Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Breakfast

In response to the wide variety of reactions I've heard from parents, teachers, and kids to the Breakfast in the Classroom program that's been phased into Providence Public School Elementary classrooms this year, I wrote "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Breakfast" for July's East Side Monthly, which has hit the streets but isn't yet online. Here's a slightly longer version of the piece that's in ESM.

To get connected to the Providence Schools Nutrition Advisory Group that's being convened by Kids First for conversation and action about the challenges and opportunities of school food and nutrition, see the next post, and please share in the comments.

--

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Breakfast

I
Every morning just before we head off for school, my three bleary-eyed and crazy-haired sons eat breakfast: yogurt, cereal, milk, a bagel, waffles. On a really good day, a piece of fruit.

II
Every morning just after the school bell rings, teachers unzip coolers, one with milk and juice and the other with food: muffins, yogurt in a tube, cereal bars, or pancakes that are served in a bag at room temperature. All food is sealed up in plastic bags, unless it’s in a tube.

III
During breakfast at home, we multitask. Who has a baseball game? Is that book report in your homework folder? Yes, I am going to comb your hair! Sit still for a second, you monkey. We make lunches, sign permission slips, scan fliers fished out of backpacks. They fight over the sports section. They eat. We leave.

IV
During breakfast in the classroom, teachers and kids multitask . They take attendance, collect homework, listen to P.A. announcements. Breakfast in the classroom is available for all. Most kids eat what’s provided with little hands-on help from teachers. They throw away wrappers, wipe up spills, and grab the broom from the corner of the classroom to deal with errant muffin crumbs. Within ten minutes, the school day continues.

V
Breakfast at home happens because someone is on hand to wake the children, find the cream cheese buried in the fridge, and otherwise expedite kids through their morning and out the door. Our family represents what is possible but not necessarily what is typical. We have resources and systems that provide enough time, money, and clarity to shop for food, roust the kids from bed, and ensure that they are passably clean, dressed, and ready to roll. Some days, despite our best intentions and favorable conditions, the whole circus of our morning routine disintegrates. One kid or another abandons breakfast in favor of last-minute homework completion, a lost shoe, or a temper tantrum. That kid is hungry until lunch, or was, before the breakfast in the classroom option.

VI
According to Rhode Island Kids Count, before Providence’s breakfast in the classroom program began in 2011, 34 percent of the city’s low-income children participated in the universal breakfast program. Eighty-eight percent of Providence Public Schools’ students qualify for free or reduced price lunch. While some of those children may eat breakfast at home or en route to school, many do not. Unless they ate breakfast when they arrived at school, those kids were hungry until lunch.

VII
Prior to the breakfast in the classroom program, Providence Public Schools already provided universal breakfast—free breakfast for every student without regard to the financial status of that child’s family. Most schools served it in the cafeteria before the school day started. Kids had to get there early enough to grab some breakfast, and they had to be hungry and focused enough to eat it in the same space where all of their friends were running around, playing, gossiping, and blowing off steam before the school day started. Late to school? No breakfast. Distracted? No breakfast. Though everyone theoretically could have breakfast, not enough kids actually did.

VIII
Hundreds of low-income urban communities nationwide are implementing the breakfast in the classroom program. Food manufacturers produce items for the program that meet state nutrition standards. More food eaten means more food purchased. Follow the money, if you’re so inclined. Of course, you can also follow the money trail left by the box of Cheerios in our kitchen cupboard.

IX
Kate Keizler, parent, Vartan Gregorian Elementary School at Fox Point: “When I look at the breakfast in the classroom program, I see students who have what they need to take command of their morning, and that sets the tone for them to feel in control for the rest of the day. I see a society that is committed to making sure that kids get what they need to be ready to learn and enjoy school.”

X
Kathy Sullivan, third grade teacher at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School: “I think that the breakfast in the classroom program is a good thing because more kids actually eat breakfast, and it doesn’t really take up any extra time at the start of the day. That part is easy. But it’s not right to say that it doesn’t require extra time during the day. The kids are having an extra drink, and that means an extra bathroom trip later in the morning. We don’t have that kind of time. Kids can’t miss ten minutes of the most important teaching time of the day.”

