Off -Track at Beachside Middle School
Narrative of the Problem
Fran Gallizio sat discouragingly at his desk, finishing up first-quarter grades for his Eighth Grade Honors Language Arts classes at Beachside Junior High. Last year, the Beachside administration decided to implement an Honors Program for Eighth Grade students, and Fran had been chosen to teach one of three Honors Language Arts classes. The new program gave qualified students the opportunity to take Honors Language Arts, Honors Math, or Honors Science. Now he sat staring at a grade-book spotted with Cs and Ds.
The Eighth Grade Honors Program was implemented for several reasons. Located in an affluent suburban community, Beachside sees many of its students move on into college-bound programs in the local high school. Many others attend area prep schools. As such, parental pressure to institute advanced classes was strong. Furthermore, the assistant superintendent of the school district had been pushing for advanced classes since her arrival. Beachside actually did offer advanced classes nine years ago. However, at that time teachers complained that students were being tracked too early, and classrooms had become less heterogeneous and more divided along racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines. The assistant superintendent fought to get the advanced classes back, arguing that the new program would allow for a greater variety of students to have access to and participate in the program. Strong support for the Honors Program from Beachside's principal ensured its implementation. This was an administrative decision; those in power, who had not been in the classroom for decades, made the decision to have advanced classes, while the Language Arts teachers who work closely with and know what is best for their students, were united in their stance against this decision.
As Fran reviewed his class averages, his eyes kept returning to one particular student, Janice, currently earning a low C- in his class. He knew she would be very disappointed in her score when she received it in the mail, and he thought about how her parents would respond. A ‘solid A’ student in Mrs. Dornan’s 7th Grade class, Janice began the school year hesitant and apprehensive about her Honors class. For the first time, Janice had been recognized as a student. Her mother and father, both high school drop-outs with low-income jobs, felt very proud when Mrs. Dornan recommended Janice for the new Honors Program. Her parents did not involve themselves in school affairs and knew little of the academic rigors entailed in the Honors Program, but pushed Janice to sign up for the course. As the quarter progressed, Janice began having difficulties. Socially, Janice felt isolated and removed from the other students in class. Her parents punished her when she brought home low test grades by keeping her from seeing her friends after school. For his part, Fran felt that he had given Janice ample opportunity to adjust to the rigors of the course and improve her performance. He had made himself available for extra-help sessions after school. In his mind, this student should not have been placed in the Honors class, and that fact frustrated him. He decided to consult the two other Language Arts teachers, Steve Entwistle and Sara Johnson, to see if they had any similar experiences with students in their Honors classes.
The three Language Arts teachers had spent the previous summer developing curricula that matched what English classes offered at Beachside High, with challenging text, a heavy writing component, and emphasis on seminar-style discussions. The teachers had agreed to meet informally over the course of the summer and exchange ideas, lesson plans, and reading materials. To the chagrin of Fran, Steve, and Sara, the administration had established the criteria for entrance into Honors classes without their consultation. For the Honors Language Arts course, each student needed:
· A grade of an A or B in seventh grade Language Arts
· A SAT-9 score of a 6 or better (9 being the highest) in the areas of Total Reading and Total Language on their sixth grade SAT-9 exam
· Recommendation from 7th Grade teacher
By September, the teachers were prepared to challenge their advanced classes and had held them to very high standards. Now, at the end of the first quarter, Fran sensed real problems with the Honors course, as it was conceived.
In his meeting with Sara Johnson and Steve Entwistle, Fran expressed his concerns. Janice had met all the criteria for entrance into the Honors class, with a strong recommendation from Ms. Dornan. Janice had only scored a 6 on the SAT-9, but her parents really felt she was ready for the challenge. Now, Janice found herself falling farther and farther behind on her reading. She found it difficult to follow class discussions and participated less and less each week. She complained to her parents that she didn't like Mr. Gallizio (and that he didn't like her); that's why she wasn't doing well. Over time, she came to dislike the class entirely and wished she didn't have to take Language Arts at all.
