Third Grade Websites!

My Wonderful Students Enjoy these websites during weekly computer time:


www.aaamath.com
http://animal.discovery.com/animals/ 
(note: some videos need parental guidance)
www.brainpop.com
username: storiescreek    password: stories
SFUSD epgy website (students given access through password from Stanford)
www.kids.gov/
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/

Against Cuts Website has important Powerpoints and Flyers to Print OUt

http://againstcuts.org/

*Special Written Assignment on School Mandates

It Is Hard to See How Mandates Are Supporting Us

By Sunny Dawn, Cleveland Elem., San Francisco, CA.

            My K-5 elementary school is on the East Side of San Francisco where we experience a population of students who are disenfranchised and have huge disparities in relation to the West Side of the same city.  This paper will give a brief overview of how district mandated quarterly assessments are not serving the students at my elementary school’s in San Francisco or serving as proper tools for teachers to gain an understanding of students’ educational needs especially in schools such as mine who have students “of color” or bilingual schools.  Furthermore it will present the idea that current administration is also unaware how to serve the needs of the teachers in creating tools for proper instruction.

My class is a good representation of the half the school’s population,  which is 80% of low socioeconomic background English language learners.  The range of ethnicities include; Chinese, Filipino, African American as well various type of Latino students from Central American to Mexican.  There are over 5 different home languages represented in my class and half of my class travels regularly out of the country to visit a majority of their extended families.  The other half of the school is the bilingual strand, which experience a wide range of issues from immigration, to high poverty, as well as various health issues.

Although we have dedicated teachers who are committed to social justice in education it is hard to see how the current district administration is supporting us.  We are given release time once a week to talk with our grade level about educational strategies but, instead of teachers being able to lead the discussions a majority of meetings are led by a district appointed “Instructional Reform Facilitator” or (IRF). This IRF then reports back to the principal and district administrations about the  “discussion” which is always results or application of the quarterly district mandated assessment (or CLAs).

I recently went to a Union meeting discussion about district mandated assessments in October of 2011.  At this meeting over 20 elementary teachers from a wide variety of schools were present and furious about how the district mandated assessments are developmentally inappropriate for K thru 2^nd and in 3^rd thru 5th grades material is often unaccessable for many students especially English Language Learners.  When the Head of Achievement Assessments, John Burke,  was asked at that October meeting, how are these assessments were helpful to teachers his reply was,”well hopefully we will be able to make the tests align to the curriculum especially with math this year,” A follow up question to this district official was asked by another elementary teacher, “If these assessments are not aligned with the standards, if it is wasting the student’s time because it’s not testing them on what they are supposed to have learned then why can’t we halt that until it is perfected?” His response, “Right now, again we are trying to serve two purposes with it. Some to inform instruction some for the benchmarking. So right now that’s what we have. This year it’s much more of a compromise, last year towards the benchmarking….The CLAs are mandated by Richard Caranza so the expectations is that  everyone…..”

Finally my staff was given anonymous polls using the website, www.pollseverywhere.com , to find out their feelings on district mandates.  The first question given was, “I feel like I have enough time to go over data from mandated assessments and implement action in my classroom?” 87% of the 15 staff who participated in the survey said, “NO” Also my staff participated in two more surveys in which 57% of the staff (who participated) reported “we have too many assessments”.  The final question given to staff, “The district mandated assessments my students take are on material we have had a chance to cover in class prior to the date required to give test?” 100% of the staff disagreed or strongly disagreed with this statement (see attached graphs or go to www.msdawnsturntospeak.blogspot.com to see poll results).

In conclusion, elementary teachers educated and trained observations are that district mandated assessments do not serve their classroom pedagogy and are actually damaging children instead.

National Board Test Chat for EC/GEN.

://ecgen.org/2012/03/nbpts-assessment-center-season-almost-here/

Stop The Monkey Business!

Now That You Fired The Teachers Enjoy Your Retirement

                                                                        March 25, 2012

Congratulations Carlos Garcia, now that you participated in laying one fourth of all teachers who received lay off notices in California, I hope you enjoy your retirement.  As reported in S.F. gate, March 15, 2012 Carranza is “hoping to agree on a contract within the next couple of weeks” Wouldn’t it be nice if teachers could rely or agree on their contract too?  You know that little thing that’s been battered and bruised overtime with Furlough days and Pay Freezes.