XI
If kids are going to earn the NECAP scores needed to demonstrate that they are learning at the pace the state has set for them, they need both that breakfast and that extra bathroom break. Somehow, we need to find a little breathing room.

XII
Ellen Santaniello, parent of a second grader at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School: “I worry that our kids are being required to take mostly highly processed, sugary food at 9:00am. For my kid, this is like being given drugs. Since this program began, her lunchbox comes home nearly full, she is frantically hungry at 3:00pm, and both her teachers and I have noticed a decrease in focus and self control. I felt I had no choice but to tell her teacher that she can't participate, but now she feels isolated and ostracized while the other kids eat. Does anyone know what, if any, choice we have here?”

XIII
Does the choice really need to be between no breakfast at all and an industrially produced breakfast in a bag? What would it take to create other options?

"Inspiring Hope" - A Look Inside Hope High School

May's East Side Monthly (with a cover that features friend of this blog Anisa Raoof, editor of the wonderful KidoInfo website) contains "Inspiring Hope," a continuation of the "At School Today" column I've been writing for ESM. For this piece, which is in the online and print editions on page 44, I spent a morning at Hope High School asking questions about what classes and programs are engaging Hope students and connecting them to success. Here it is online, and I've reprinted the piece below (which differs very slightly from the edited version in print).

There's been a lot said about Hope recently, especially since RIDE declared at the end of March that Hope Information Technology was a failing school in need of intervention (interestingly, the announcement of that unfortunate, and I think undeserved, designation happened the day before I visited the school for my ESM story). A few highlights of the Hope High School reporting and opinionating:

• "At Hope High, Recent Gains Now Lost," a bleak but honest assessment of the situation at Hope now in the ProJo
• A write up from WRNI on Hope teacher's reaction to the plan, which includes appealing RIDE's decision and/or combining Hope Arts and Hope IT to form one un-failing school (the ProJo also covered this development here)
• Commentary from Warren Simmons of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform on the ups and downs of Hope with an eye toward describing the reasons why changes made to improve academics at the school have not created meaningful or lasting improvement. 

I feel that I have far more to learn about my neighborhood's only public high school before I embark on any significant opinionating of my own. I am exceedingly grateful for the generosity of Hope's educators, administrators and students as I have begun to get to know the school. For this story and for a feature that's going to appear in the June edition of East Side Monthly, they have greeted me warmly and opened their school to me. There's a deep well of good practice alive at Hope, and much of that emerges in the stellar programs that I wrote about. These programs - JROTC, theater, and the arts program - are not making the difference academically or otherwise for all kids at Hope. Nevertheless, even if they don't represent what is typical, they very much represent what is possible, and I believe that if Hope's educators and students had a reasonable amount of autonomy balanced with accountability, as they have had from time to time in the past though not long enough and not with the right conditions (as Dr. Simmons described), they could achieve amazing results.

With no further ado, here's the May ESM "At School Today" piece on my day at Hope High School:

As a curious neighbor, possible prospective parent, and journalist, I recently visited Hope High School. I wanted to get inside Hope to appreciate some the good things that I believed must be happening for students within Hope Arts and Hope Information Technology, the school’s two learning communities. Anyone with a passing awareness of local public education knows that a collective of Hope students have demonstrated fierce loyalty to the school as they attempted to preserve the Hope’s block schedule and accompanying adequate teacher common planning time, an endeavor that has met with frustration (and which is itself a powerful story, but not the story I am telling here).  As that situation unfolded, my present curiosity focused not only on teaching and learning as demonstrated (or not) by NECAP scores but on what else was happening inside Hope.

The morning I set aside to spend at Hope started in Laura Maxwell’s Advanced Placement English class, one of four AP offerings this year at the school, where I joined the class’ 12 students to study the construction of persuasive essays. I spent several more hours with teachers and students, although I needed several more days to check out all the list of programs and opportunities for students that Laura and her colleagues had assembled. In the time that I had, I got to know a bit about three programs that are clearly creating powerful opportunities for engagement and success for students.