Listening to Fran, Sara Johnson immediately thought of Sergei, a student of hers with a strong educational background who recently immigrated to the United States from the Ukraine. She told Fran and Steve of the challenges Sergei experienced in her Honors class. Sergei had recently come to America with his parents from Ukraine, where he had a rigorous education in math, science, and literature. As highly educated members of Kiev's elite, his parents had cosmopolitan interests but limited proficiency in English. As a prominent member of the local university's faculty, Sergei's father was well known in Beachside and respected by many as a brilliant scientist. Since coming to the United States, Sergei had learned how to speak English very quickly. His parents had pushed very hard for Sergei to be admitted in to the Honors Program. Miss Johnson gave a lot of attention to proper writing styles, and Sergei struggled with grammar, punctuation, and verb usage. In addition, his heavy accent and manner of speaking always drew unwanted attention from his peers when he spoke up in class. Often, he did not relate to other students' experiences, nor did they to his. Miss Johnson had sent many notices home, informing Sergei’s parents of his poor performance, but she had heard nothing in return.
On hearing Fran and Sara's accounts, Steve Entwistle told them of Stephanie, one of his top former students who was sadly struggling in his Honors class. Stephanie did very well in several subjects, receiving the highest grades in both her science and math classes. Over the last two years she had established herself as one of the top students in her class, praised by her teachers and respected by her peers. Her proud parents saw great scholarly potential for Stephanie and pushed her to pursue the most rigorous class schedule available at her grade level. With A's in all of her seventh grade classes, she had been recommended for Spanish, Honors Math, Advanced Science, Honors English, and Honors History. On the weekends, Stephanie practiced piano and played club soccer. By the end of the quarter, her enormous amount of work for each class became too much for her. She was ready to give up entirely.
Fran, Sara, and Steve continued swapping stories of struggling students and concurred that something needed to be done with the Honors Program. They decided to explore ways in which they could ensure the opportunity for equity and excellence for all students enrolled in Honors classes.
Analysis of the Problem:
Although the Language Arts teachers face a myriad of challenges, their problem stemmed from two fundamental elements of the Honors Program: tracking and instructional strategies. Beachside administrators implemented a tracking program doomed to failure, and the teachers were not implementing instructional strategies that allowed for equity and excellence for all their students.
From a tracking standpoint, the administrators used criteria that were too narrowly focused to determine students’ eligibility for the Honors Program. Secondly, the criteria set forth by the administration allowed for too much freedom of choice for students to enroll in the Honors Program. Without significant guidance, support, encouragement, and communication to compensate for these factors, Beachside's Honors Program lacked the comprehensive administrative approach necessary for student success.
Instructionally, Fran, Sara, and Steve realized they were not meeting the needs of their students in the classroom. The current classroom structures did not allow for small group collaboration; they were organized in a traditional manner. Cultural barriers were in place in the classroom, causing Sergei to feel isolated from most other students. The teachers were not utilizing team or thematic planning; they typically operated with more of a closed-door policy to lesson planning. Finally, because the administration had not been emphasizing the importance of communication between parents and teachers, the students were the ones who were suffering. The current classroom instructional strategies being used were not providing the opportunity for all students to succeed.
In the case of Stephanie, Beachside failed to provide proper guidance and to consider the impact of her overloaded schedule. For years, teachers had viewed Stephanie as a gifted, bright, and highly capable student. She seemed naturally destined for the honors course in their eyes. Her parents assumed that Stephanie belonged in all of the Honors Program courses. Beachside's Honors Program allowed parents to schedule their students without significant oversight or guidance. Stephanie and her parents, unaware of the teachers' expectations in this new program, both assumed she could handle the load without trouble.
Sergei faced several institutional barriers at his new school. Despite his strong educational background, language and cultural barriers led to Sergei's slipping through the cracks in the rigorous Honors curriculum. Beachside administrators, perhaps fearing that Sergei's parents would not look kindly on their son being kept out of the Honors Program, decided to admit Sergei despite his limited language skills. Secondly, language barriers between the Beachside staff and Sergei's parents made effective communication difficult. Finally, cultural barriers had made relations with other students and the classroom experience in general particularly troublesome for Sergei.