But I just want to refresh your memory before you started making July vacation plans  with your SFUSD money. There were over 40 teachers begging you to reconsider your position on Zone schools, including my nine-year old daughter, in regards to laying off teachers last March 13, 2012 at the San Francisco Board Meeting.  We asked you to listen to workers’ rights or to what Dennis Kelly, UESF President, has said to you at previous Board of Education Meetings, “Social Justice for some is Social Justice for none.”  However you went against that and now here we are teachers fighting each other over who deserves to keep their job.

I am at teacher Cleveland Elementary, which is experiencing teacher lay offs.  We are not part of a “Zone School” even though we have the same populations and statistics.  We are classified as a “Hard to Staff School”, have had a large amount of money poured into our school from SFUSD for English Development Trainings, as well as half our staff are participating in National Board Certification yet does any of this matter,No. 

Why should it? Your contract is up and its retirement party time!  Nevermind other teachers’ contracts are up and its Unemployment Line Time for them.  Either way congratulations on being done with SFUSD and having nine-years olds shame you in public.

Sunny Dawn

Union Representative and 3^rd Grade Teacher for Cleveland Elementary

(emailed to Carlos Garcia, SF GATE Op ED, and SF Examiner OP ED today)

S.F. Board meeting and over 40 angry teachers! Regarding Lay Offs.

http://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=47

Teacher Lay OFFs effect.

http://www.edsource.org/extra/2012/beyond-individual-pain-teacher-layoffs-have-rippling-effects-on-schools/6893

UESF AFT TEACHER LEADER GROUP S.F. Vision!

Concerns:

Teacher Leaders

·                   Enlisting other teachers taking it back to school

·                   Link to technology networking/community resources

·                   Group think

·                   Union

·                   Limited time.  What can we really get accomplished.

·                   Meet with politicians

·                   What will the product be?

·                   We get a say to the district

·                   Press conference – feedback to media from TL

·                   Reaching out beyond SFUSD to other districts

·                   Is there an ultimate goal?

Teaching, Learning, Education

·                   Disparity urban/suburban

·                   Class warfare

·                   Lack of continuity – 5 years, 5 admins

·                   Corporations – schools as cash cow

·                   Charter schools

·                   Lack of training in cultural awareness.  Institutional racism

·                   Schools should be community schools

·                   Criminalization of youth b/c lack of resources

·                   Disparity between schools within district

·                   School safety

·                   Data that we can trust

·                   Reducing teacher cynicism

·                   Crisis in leadership – admin, superintendent, district initiatives

                       - Arne Duncan

                       - Bill Gates

·                   Teacher education

·                   Testing

Vision: Group A

·                   Teacher voices will be heard and deemed legitimate by policy makers, media and administrators (from site to federallevel)

·                   Holistic approach to student assessment – reallocate funds to books and the arts

·                   Teacher driven PD

·                   Creation of TL website

Vision: Group B

·                   Create community schools – provide community services (medical, therapy, etc)

·                   Major realignment of priorities and resources

·                   There is a holistic relationship between the micro-level and macro-level with accountability to be one another (i.e. politicians communicate with teacher speaker bureaus)

·                   Redesign administrative positions to better serve students and teacher needs (i.e. teacher input into principal evaluations)

Visions: Group C

·                   Building communication across differences.

·                   Working together, reflecting as school staff, community including institutions in our society to create, implement solutions for our children

·                   Support a diverse school for staff for our children

·                   Support holistic educational environment which ensures the needs of our children and school staff

Barriers to Reaching Our Vision

·                   Historical barriers affecting achievement gap

·                   Corporate reformers controlling the terms of debate

·                   Lack of teacher support (resources, time, etc.)

·                   Convincing public of public education being in public’s best interest

·                   Literacy and poverty in students’ lives

·                   Cultural norms/white liberal

·                   Learning how to create culturally relevant curriculum/pedagogy

·                   Reason for high dropout rates for Latinos/Blacks

·                   District hierarchy

·                   Revolving/turnover of admins

·                   Need for students to deal with trauma and stress (restorative justice?)

·                   Administration?  Overburdened?

·                   Lack of trust in system

·                   Lack of clear communication?  Collaboration

Good Video of March 5th!

Good Video of March 5th!