First, I visited Hope’s Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) program, run by teachers Lieutenant Colonel Raoul Archambault and First Sergeant Alan Kushner. Formerly part of Hope Leadership, which no longer exists as a separate learning community, the JROTC program continues to thrive. Enrolling 130 students in grades 9-12—nearly a tenth of Hope’s student body—JROTC combines academics, leadership and teamwork training, service learning, health and physical fitness, and more. I saw young people learning in a unique classroom, with desks on one side, a workout area on the other, and ample resources to support their JROTC commitment. The only school in Providence with a JROTC program, Hope receives federal funding for uniforms, materials, and a 50 percent subsidy for instructor salaries. JROTC students’ strong academic achievement, high rates of graduation, and higher education success repay the investment. Students I talked with said that they were grateful for the program’s structure, high expectations, and opportunity to share their skills with the city; if you see a military color guard at a Providence Bruins game or a Providence Public Schools high school graduation, you’re likely looking at Hope JROTC students in action.

I next met with art teacher Valerie Kline, who spent her lunch break sharing details of Hope’s partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design. In its eighth year, the partnership offers Hope Arts students the opportunity to pursue serious arts study and career preparation. Students participate in RISD’s Project Open Door program, which provides learning opportunities and mentors for students from Hope and several other urban schools from eighth grade through college. Hope students can earn RISD certificates—a professional credential—in a variety of fields, and RISD students and staff work at Hope to support students as they hone their skills and build their portfolios. RISD places three Master of Arts in teaching candidates at Hope for training and RISD students and staff members actively participate in Hope’s robust afterschool offerings. The Hope-RISD partnership also assures that up to two Hope Arts students per year are eligible for full 4-year RISD undergraduate scholarships. Clearly, Kline and her fellow Hope Arts teachers also serve as valuable assets to Hope students dedicated to approaching arts scholarship and practice seriously.

My last stop took me to Christine Auxier’s drama studio, part classroom and part stage. Auxier and 15 of her theater students were preparing for the following evening’s preview performance of Laurie Brooks’ Triangle, a play focused on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire disaster and its parallels to current-day immigrants' issues. [Readers may remember that I shared info about a Triangle preview in a previous post.] In August, the Hope High School Theater Company will perform Triangle in Edinburgh, Scotland at the American High School Theater Festival, which takes place in conjunction with the city's renowned Fringe Festival. The American High School Theater Festival showcases the best of high school theater in the United States. Hope is a repeat visitor to the Festival, having performed there previously in 2000 and 2004, and this year is Rhode Island’s only representative. It’s an incredible honor, the result of many years of dedicated effort and tradition within Hope’s theater program.

There’s so much more. I wish I could tell you about Hope Information Technology’s certification offerings for students, about Hope’s athletics program, about Hope’s student journalism successes. Through the years that I have been writing about education, I have felt far more love for high schools that I ever dreamed possible when I was a student myself. I share this not terribly astounding revelation as a way to frame the frankly giddy delight I experienced during my brief time at Hope. While what I observed may not be the experience of all students, it certainly represents what is possible and what we as a neighborhood and a city must celebrate and expand.

P.S.: In February’s column, I didn’t yet know which middle school my oldest child would choose as he moved from elementary school. People have wondered about what we decided, so I’m happy to report that once we get through the rigors of fifth grade and the delights of summer, he will be a student at Nathan Bishop Middle School*.

*Or so I expect, but do not actually know for sure. As of today, May 10, families of incoming middle school students have still not heard from PPSD about our kids' school placements.  

Focus on Mt. Hope Learning Center: East Side Monthly's March 2011 Column

I don't want to let this very education-eventful March come to a close without sharing the month's "What Happened at School Today" column, which I write for East Side Monthly. This monthly, "What Happened at School Today" focused on Mt. Hope Learning Center. It's online here (flip digitally to page 41), still likely available in various neighborhood coffeeshops and other establishments, and I've reproduced it below.