Janice, too, struggled to overcome subtle obstacles, which were not anticipated by Beachside administrators. She felt out of place among the other honors students and believed that they and Mr. Gallizio did not respect her. She had been pulled from her peer group and forced into the Honors course by her parents. Beachside had not provided an appropriate social setting and academic support system for Janice to make the transition into the Honors program.
Relevant Theoretical Knowledge
In terms of tracking, Beachside needs to broaden its criteria for admission into the Honors Program. Janice, Sergei, and Stephanie might have benefited from a variety of assessment tools and placement procedures. As Mitchell (1997, pp. 19-20) points out, standardized test scores often do not accurately assess student learning in the classroom. Objective curriculum-free tests designed to measure general intellectual ability do not reflect student ability in the classroom.
In addition, tracking systems like Beachside's Honors Program are often implemented in an environment with a complicated overlap of needs, assumptions, and structures. Student aspirations, institutional barriers, and "choosing respect" all factor significantly in determining students’ success in tracked courses (Yonezawa, et. al, 2002). Tracking programs, or programs that seek to de-track, need to create a safe environment, provide resources, and improve parent-teacher communication.
Familiarizing themselves with theory and research will help Fran, Sara, and Steve learn how to create classroom environments conducive to successful learning for all students. Because Janice is struggling in Fran’s Honors Language Arts class, he decided to research collaborative grouping strategies. Sara opted to focus her research on cultural and institutional barriers that might be affecting Sergei. In his research, Steve found evidence of mismatches occurring between home and school, which he thought was the center of Stephanie’s struggles.
Research shows that learning is a social process; individuals help each other construct meaning, which is then internalized individually. Jeremy Bruner, a developmental psychologist, emphasizes that "a child’s development must be mediated through interaction with others" (Bayer, 1990, p. 8). Bayer emphasizes student-centered learning as an important tool to facilitate learning. Bayer calls her student-centered model Collaborative Apprenticeship Learning, or CAL, and describes it as occurring in small groups which help students to "internalize new ideas, . . . promotes cognitive development . . . and the use of critical thinking strategies" (Bayer, 1990, p. 12). Throughout this collaborative model, language is the primary tool for learning. By using collaborative talk in social groupings within the classroom, students share their background knowledge and work in small groups to build on that prior knowledge. Social learning promotes the "development of more complex and conceptual structures and cognitive procedures" (Wells, 1992, p. 55).
Vygotsky emphasizes that learning and development are intertwined. In Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, or ZPD, the actual developmental level is what the child can do independently, while the potential developmental level is what the child can do when working with more capable peers. Utilizing Bayer’s CAL in the classroom is an optimal method for allowing the ZPD to occur among students enabling all students to excel. Those students who are more capable can teach those aspiring to learn a concept, and each student can have the opportunity to be the expert in his/her area of strength, thus providing equity and excellence for all students.
Scaffolding is an important strategy the teacher must engage in with his students for collaborative grouping to work. Bruner defines scaffolding as "guided participation in joint activities that help students assimilate new ideas" (Bayer, 1990, p. 9). A teacher must teach his students how to effectively work in groups to achieve the desired outcome (students constructing their own meanings through collaboration and different ZPDs); simply putting students in groups and instructing them to work together is not enough. Teachers must provide scaffolding to their students to guide them through this process.
In utilizing the collaborative apprenticeship model in classrooms, it is crucial that teachers start with their students’ background knowledge and help them connect that with the new knowledge they are constructing through the use of language. "Cognitive apprenticeship implies that children acquire cognitive and metacognitive processes through assisted instruction with a sensitive adult (Collins et al. 1989)" (Dorn, 1998, p. 16). In his article, Dorn emphasizes the seven principles of an apprenticeship approach to literacy. These are crucial skills for a teacher to know and implement in her instruction in order to create a true model of apprenticeship in her classroom. The principles are:
In collaborative classrooms, students construct knowledge through interaction with peers and teachers. To provide education that emphasizes equity and excellence for all students, a teacher must provide scaffolding to her students to help them learn to effectively work in collaborative groups allowing for ZPDs to occur. Creating social interactions among small groups of students will be of benefit by allowing them to construct their own meaning, gain knowledge, and most importantly allowing all students to excel.
