Providence Public Schools Middle School Open Houses/Registration

File under better late than never! Here's the basic information about PPSD Middle School Open Houses and registration for next year's 6th graders (and 7th graders coming from any elementary schools that still have 6th grade). In order to choose a middle school, families must complete and return a middle school choice form, which--for students already in a district school--was sent home just after Thanksgiving break. It's due back to your child's school by 12/20. Click here for a link to PPSD's school choice/student assignment policy.

Open Houses already have or will soon take place at all PPSD middle schools, as follows (I've included the dates that already happened this week for your info; if you want to see these schools, give them a call and see if it's possible to visit):

Monday, December 6
Gilbert Stuart Middle School
188 Princeton Avenue
456-9340 or 456-9341

Tuesday, December 7
Roger Williams Middle School
278 Thurbers Avenue
456-9355 or 456-9357

Wednesday, December 8
Nathan Bishop Middle School
101 Sessions Street
456-9344
 
Thursday, December 9
Esek Hopkins Middle School
480 Charles Street
456-9203 or 456-9459

Tuesday, December 14
DelSesto Middle School
152 Springfield Street
278-0557 or 278-0558

Wednesday, December 15
Samuel W. Bridgham Middle School
1655 Westminster Street
456-9360 or 456-9361

Thursday, December 16
Nathanael Greene Middle School
721 Chalkstone Avenue
456-9347 or 456-9348

For more information, you can visit www.providenceschools.org/registration or call the Student Registration Center at 456-9297. Note to those who call: have this page handy on your web browser in case you get the automated voice mail that asks you to dial an extension. My experience is that it takes quite a while to get an actual live human on the line. Keep trying. Try them all if the person you think you want isn't reachable. Don't give up. Good luck. And here's hoping that next year, it's easier for families to make a simple phone call to get basic information about school registration and assignment.

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.

Back to School on Kidoinfo.com!

Hope everyone is set to enjoy the second week of school. It's a short one for our family; yesterday off for Labor Day (which we spent delightfully at Goosewing Beach) and then Thursday out of school for Rosh Hashana. See this recent Providence Schools blog post for more on that, and Providence Public Schools' decision to keep schools open during the Jewish High Holy Days this year.

With so much focus on getting the kids back into their school routine--and on everything else! busy times lately--that I am only now posting a note here about a new piece from me, "Back to School Advice," which ran on Kidoinfo.com last week. Featuring tips for easing kids back into their school routines from Learning Community teacher Maureen Nosal, I think it helped a few of us shift from la-ti-da summer mode to a more structured routine. Helped our family, at least! Thanks, again, Maureen, for speaking with me and sharing your thoughts.

"Back to School Advice" is infused with assumptions about the ways kids and their families spend time in the summer. Because of that, I turned to a teacher working with a population of kids that's not quite the same as my own, and while that alternate--and professional--perspective serves the short Kidoinfo.com article just fine, I've been left wondering about the variety of ways Providence kids experience summer. Sadly, I don't have time to research that now, so am putting it out there as a flag for future exploration and understanding.


In the meantime, what are you tips and thoughts for getting your kids transitioned from summer to school? Has it been a big deal or an easy shift? What's working, what's challenging, and what changes will you be making to get your kids off to school with their--and your--sanity more or less intact?

Teach for America: benefit for Rhode Island?

Earlier this week, the ProJo reported on Teach for America's Rhode Island debut, including 20 TFA-ers in the Providence Public Schools. Here's a link to Linda Borg's article, "R.I. Opens Doors to Teach for America," that includes a glamour shot of an incoming TFA-er. (Note to ProJo: make sure ongoing coverage of Rhode Island's teachers includes similar photography standards; not that our teachers are not beautiful and stunning on their own, but a little makeup and good lighting goes a long way after a long day in the classroom.)

Borg's article cites research demonstrating the effectiveness of TFA-trained teachers. True--and there's more to it. This Washington Post piece, also published this week, takes a more balanced approach, citing extensive reseach out of the University of Texas and California State University that finds that TFA teachers deliver mixed results for kids and create extra costs for districts. 