--

A Visit to Mount Hope Learning Center (note: not the catchiest title. The piece in ESM was called "Keep Hope Alive," which could be the title of the Hope High School piece I'm finishing today that's slated to appear in May's issue. I have full faith in the editorial staff of ESM to come up with another equally catchy title.)

The East Side’s rich educational resources include the Mount Hope Learning Center (MHLC). As a parent at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School, where MHLC runs an afterschool program (one of two in the school—the YMCA Out of School Time Program runs the other), I know the general outlines of the Center’s work. To find out more, I met with MHLC Executive Director Elizabeth Winangun in her sunny office at MHLC, a former residence at 140 Cypress Street that was converted to its current use in 2002.

Founded in 1998, the nonprofit MHLC focuses the Mount Hope neighborhood, which is demarcated by Hope Street, Rochambeau Avenue, the Amtrack/MBTA railroad tracks, and Olney Street. Mount Hope’s demographic statistics align with those that describe Providence’s poorer communities rather than the quality of life indicators of much of the generally affluent East Side. The 2000 Census reports that a third of Mount Hope’s children below the poverty level. While the 2010 Census data may report that this and other details have changed, Winangun reports that poverty and lack of opportunity still challenge many Mount Hope families, especially during our current economic circumstances.

The centerpiece of MHLC’s work is the afterschool program at King. Serving 100 students, the program is funded by a federal 21^st Century Community Learning Grant administered through the Rhode Island Department of Education. Fifteen AmeriCorps team members representing a remarkable range of experience and other measures of diversity staff the afterschool program. The AmeriCorps team, funded through Serve Rhode Island, which administers federal funds from the Corporation of National and Community Service, is “the heart of the center,” Winangun says. Hailing from the Mount Hope neighborhood and far and wide beyond, the AmeriCorps team members dedicate 11 months to the program, earning a minimal weekly stipend and eventual education grants. MHLC staff members provide AmeriCorp members with extensive training and clear guidelines to develop capacity and skills that will stay in Mount Hope for the long haul.

Accordingly, the afterschool program at King does more than provide basic childcare. AmeriCorp team members support students’ academic achievement, develop their social skills, and provide activities that help them identify their interests through structured activities such as the fourth grade heath and nutrition group led by AmeriCorps educator Jawuan Meeks. Previously a high school social studies teacher in Boston, Meeks is working at MHLC while preparing to pursue a doctorate in education. “We’re working on finding ways to be physically active in the community and students are learning about food and nutrition,” Meeks describes. “Today, the kids got excited about radicchio, avocados, and grapefruit. They’re finding their passion for healthy food and nutrition at a young age, and they get their parents engaged and involved.”

While the program is dedicated to extending education past the formal end of the school day and has demonstrated a positive impact on students’ academic achievement, “It’s most important to work on the social stuff,” Winangun reflects. “At the end of the school day, some kids are joyful and some are miserable. Our aim is to get them all to a better place so that whoever picks them up between 5:00 and 6:00 sees a happier kid.  We teach kids how to shift gears.”

Though MHLC AmeriCorps team members devote most of their time to the afterschool program, they also work on other initiatives. Meeks is collaborating with two colleagues to create a pre-GED life skills program for young men who are out of school and work. “We don’t just want to ‘help’ the community,” says Meeks. “We assist the community to develop leadership and talent within the community itself and to take the reins when we’re gone.” Galvanized by the lack of meaningful neighborhood opportunities for 14 to 15 year old young women, another AmeriCorps member successfully wrote a grant to a Brown University philanthropy class for $15,000 to initiate a program that will train young women to identify community needs and plan projects in response for themselves and their peers.

Response to neighborhood needs has promoted the evolution of other MHLC programs, including school vacation and summer camp programs, a cooking class that’s a popular pick among middle schoolers who participate in the Providence After School Alliance AfterZone program, and a G-Tech sponsored computer lab run by part-time staffer Tom Lew. Having this ongoing support nearby is vital, Winangun believes, because for some residents, “There’s an invisible wall around Mount Hope. It doesn’t affect everyone but for some in our community, getting on a bus to take advantage of opportunities elsewhere is a huge challenge due to limited finances, fear or conflict, or anxiety about the unknown. We work with a lot of people who haven’t ventured far outside, and we need to be here for them.”