Institutional barriers show that "the places that students and parents occupied in the larger social structure often shaped the information they received" (Yonezawa, 2002, p. 39). Having conducted research on the issue, sociologists determined that "segregation in people’s workplaces, schools and neighborhoods shape the relationships or networks they form and the information they accrue" (Yonezawa, 2002, p. 46). Cultural and institutional barriers within schools propagate inequity and can lead to students feeling isolated and segregated. Students need safe spaces in schools where they can "create new relationships between their places in school and their academic and personal identities" (Yonezawa, 2002, p. 61). Safe spaces in schools will help students develop relationships with peers as well as teachers, and will hopefully help them feel valued rather than isolated. As Thompson and Gitlin (1995) explain,
"The creating of spaces lends itself to the possibility of changing relationships in ways that problematize co-ordered power and that engender new habits, expectations, and notions of appropriateness (p. 148)" (Yonezawa, 2002, p. 206).
The ideology of mutual adaptation reflects parent involvement in a child’s education. It also addresses the notion that education tends to be designed to meet the needs of white middle class students, thus leaving out the culture, values, and experiences of non-white middle class students and their families (Robinson 1997). Teachers must take into consideration the home culture of the student because much learning takes place at home as well. "In mutual adaptation, it is just as important to retain the integrity of the home culture as it is to introduce the child to the dominant culture" (Robinson, 1997, p. 301). Teachers need to use their students’ home cultures as a starting point for their education; it makes up a large part of their background knowledge. This can foster "better quality contact between home and school and helps to cultivate successful home-school relations and success for children" (Robinson, 1997, p. 301).
Facilitating parental involvement is another crucial task in which teachers must engage. Creating a neutral zone where parents feel comfortable to voice concerns and ask questions of teachers is one way to accomplish this (Vondra, 1996). Active listening is an important element of these neutral zones; in this manner both parties can develop mutual respect and all points of view can be heard as well as understood (Robinson 1997). Teachers and parents can ensure the student’s needs are being met through positive interactions/discussions.
Theme-based learning is a way to incorporate all curricular areas into one theme. This allows teachers to design distinct lessons centered on one topic that addresses multiple intelligences across the curriculum. Not only does thematic learning take into account students’ prior knowledge, it "allows children to enter at their own level and extend their learning at their own pace" (Savitch and Serling, 1997, p. 146). Thematic learning is an effective means of broadening and reinforcing a student’s knowledge and learning.
Instructional Solutions
The proposed instructional solutions focus on what the teachers can do within their classrooms in order to provide excellence and equity for all their students. Applying the principles from the theoretical research into their curriculum will help these teachers revise some of their practices and thus enable their students to be more successful. Fran, Sara, and Steve realized they have to restructure their classrooms to accommodate the learning of their students. Administrators can actively support their efforts with professional growth opportunities and in-servicing.
Administrators can take several steps to rectify the aforementioned issues related to the Honors Program at Beachside. Indeed, the three Language Arts teachers have already begun the process of reflection necessary to build on the program for succeeding years (Elwood, 1997). However, with increased administrative support and coordination, all of the constituents involved in the Honors program can contribute. Teachers need to be actively involved in establishing prerequisites and criteria for admission to honors courses. Particularly, 7th and 8th grade teachers should be provided with the opportunity to meet formally to discuss student eligibility, scope and sequence, and acceptable assessment criteria from one year to the next.
Simple alterations can change school culture, like changing the name of the program and courses from " Honors" to something less hierarchical or suggestive of tracking (Elwood, 1997). Perhaps the honors course could be called "Literary Analysis and Critical Writing" and the non-honors "Language Arts." That might remove some of the stigma associated with being in the "non-Honors" group.
Creating a warm, safe classroom environment is the first thing these teachers will do. In a classroom with this type of atmosphere, students feel comfortable participating and even making mistakes. Utilizing collaborative grouping in their curriculum is one way teachers can achieve this. When this occurs, the classroom as a whole will be a safe place, and by working closely in small groups the students will be fostering the development of relationships with each other as well as with the teacher.
