Poverty, Scholarship, College, and High School Project musings

I have a cousin in Virginia, now in her sixties, who is a kindergarten teacher.  About 15 years ago, she and her husband wanted to up their charitable contributions for tax reasons, and they decided to set up a scholarship fund for her former students.  When they were seniors in high school, the former students could apply for the scholarship (which was about 5K), and she picked one lucky winner.

I always thought that was a nice way to stay in touch with a few students.  As we’ve talked in class, I’ve wondered if it would be a way to motivate any students?  How about if the fund were created in 5^th grade, and anyone who applied for a scholarship was guaranteed to get one?  If you were in 5^th grade and you knew there was a bit of money set aside for you in a fund somewhere, growing with interest, would you be more determined to get to college?  Could a teacher or school or organization raise enough money each year to keep a fund like that going?  Will the nature of college change so that such scholarships don’t make sense?  Has anyone ever tried something like this on a larger scale than my cousin’s?

As I wondered about this, I liked the idea, but thought it would be a lot of work to figure out if it made sense and was feasible.  But then I thought it would be a pretty cool project for a high school class to work on, and perhaps the class itself could be eligible for the 1^st round of scholarships.  Of course their research would be the first step, and there would be a ton of legal stuff in the next.  And that got me to thinking about how cool it would be if the local fro-yo shop could have a high school class design their advertising campaign, and so forth.  These seem like cool projects, but are they ethical or are they violations of child labor laws or school  policy?  Could local businesses somehow pay the class or school?  How would you take the first step?

Where I'm From

I am from stacks of papers,

from stoneware vases with celadon glaze,

from computers humming and beckoning

with knowledge of everything.

I am from neglected rose bushes that prosper,

and wildflowers that don’t,

From a lilac bush that gladdens me every spring,

With its sweet fresh smell after winter.

I am from squeaky dog toys,

left in the yard on rainy nights,

by the big serious dog,

and from autumn leaves dragged in,

by the little monkey dog.

I am from Lily, as she is from me,

and from Brian,

and from Phyl and Aunt Ruth,

and a surburb of NYC.

I am from Okey, bedokey, Gemini smokey,

and pizza, lasagna,

and marzipan

and look:

Isn’t that Dan Boone?

No?  Well, there you go…

I am from these moments,

in a house in the tree tops

amid singing birds and gray clouds,

but still

I’m not.

Get unwrinkled

           When my daughter was in kindergarten, I was anxious for her to get to know other girls at her school, so I recruited and ran a Daisy scout troop.  I remember that each meeting was to have a discussion about a topic related to character, but I no longer remember where my materials came from.  At any rate, one week we were to talk about being kind, and from my prep work I had the example of a piece of paper.  If you crumble it up (hurt someone’s feelings), it can be smoothed out again (apologize), but it can never again be unwrinkled (hurt lasts forever).  I used the example in the meeting, but have never forgotten it because it bothered me.  Sure, you shouldn’t hurt someone’s feelings.  But if your feelings have been hurt, you don’t have to stay hurt forever.  Go ahead and get unwrinkled.

                In talk about bullies or mean or dominant kids, and their “victims,” I think we tend to get caught up in dealing with the bully.  But it’s equally important to make sure the “victim” knows they are not a victim for life, and that they are not defined by the victimhood. 

Creativity in groups

I came by this story, which made me think of Sir Ken's advocacy for group work to promote creativity.  The reporters at Planet Money decided that the were going to create and sell a T-shirt from scratch, just as an exercise in how you would do it.  They started out by buying some bales of cotton, and then looking for someone to spin them into thread and t-shirts, only to get advice that you want to work backwards from the end product, rather than forward from the cotton.

So going from back to front, they went to work as a group on deciding what the T-shirt should look like.  At first, they thought it should say "Planet Money" in a fancy font.  But they got more creative, and decided to reference the "animal spirits" term from Keynesian economics (new to me), and next came ideas like the ghost of a bear etc.  They ended up with a squirrel with a martini.  And with that they went to kickstarter to raise funds.  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/planetmoney/planet-money-t-shirt

So they obviously aren't schoolkids and the scope of the project seems larger than you could do in any school, but it seems like a kick, and a pretty fun way to learn your way around the  business world.

The podcast:  http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/04/30/180079862/episode-455-the-planet-money-t-shirt-is-finally-almost-here

Respect

I was thinking about Wednesday's discussion about how little respect teachers get, and realized that there is a sliding scale.  PreK get the very least, elementary get a little bit more, middle a bit more than that, high school more than that, and then university professors quite a lot.  So what's different about elementary teachers and college professors?

Certainly when I meet a tenured college professor, I feel like they will be better educated than I am.  They will have spent more time in school, they will have focused on a subject and learned it thoroughly.  They will be doing research and staying up-to-date in their field.  They will make a decent salary and job security.  They will have been put through the vetting process by the university and proven themselves worthy of tenure by a combination of good research and proven teaching skill.  Their students will be paying to be taught be them. 

That's my perception, and it may certainly be out-of-date or just plain incorrect, but respect is based on perception.  So can elementary schoolteachers make progress on any of these points?  Yes.  In the current system, I think the two that could be changed are education and research.

When I was at college, the people who were getting their degrees in education got little respect and those studying architecture or pre-med got a lot of respect.  No one failed out of education and lots failed out of the bio and architecture classes.  Someone in class Wednesday mentioned a 100 level economics class which weeded out students.  It flies in the face of what we're learning to think of deliberately failing some, but a reputation as a hard major would surely increase the respect for it.  Perhaps education programs could require that their graduates were true renaissance women and men, by requiring that the they take college level classes in a wide range of subjects in addition to education classes.  A heavy courseload would reflect a hard major.

I have myself thought it would be fun to do research projects in elementary schools, and one of our readings talked about a private pre-schools informally doing research to keep the teachers focused and engaged.  I will be curious to read the mood at the elementary schools that the UW partners with; I would think that the partnership would promote a great deal of respect from the parents there.  Could all schools partner with universities, and have teachers work with them to carry out research?  How cool it would be to have schoolteachers among the co-authors on professional papers, and have school websites include that information in their staff biographies, along with liking cooking and scrapbooking with friends.

Rewarding teachers without promoting them

Sometime in the past year (recent enough to remember the gist, too long to remember the source) I read an article about how in the regular business world promoting your best employees to new positions was detrimental to a company.  Your best employees have established their skill at the old “lower” job, which might not share any skills with the new ”higher” job, and so success in the old job didn’t predict it in the new job.  Better to keep them in the old job where they are outstanding, and find someone with proven skill for the “higher” job.  But the trick is to figure out how to reward and recognize the employee, and to encourage their professional growth without promoting them.

                From Biklen’s article “School Work,” it seems like this is where schoolteachers find themselves, but “the company” hasn’t figured out how to reward and recognize and grow teachers while keeping them in the classroom.  There’s some irony in schoolteachers chasing or envying the idea of promotion from other professions, when it is an idea which doesn’t necessarily serve those professions well.    

                When I try to think of how to reward and recognize teachers while keeping them in the classroom, I don’t have many ideas beside salary.  In a business, you could throw the thornier clients or harder problems to an skilled employee, which would bestow prestige, but I can’t imagine that a teacher would want the prestige of being given all of the challenging students.  The best teachers could be asked to coach other teachers, or their lesson plans could be used in other classrooms, but the article also makes it clear how important autonomy is to all the teachers.  It’s a hard problem.  When teachers do figure it out, maybe they can teach it to the business world.