As has happened to many nonprofits in Providence and elsewhere, 2010 presented MHLC with near-knockout financial blows. As a result of management challenges, the Center went into receivership in April 2010, simultaneously weathering a change in leadership, extensive board member retirement, and a staff reduction from eight to two-and-a-half full time employees. MHLC’s excellent track record and neighborhood support have been keys to its survival. Mainstay board members Stacy Couto, Jorge Cardenas, Sylvia Soares, and MHLC co-founder Lenny Long either remained or returned to board service, thereby ensuring continuity and focus on continued service. Winangun, a longtime staff member who became executive director during this time of transition, noted that City Council representative Kevin Jackson and state representative Gordon Fox remained stalwart supporters throughout. All funders, including the United Way Rhode Island, kept funding in place throughout the receivership oversight period, and the Center did not interrupt service or programs.

Consider a donation of time or expertise to keep MHLC going strong. Though the afterschool program at King costs families just ten dollars per week per child, scholarships are in demand. And a $300 donation supports a student through a year of school vacation and summer camp experiences. It’s a great investment in the children of our community. Learn more about Mount Hope Learning Center and find out ways to support its work at http://www.mthopelearningcenter.org.

--

End note: Since I wrote that, the AmeriCorps program, which is the heart and soul of MHLC, is at risk of losing funding along with and many other AmeriCorps=staffed programs that serve communities nationwide. Click here to learn what you can still do to ensure that they don't. Thanks.

PPSD middle school curriculum correction

I recently posted a version of my most recent East Side Monthly education column on Nathan Bishop Middle School. The blog post that reproduces the article is here. Since then, I heard from Theresa Fox, a seventh grade English teacher at Bishop, who wanted to share her thoughts and clarify a point that I made about middle school curriculum in the Providence Public Schools. I had stated

Clearly, it’s too soon to use long-term indicators such as high school graduation rates to determine whether the district’s newly implemented curriculum—which is the same at all of Providence public middle schools except for Nathanael Greene Middle School’s Advanced Academics program—will produce the results needed to close existing achievement gaps and propel all students to success in high school and beyond.

Ms. Fox corrected my statement that Nathanael Greene does not have a different curriculum than the other Providence public middle schools, and I am grateful for her clarification. Her entire response, which I believe will be printed in East Side Monthly's March edition, appears below. A few more thoughts from me follow her letter.

To the Editor:

I enjoyed reading Jill Davidson's recent piece about Nathan Bishop Middle School ("An Enviable Choice: A Look Inside Nathan Bishop," February, 2011) and her decision to possibly have her son attend next year.

I am thrilled to be teaching at Bishop and to be a part of such a vibrant and positive educational community.  Wonderfully supportive administrators, creative and energetic faculty and staff, supportive and engaged parents, and a diverse student body make for a truly exciting environment in which to teach and learn and it seems to get better each week.  At Bishop, I can help a student craft a piece of fiction that makes me wish I'd written it myself, watch excitedly as another masters his first "perfect paragraph," enjoy cafeteria table conversation in a mix of French, Haitian Creole, Arabic, and English with newcomers from Haiti, Guinea, Ivory Coast, and Iraq, have a conversation a with student who reads The Economist for fun, and guide students through research about events they'd recently discovered in the history of their home country, the Dominican Republic.  In short, I agree with Ms. Davidson that it is an exciting addition to the list of school choices.

Before coming to Bishop, I taught at Nathanael Greene Middle School for 18 terrific years, half of those years in the Advanced Academic Program, and I served on the district's curriculum writing committee for a year, so I feel somewhat qualified to question one bit of her piece, however.