Implementing the Collaborative Apprenticeship Learning model into their classrooms is an important change these teachers will make. By first providing scaffolding for their students, Fran, Sara, and Steve will restructure more of their lessons into meaningful group work. Utilizing the CAL will optimize the use and creation of ZPDs in the classroom. Students like Janice will greatly benefit from collaborative work in that those students in her group who are more capable will help her construct her own meaning, and she will thus move through the ZPD. The CAL model will also help students like Sergei because the small group discussions will reduce the stress of a seminar-type classroom structure. Further, he will be constantly developing new relationships with other students within a safe place.
The students will not be the only ones working collaboratively; it is important for ZPDs to occur among teachers as well, so they will be planning units together. Thematic units are another tool the teachers will use to help their students achieve success. Teaching units across the curriculum might help students like Stephanie, whose workload is incredibly high, to manage her time. For example, a composition students write in their history class could be further developed and peer edited in their Language Arts classes. Not only would this ease Stephanie’s workload, but by writing one in depth composition rather than two, more surface level compositions, Stephanie will also become a better writer.
Incorporating their students’ cultures into their lessons is one way Fran, Sara, and Steve can eliminate institutional barriers within their classrooms. Valuing each student’s culture is important for teachers to do. For example, the teachers could plan a thematic unit on family trees, incorporating Science, History, Math, and Language Arts. A theme-based, multicultural unit would be an excellent way to show each student that he is an important and valued member of the classroom community.
At Beachside, the mismatch between parental knowledge of the program, administrative goals, and teacher expectations has put an unnecessary onus on some students. Beachside needs to provide a more prominent forum where parents; administrators, teachers (and, perhaps, students) can meet and exchange information, express their concerns, and provide clarity. An "Honors Program Forum" or "Honors Program Discussion Series" might be in order. With school support, Fran, Sara, and Steve can create e-mail accounts or a web site devoted to disseminating information about the program. Through active listening and frequent communication with parents, the teachers will use these technologies to foster better relationships between home and school.
Finally, all three teachers would do well to develop a more political approach to their teaching loads and their professional aspirations. Confronted with the potentially conflicting goals of administrators, teachers, parents and students, Beachside educators need to be more responsive to parents’ concerns and establish conditions for more meaningful and structured collaboration between the different constituents (Robinson, 1997).
Addressing each of the proposed solutions and giving priority to issues that promote equity and excellence in the classroom will greatly enhance Beachside's Honors Program and offer students a vastly improved environment for learning. By implementing these administrative and instructional solutions, Beachside will provide many opportunities for success and enhance the probability of equity and excellence for all students.
References
Bayer, A.S. (1990). Collaborative-apprenticeship learning: Language and thinking across the curriculum, K-12. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Co.
Dorn, L.G. et.al. (1998). Apprenticeship in literacy: Transitions across reading and writing. York, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
Ellwood, Stephen C. IV (1997). The power of possibilities, in Goodwin, A.L. (ed.) Assessment for equity and inclusion: Embracing all our children. New York: Routledge.
Goodwin, A.L. (ed.) Assessment for equity and inclusion. New York: Routledge.
Mitchell, R. (1992). Testing for learning. New York: The Free Press.
Robinson, Jennifer J. (1997). Parents as allies for alternative assessment, in Goodwin, A.L. (ed.) Assessment for equity and inclusion. New York: Routledge.
Savitch, Julie Heiman and Serling, Leslie Anne (1997). "I wouldn’t know I was smart if I didn’t come to this class", in Goodwin, A.L. (ed.) Assessment for equity and inclusion: Embracing all our children. New York: Rutledge.
Wells, G. and Chang-Wells, G.L. (1992). Constructing knowledge together: Classrooms as centers of inquiry and literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heineman.
Yonezawa, S., et. al. (Spring, 2002). "Choosing tracks: ‘Freedom of choice’ in de-tracking Schools", American Education Research Journal, Vol. 39, No. 1.