President's Message: Online Newsletter To Keep Us In Touch In Challenging Times

Welcome to the first CCEA online newsletter! The online edition of our newsletter moves us solidly into the age of technology. Thanks to Doug Paulson, our State Secretary, for doing all the work to make this happen. Look for a newsletter about every six to eight weeks throughout the coming year. This will be emailed to all of our Professional Members, our Life Members and all of our schools…IF we have your correct email. If you received this and know of someone who should be receiving the newsletter, let them know to contact us with their email address. We will still have two hard copy editions of our newsletter: one will be at the beginning of each school year (September) and the other will be midyear to highlight our State Conference. We’d love your feed back on this. Please email me at JanetWK@aol.com or Doug at dpaulson@euhsd.k12.ca.us .
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Earlier this month, we had what may very well turn out to be the most important national election of our life times. I hope you exercised your right to VOTE! Whether you are pleased with the outcome or not, you cannot just forget about this for the next four years. You must stay in touch with your elected officials constantly. There are many things that will be happening very shortly that will affect us all. If we do not make our voices heard, we will have no complaints if we are unhappy. The course of our nation over the next four years may very well depend on our ability to voice our opinions. In addition, invite your elected officials to visit your school. Make them aware of all the good things you are doing for young people on a daily basis.
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Many of you may have been notified that your school will enter Program Improvement for the coming year. This was based upon the percentage of students you tested during last year’s testing. If you did not test 95%, then you will fall into Program Improvement this year. Next year, if you do not test 95% AND score lower than 560 on your API, you will be placed in Program Improvement. It is extremely important that you work with your students and parents and stress the importance of both the CAHSEE and the STAR testing. While it may not be the best measure for continuation education, it is what the Federal Government is using to determine school improvement. This does not mean that the ASAM is dead! On the contrary, the ASAM is still alive and well and the measure that we are using in California to determine growth and program improvement. We will continue to work toward having the ASAM be the only measure to determine growth in the continuation schools. So, it is extremely important that you file the necessary data by the deadlines, in order to adequately show proof of the good job our continuation schools are doing with students. The ASAM is the only measure that shows we are doing a good job of educating our students.
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Professional Memberships for CCEA are up! Congratulations to each of you who has worked to make this happen. As of early October, we had the same number of Professional Memberships for the 2004-2005 school year as we did for all of the previous year! Now, let’s keep the ball rolling and see just how many we can get. There was a time when we had over 1,000 Professional Memberships! Perhaps we can approach that number this year?! A reminder to all of you: Professional Membership dues increase as of January 1st, 2005. Dues will go from $35.00 to $50.00 for Professional Membership. So, if you are inclined to save a little money, mail your dues today to Fuchsia Ward, our Treasurer. Or, you can go online and pay by credit card. While you are at it, Principals, remember to also have your school join. Those dues have not changed. Remember, CCEA dues are tax deductible!
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Start planning for our State Conference. If you would like to be a presenter. Contact Tom Campbell at tcampbell@gsd.k12.ca.us. Mark your calendar for April 22-24, 2005 and plan to join us at the Doubletree Hotel in Sacramento.
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I’d like to close my column for this issue with a story about attitude. Many of you may have heard this story before, but I think it bears repeating.

The 92 year-old lady, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coifed and makeup perfectly applied, even though she is legally blind, moved to a nursing home. Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary.

After patiently waiting in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, the aide provided a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window. “I love it,” she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.

“Mrs. Jones, you haven’t seen the room…just wait.”

“That doesn’t’ have anything to do with it,” she replied. “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged – it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I’ll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away, just for this time in my lie. Old age is like a bank account – you withdraw from what you’ve put in. So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories.”

What were you thinking about when you woke up this morning?
 

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The Socratic Seminar is a method of teaching students to think deeply, formulate high level questions, respect other people, and to develop thought processes. This method was first developed by the Greek philosopher Socrates, and remains a valuable teaching method today. In continuation schools, the Socratic method is a fantastic way of engaging students in deep explorations of literature, current events, and universal topics. It allows our students to shine in ways that they often cannot on standardized tests or in traditional classes.

In a Socratic seminar all of the students examine a common text. This text could be a short story, a newspaper editorial, a poem, or an article on a controversial topic. After the students have read the article, several open-ended questions are posed (either by the students or by the moderator), and the discussion begins. Students are encouraged to listen non-judgmentally to the opinions of others and to respond by paraphrasing what has been said and offering another perspective. They are also encouraged to answer other people’s responses with probing questions, which hopefully generate additional deep discussion.

A Socratic Seminar is not a debate. Rather it is a disciplined, collaborative dialogue in which a group of people works toward a shared understanding of a topic. This type of non-oppositional consensus building is not common in our society, but is vital if we want our students to build deep understandings of learning and of the world around us.

The first time I saw a Socratic seminar was with a group of A.P. students from an affluent high school. Their thought processes were crisp, probing, and organized. I was very unsure of how it would work with my continuation school students. The A.P. teacher assured me that it had taken him a long time to get his students to their current high levels of thinking.

He also assured me that there was no way in the world that a bunch of continuation students would be able to engage in high level dialogue and questioning.

That broke it. I was determined to try.

Since beginning to use Socratic Seminars three years ago, I have found that they are wonderfully suited to continuation school kids. Far from being rude and undisciplined in their actions, and undisciplined and shallow in their thought processes, I have found that continuation students go to great lengths to be polite to each other. They work to understand the other person’s perspective in hopes that the other person will work to understand theirs. It seems as though our students often just want to be heard and to have their thoughts heard.