She mentions that the district's "newly implemented curriculum...is the same at all Providence public middle schools, except for Nathanael Greene's Advanced Academics program."  I did not know that this misperception was out there in the community, as, in fact, there is no special curriculum for the AA program--nor has there ever been one.  The curriculum is actually the same for all middle schools in all subjects--except for advanced math courses, into which students are scheduled according to placement test scores.  It is, and has always been, up to individual teachers or teams of teachers in the AA program (as in any classroom) to differentiate curriculum according to student needs, interests, and abilities.

Ms. Davidson's implication that a "policy-driven district program" exists with an AA curriculum at Greene is simply false and creates a false set of criteria for choice between schools.  I think parents should know this as they make decisions about their children's education.

Theresa Fox
Grade 7 English teacher
Nathan Bishop Middle School

Again, I am really grateful to Ms. Fox for her perspective and for correcting my misunderstanding. As I told her in email, I do think that that it's fair to say that Greene's Advanced Academics offering is a "policy-driven district program." It is offered to students as such. I need to understand more about the actual PPSD policy/policies that create the opportunity for academically advanced programs; I guess it's possible that such offerings exist in practice with no policy underpinnings. But Greene's program does exist and is promoted to students as a distinct experience, which I now know is the result of educator initiative within the standard curriculum framework.

Thank you, Ms. Fox! And thanks to everyone for the feedback I've received on the East Side Monthly columns. It's so valuable and much appreciated.

Choosing Middle Schools: A Visit to Nathan Bishop - February's East Side Monthly Column

East Side Monthly's February 2011 issue is out in print and online; for this issue, I wrote about visiting Nathan Bishop Middle School, our neighborhood middle school, in preparation for my son Elias' move to sixth grade. I wanted to know more about the ways the school supported students as they grew as learners and as well-rounded people, and had a great conversation with Amy Battisti, one of Bishop's guidance counselors. I hope I did her work justice. I also touch on the decision we're making between Bishop and Nathanel Greene Middle School's advanced academic program, about which there's more to say for sure.

Here's the column as I wrote it--the version in East Side Monthly is slightly edited. You can find it online at http://www.providenceonline.com/eastsidemonthly/read.html on page 39.

Choosing Middle Schools: A Visit to Nathan Bishop

My oldest son will be entering middle school next year. While still puzzling over our alarmingly swift arrival at this stage (Weren’t you just in kindergarten, kid?) we organized ourselves to look at middle schools. Since kindergarten, he has been generally content and successful at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School on Camp Street. Given his track record, our values, and other factors (three kids, this economy, any expectation of affording college) we’re staying on the public school path.

Along with most or all other East Side addresses, we fall well within Nathan Bishop Middle School’s zone. Next year’s class of 208 sixth graders will complete Nathan Bishop’s student body, which has grown one grade per year since the school reopened in 2008. Most readers will remember that Bishop was deeply troubled. Poorly attended by East Siders of all economic strata, neighborhoods, and races, it was not serving most its students effectively. After the Providence Public Schools shuttered Bishop in 2006, the East Side Public Education Coalition led a public demand for its reopening. As a result of advocacy, historical preservation requirements, pre-recession economics, high-quality educational architects, and constructive collaboration with Providence Public Schools leadership, a thoroughly and thoughtfully renovated Nathan Bishop Middle School emerged with new leadership, staff members, and intentions.

As my son and I observed when we spent an evening in the building at an exceptionally well-attended open house, Bishop’s renovation is state of the art, utilizing technology and design to create fruitful conditions for learning. Bishop’s brand-new spiffiness also created conditions for crankiness, at least for me, because it contrasts so jarringly with the timeworn settings of most other public schools in Providence—thereby demonstrating the predominant lack of access to suitable facilities for teaching and learning. But a column devoted to educational infrastructure investment is a task for another day. Back to Bishop.

After the open house and additional conversations with Bishop’s staff members and students, my son is fired up. Many of his MLK Elementary classmates chose Bishop, and he is looking forward to joining neighborhood buddies who have attended other elementary schools. His verve seems to be adding fuel to his occasionally flickering fire to excel academically.

Still, I have questions. How will he and his peers reinforce habits of cooperation, work on his social skills, and continue to respect and reach out beyond race, class, and other differences? How will the educators at Bishop encourage him to step on the gas academically, build lifelong learning skills and habits, and take risks? What support will he receive? What challenges will he be likely to experience so that he won’t coast or settle for “good enough?”

