't know" for every question and colors the worksheet black.

On the parent survey, a mother describes her daughter as "a diamond that must be polished to perfection." She says she can help out in the class anytime she is needed.

$7 could be just too much

Tim Schlosser, a teacher at Southeast Middle School, writes:

I required my students to bring their binders and signed parent letters to class last Friday.  Most did.  But one seventh-grade girl brought a note from her dad: "Unable to buy the material now because of crazy situation in the U.S.A.  Certainly she will have it soon."  I took this to be an allusion to the economic situation, and I gave her the binder. 

Because I have some degree of insulation from the economic downturn, I can view it with detachment: It's something for politicians to talk about, it's in the news, it comes up in conversation, but it is not something I personally have to worry about.  I know that it hurts all those swing-state mill workers and single moms that McCain and Obama strike up friendships with.  But it's easy to forget that it's here, too. 

In my previous two years of teaching, I also required students to bring in binders, pens, paper, and dividers.  Maybe $7 worth of materials.  I made it clear that I would find students the materials if money were an issue, but it seemed that they were all able to get them without a problem. Yet this year, in various forms, I have received at least four claims from students that they couldn't get materials because of cost. 

That could be happenstance.  Or the kids could be making excuses.  But I also think it could be a reminder that tough times hit hardest for those on the bottom half of the socioeconomic totem pole.  I have the luxury of viewing climbing prices and unemployment as mere news headlines, while to people in South Gate, many of whom lack college degrees and have large families to support, these things seem like a completely "crazy situation." 

Getting the most from back-to-school nights

Forms to fill out and homework to do and meetings to schedule. Yup, school has resumed. Soon you'll be headed to back-to-school night, and the website Great Schools has some tips for getting the most out of it, via Denis Cruz, 2006 California Teacher of the Year.

Cruz suggests asking:

• What is the policy on late work and make-up work? How does it affect the student's grade?
• How do absences affect the grade?
• How do I teach my son or daughter to gain independence in middle school?
• How can I check on my son's or daughter's progress in school? Do you give weekly progress reports?
• How do I know what the homework is? Is there an online homework calendar?
• Should I call or e-mail the teacher?
• Are there field trips?
• How can I check on detentions or behavior issues?
• Is there anything you'd like me to do? May I volunteer in the classroom?

Before you go, find out if it's OK to bring your children. Some schools prefer to reserve the evening for adults only.

-- Mary MacVean

Remembering Murchison Elementary

Tuesday's story in The Times about a campaign to convert Murchison Elementary School on the Eastside to a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school brought a number of reader comments. Most saluted the idea, although one middle-school teacher argued -- as do some education experts -- that what's important is the quality of the teaching, not the configuration of grades.

But one e-mail in particular caught our attention. Marie Matteson wrote that she attended Murchison in the early 1940s -- when it WAS a K-8 school. She also said her mom, Louise Burciaga, founded the PTA at Murchison when a Mrs. Roberts was the principal. Anyway, here's an excerpt from her e-mail:

"Your article on extending years in elementary school has me excited. It so happens that I attended Murchison from kindergarten through the 8th grade. The graduation class consisted of only 14 students. Instead of going on to the ninth grade at Lincoln High School, I chose to go to Wilson in El Sereno. I could take the Red streetcar rather then walk through Lincoln Park in order to get to school. That was in the early forties.

"Being the oldest of five girls I remember Murchison in many ways. As children we were bilingual and that proved to be an advantage. We learned from our parents and grandparents. The neighborhood at that time was multi-ethnic to some degree. Prior to the Ramona Gardens development, we could run in the fields and played in the haystacks behind our home."