The Socratic method gives them the opportunity to learn from each other and to work together at a level that many curricula do not allow. The Socratic seminars at my school last for one hour, the length of a class period. At first I expected to have trouble filling the hour. Now, it is difficult to limit the discussion to one hour. Oftentimes, students return the following day wanting to continue the dialogue. Not allowed, but how wonderful they are still thinking about it.

Setting up a Socratic seminar is fairly easy.

First, you must choose a text for the group to focus on. This should be an article at the students’ general reading level, and something they will be interested in. Make sure to choose something that lends itself to open-ended questions, is world connected, or has a universal theme.

Second, teach the students how to pose open-ended questions and deep thinking questions. This takes practice. Model questioning techniques for them, show them examples of probing questions, and be prepared to ask many of the questions as you start.

Third, have students read the text thoroughly, either as homework, in class the day before, or at the beginning of class. Have them mark key passages and important points. Each student should also write 2 or 3 high level questions about the text.

Fourth, arrange the chairs in your room in a circle so everyone can see each other.
Have each person say their name and share one fact or thought from the text.

As soon as each person has shared something, ask a participant to pose a question or pose an open ended question yourself. Do not have people raise hands or call on students. Allow them to speak, and teach them how to wait for an opening. Explain that they should be watching and listening to the person speaking. Encourage them to work at understanding the other person’s point of view, and to respect other peoples’ opinions even if they don’t agree with them.

Do not worry about silence. Those moments of discomfort when nobody is speaking often lead to some of the best thought out dialogue.

Allow the discussion to go where it chooses (as long as it is appropriate). Groups often wind up on a topic only distantly related to the original subject. This may be the result of the students making connections that we can’t readily see.

Another outer circle of chairs can be placed around the outside of the group so that observers can make notes on people’s interruptions, body language, participation rate, and other interactions. These may be shared at the end of the session.

After the seminar, have students go around the circle and share their evaluation of their own performance and the performance of the group. This reflection is invaluable for making them more conscious of their communication and thinking skills.

There are several excellent websites about Socratic Seminar and some excellent videos about conducting them. See the links below for more information. Another good resource is the AVID program, which uses this technique and is an excellent source of information about Socratic Seminar.
 

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Bill Gates Gives Valuable Advice To Students       [top]

To anyone with kids of any age, here's some advice. Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

If you agree, pass it on.
If you can read this - Thank a teacher!
 

Burns To Join CCEA Lobbyist Firm       [top]

CCEA lobbyist Peter Birdsall recently announced that Teri Burns will be joining Birdsall & Associates as Director of Legislative Advocacy, effective December 7. “I have worked with Teri for nearly ten years, principally during the past six years while she served as Deputy Superintendent for Governmental Affairs for the California Department of Education,” stated Birdsall. “I am confident you will find that she brings the highest standards of knowledge, judgment and professionalism to her work on behalf of the CCEA.

As Deputy Superintendent of Governmental Affairs, Teri has managed the Department of Education’s legislative program, at both the state and federal levels, for six years. In that capacity, she has worked on virtually every major K-12 education issue of the recent past, ranging from the state budget, to implementation of NCLB, to the most recent Williams Court Case legislation.

Teri brings to Birdsall & Associates a keen understanding of the local perspective on these same educational issues. For the past 19 years, she has served as an elected school board member of the Natomas Unified School District. She currently serves as President of the Sacramento County School Boards Association.

Finally, Teri brings a deep working knowledge of the State Legislature. Prior to joining the California Department of Education, Teri worked as staff in the State Senate for 16 years. She received her B.A. degree from UC Davis.

Birdsall is very excited about the addition of Burns to his staff, and believes she will provide exceptional advocacy on behalf of the CCEA. “I am confident that Teri will bring to our work on your behalf the experience and knowledge needed to continue providing you with top quality legislative representation and up-to-date and accurate information and consulting,” said Birdsall.
 

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The proposed system, known as HOUSSE (California High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation), will require veteran teachers to be awarded 100 points in order to be considered highly qualified. The points will be awarded in the following categories:
• Teaching experience: Ten points for each year taught: 50 point maximum.

• Core knowledge: Fifth points for 18 units in the four core areas for elementary teachers and 60 points for an advanced degree in teaching/curriculum/assessment in the core academic areas.

• Standards-aligned professional development: Five points for every 20 hours of state-approved professional development and five points for every 20 hours of locally approved professional development within the last six years. Options: BTSA, National Board Certification, AB 466, Reading Excellence Act, etc.

• Service or leadership to the profession: Twenty points for one year of service or leadership within subject area. Options: mentor, supervising teacher, college instructor, BTSA support provider, department chair, etc.

For those veteran teachers with fewer than 100 points, the evaluation also awards up to 100 points for meeting California Standards for the Teaching Profession No. 3: understanding and organization of subject matter for student learning, and No. 5: assessing student learning. Evidence of this will be verified by at least two methods, such as through interviews, classroom observation, written response, use of student achievement data, lesson plans, etc.

The evaluations must be conducted by the “supervising administrator” who may “consult as necessary” with subject matter content experts. These are not to be regular evaluations. They are to be one-time assessments to determine whether a teacher meets the requirements of “highly qualified” under the federal NCLB guidelines.

The system is designed to provide flexibility to individual schools in assessing their teaching staff. Also, please remember that veteran teachers have until the 2005-2006 school year to meet the Highly Qualified Teacher stipulations.
 

Visit the CDE Website for more information on NCLB and Highly Qualified Teachers