In order to dig more deeply, I met with Amy Battisti, one of Bishop’s two guidance counselors; when Bishop gains its third class in the fall, the school will have three counselors. An East Side resident hired in 2008, Battisti works with the current seventh graders and will move with them to eighth grade. By design, she knows each of her 210 students well. Four days a week, she eats lunch with students. She meets with every student in this low-stakes way three or four times annually. “Those lunches really pay off,” she says. “When something happens, they have that person they’ve already chatted with.” Battisti and her fellow guidance counselors also serve as a bridge between home and school in order to facilitate interaction among each student’s family members and six teachers.  Through 15-20 phone calls per day, numerous emails, and before-school meetings, Bishop’s guidance staff members spend a third of their time communicating with families.

Bishop’s student population is approximately one-third Hispanic, one-third African American, and one-third white and Asian; students come from the East Side and citywide. The school serves a large group of English Language Learners; many families speak Spanish at home. A range of students receives special education services. Over 60 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Elements of the school’s culture, such as the highly visible code of conduct featured on signs in hallways and classrooms, indicate understanding of the opportunities and challenges of such multifaceted diversity, as well as the developmental needs of young adolescents to learn without fear, a fundamental precondition for success for all of us.

Battisti’s collaborates with teachers to assess student progress and provide intervention as needed, and she walked me through the academic support strategies that Providence’s middle school curriculum provides for struggling learners. Clearly, it’s too soon to use long-term indicators such as high school graduation rates to determine whether the district’s newly implemented curriculum—which is the same at all of Providence public middle schools except for Nathanael Greene Middle School’s Advanced Academics program—will produce the results needed to close existing achievement gaps and propel all students to success in high school and beyond.

We also discussed the ways Bishop’s educators provide challenges for students who exceed expectations and crave additional challenge. Some of Bishop’s teachers have opted to innovate within science, math, and English courses for those students who demonstrate aptitude and effort. This approach differs from Greene’s program in two ways: it’s implemented within the school as a result of educator initiative rather than as a policy-driven district program, and its “a la carte” approach provides opportunities for student-specific differentiation.

I took careful note of these differences, as we will be deciding between Bishop and Greene’s Advanced Academic program, should my son be accepted. We visited Greene as well; my son was able to visualize success there, though he feels strongly that he would prefer to stay in the neighborhood—or, as he puts it, sleep until 7:00am rather than get on the bus then. I’ll let you know where he ends up. Either way, I am grateful that through the efforts of Battisti and her colleagues, Bishop has become a place for teaching and learning for young people within and beyond the East Side.

Update: Please see this post for a correction from Bishop teacher Theresa Fox that points out that my assertion that Greene has a different curriculum from the other Providence middle schools is not accurate.

What Happened at School Today? A question and an introduction

This column originally ran in December 2010's East Side Monthly.
 
What Happened at School Today?

“So, what happened at school today?” It’s a habitual question if you regularly sit at a dinner table with school-aged kids, and it’s the inquiry that drives me personally and professionally. I write about education, analyze policy and research, and collaborate with educators, students, and community members within schools as a facilitator and organizer for new initiatives. I’m always wondering: what really did happen at school today? What does it mean? How do we know? How can we sustain effective practices and policies? How can we identify and challenge the obstacles that stand in the way? And how can we bridge differences to create great educational options for all young people?

After nearly a decade of employment with the Coalition of Essential Schools, a national education reform and restructuring organization with East Side roots, founded at Brown in 1984 and now located in Oakland, California, I am focusing my enthusiasm and experience here at home, joining educators, administrators, community leaders, families, students, scholars, and activists, and others who have rolled up their sleeves to work for what’s best for our city, state, and region’s schools.

To be closer to East Coast family, we—my husband Kevin, sons Elias and Leo, and I—moved to Providence’s East Side from San Francisco in the final weeks of 2004. (Note to fellow settlers coming here from more temperate climes: do not underestimate the shock to the system that a sudden entry into a New England winter can produce. And remember to be generous with the heating oil estimate when planning your family budget.)