I am not here to bash TFA per se. However, I am here to ask questions about its benefits in our city's schools. As a Providence Public Schools parent, I'd like to see clear statements from the district and the Rhode Island Department of Education describing the anticipated impact of TFA on students' learning and well being. If we are using precious additional resources to establish a TFA presence here, why? What's the upside? The ProJo article emphasized what TFA can do for the young people enrolled in its program and about to be in front of our classrooms. Less clear are the ways our own, slightly younger, kids will benefit, and the ways our district--including those teachers who have been there before the TFA recruits arrived, who will be there long after they leave, and who will be spending time formally and informally mentoring the TFA-ers--will benefit. How does TFA fit into the overall strategic plan to deliver the best public education tp all students in all schools? How does this improve teaching and learning? Absent clear communication, I can imagine all kinds of ways TFA will bring sunshine, laughter, and learning to our students, and I can easily spin out a morass of gloomy scenarios. You can too--please have at it in the comments.

Bottom line: how will this addition help us? I'd like to understand the district and state's sense of how TFA helps our kids learn and thrive. I'd like to understand how TFA fits into plans for professional development and creating the best conditions for the kind of teaching that leads to professional satisfaction and student success.

A final note: the questions I ask about TFA don't apply solely to TFA. This is the shiny new object of the week (rather, it was, before the news of Rhode Island's Race to the Top award, which is indeed quite super-sparkly) about what's happening inside our kids' classrooms, so I'm paying attention, and asking questions on behalf of thousands of parents who want to know more about the adults our kids interact with every day at school, how those adults are helping our kids use their minds well. Clear communication and opportunties for understanding help us support our kids, and their educators.

Providence Public Schools: Jewish Holidays No More (for now)

Mario Hilario, the rhymingest reporter in Providence television news, recently reported this story on Providence Public Schools' discontinuation of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur as school holidays (well, Rosh Hashana, anyway, as Yom Kippur doesn't begin until sundown on Friday, September 18). Here's the ProJo's take on the story, with some added perspective from Providence district staff; I'm happy to note that both versions feature our rabbi, Emanu-El's Wayne Franklin.

Providence Public Schools have been off for RH and YK for 30+ years; reasons why they won't be this year, according to the above reports, include the early dates for the holidays this year (RH is on 9/8, a week after school starts), the declining Jewish public school student and teacher population, the ongoing challenges of accommodating holidays observed by diverse religious groups. and the pressure not to lose any days for needed instructional time (I'd love to know more about the percentage of PPSD Jewish kids and teachers/staff, as well as the ways that other major religious are/aren't acknowledged in various ways in school, investigations that will need to wait for another day).

All valid, and I was glad to hear that this decision is a trial and may not be repeated next year (though I would not put any money on its reversal). Likely, this issue wouldn't even be on my mind if my own Jewish children weren't going to be missing school just as school gets rolling. Do I think they're going to miss key learning that will penalize them thereafter? No, not so much. Though I do hope, perversely, that they miss something meaningful--otherwise, what was the point of this calendar change? Do I think that they will become more conscious that, as Jews, they're different than many of their peers? Yes, I do. Whether that's good, bad, or indifferent, only time will tell.

I suspect, as well, that Jewish kids may feel evaluated in some real way by this change. Every other year, the major holidays of their religion were recognized by school--one of the other key institutions in their lives. Now, no, and I think they and other kids, Jewish and not, will take note of that change and perceive that what was important isn't anymore.

When I think broadly about what's best for all kids, keeping school open for the Jewish holidays makes sense. Here's hoping that PPSD does great things with the extra time. Still, I worry about the loss, both for actual Jewish children who miss learning and bonding with their peers so early in the school year, and for all of the kids, who get the message that what was important last year isn't anymore.

Recess Shunned in Favor of the Popular Kid, Physical Education

Today's ProJo reports that East Providence is banning recess, as defined by 10-15 minutes of aide-supervised post-lunch running around, in favor of optional in-class breaks and additional formal physical education opportunities. All well-intentioned, and now East Providence is now meeting Rhode Island's basic education plan requirements for physical education.  Kids have more time to eat lunch, too, which is all to the good in my book--if that time sitting were followed by time running (and yes, sometimes falling, an event that the head of the East Providence School Committee, paraphrased in the ProJo article) is eager for children to avoid, along with recess' potential for fights and hurt feelings).

But formal physical education is not the same as unstructured time, which children (and adults) need during the day. Increasing the opportunities for formal physical education means increasing opportunities to supervise, evaluate, and control kids. Eliminating time for kids simply to be and interact, without judgment or structure or expectations during an otherwise highly regulated school day means that the joys (and sorrows) of play are now subject to the inevitable angst of a grade. There may be good in what's being implemented in East Providence, but the costs are high.