My oldest son Elias was gearing up to enter kindergarten in 2005, so as soon as we refamiliarized ourselves with snow shovels and ice scrapers, I introduced myself to our new friends and neighbors with school-aged kids. “Hi! New in town! Talk to me about the school your kid goes to.” I queried kids about what they thought of their schools. I listened, asked questions, and listened some more. Unfortunately, the timing of our arrival was all wrong for what I describe as the “playground phenomenon”—that is, often as not, at the playground or park, when you see a cluster of parents with young kids, they’re deep in discussion about their kids’ actual or possible future schools. Despite the deep freeze, birthday parties, trips to the Providence Children’s Museum, and other community events provided plenty of opportunities to listen and ask yet more questions. (Online extra! Click here for an article I wrote for Kidoinfo about choosing schools.)

We balanced what we learned from those chats with visits to our community’s schools, including the charter schools, independent schools, and the two Providence public schools that were designated as our neighborhood schools: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School and Vartan Gregorian Elementary School. We sought an appropriate learning environment for our particular kid, and felt fortunate that several choices emerged as sound options. Ultimately, King best matched our family priorities and my son’s needs. Elias is now in fifth grade at King, getting fired up about enrolling at Nathan Bishop Middle School next fall. His brother Leo is also at King, in second grade.

Since moving to Providence, a third son, Henry, joined our family. He’s four and a half, just the age Elias was when we first arrived, preparing to enter kindergarten. Again, I am in “playground phenomenon” mode, learning about families’ experiences and visiting schools. My two other kids are thriving at King, and I suspect Henry will as well, if that’s the choice we make. However, we owe it to him to understand the options now, not as they were three or six years ago during our previous journeys through this parenting rite of passage. And we need to acknowledge that we’re grateful to have options; that’s not something that all families can say, and that needs to change.

Since that cold winter of our arrival, I’ve connected with hundreds of parents on similar paths at community meetings, during tours at King, during those inevitable playground conversations, at baseball and soccer games, in the aisles of Stop & Shop, pretty much everywhere. Many East Side families ask me to explain why we chose King. It’s a reasonable question to which there is no “right answer.” We chose King for a few specific reasons. We had become friendly with other families with kids thriving at the school. It had a long-established and thriving PTO. I connected well with teachers there. It was fairly close to our house. A belief seems to persist that there is a dire scarcity among public school choices. There must, many seem to think, be the best pick, the right answer. I suggest that parents’ responsibility is not to find the platonic ideal of the “best” school according to anyone else. Our responsibility is to examine the options available and make the best choice for our particular kids. At the same time, I feel compelled to warn against complacency in any form. It’s great that my own kids—and yours, I hope—are learning and thriving, but I will not be happy until all families in all parts of Providence and beyond can feel similarly about their kids’ schools. None of us should be.

I’m grateful for East Side Monthly assistant editor John Taraborelli for tapping me to share my thoughts on education in these pages. Thanks also to Sam Zurier for years of informative, balanced, well-researched columns that ranged far and wide on issues that affect education in Providence and beyond. Congratulations, Sam, and thank you for taking your passion for great schools for all kids into your new role on the Providence City Council as Ward 2’s representative.

--
Jill Davidson can be reached at whathappenedatschool@gmail.com, @dazzlingbetty on Twitter, and here at her blog, providenceschools.blogspot.com. To make “What Happened in School Today?” the best it can be, please in touch with your thoughts, ideas, comments, criticism, and ideas.

What Happened at School Today? in East Side Monthly

I'm delighted to share that East Side Monthly is running a monthly education column that I'm writing, called "What Happened at School Today?" It started in December and is online here, on page 42, and available in coffeeshops, stores, and, if you're a resident of the East Side of Providence, in your mail delivery of a couple of weeks ago. And I'll repost columns here. The next post features December's debut, in which I introduce myself and discuss the process of sorting through education options to find a good fit between kid and school.