12/26/08

Plain Dealer

Edith Starzyk

Karen Landolph has seen her profession go through a lot of changes since she began teaching elementary school in the Bedford district 33 years ago, but she still loves her job.

“It’s a lot more exciting and fun now than in the days of rote learning and memorization,” said the second-grade teacher at Glendale Primary School. “Teachers have so much more available to them in terms of new methods and materials.”

With Landolph as our guide, here’s a closer look at some of those changes:

Reaching every child

Even the reading books are different. They’re more beautiful and colorful — and children of various races and ethnicities can see themselves represented, unlike in the days of Dick and Jane, Landolph noted.

That reflects a key fact about teaching today: Any given classroom is likely to hold children from a host of backgrounds who perform academically at vastly different levels.

The teacher is responsible for each one meeting state and federal goals.

“Teachers are expected to be able to teach students who come to school with more needs than they have in the past,” said Angela Minnici, associate director of education issues for the American Federation of Teachers.

More than a third of America’s school-age children are from low-income families. More than 10 percent are classified as English language learners. Around 14 percent have some kind of disability, and most of them spend a significant portion of the school day in a regular classroom, she said.

The average teacher — a white female who speaks only English and comes from a middle-income background — may not feel prepared.

A survey by Public Agenda earlier this year found only four in 10 teachers thought their training helped “a lot” in teaching an ethnically diverse student body. Less than half said it helped a lot in teaching students with special needs, according to the public-opinion research organization.

Even Ohio’s Teacher of the Year, Jennifer Walker, can feel inadequate.

In her English classes at East High School in Youngstown, she tries to help her students see themselves in the literature they read and find their voices in their writing. But the stories they tell are often heart-breaking accounts of poverty, abuse and violence.

“Education is a daunting profession, and at times, I find myself completely overwhelmed with the challenges it presents,” Walker said. “I constantly worry that I cannot be everything that my students need me to be.”

Teamwork and testing

If this is starting to sound like a job that’s too big for one person, that’s because it is, Landolph said. Gone are the days when teachers worked in isolation, each classroom a kingdom behind the closed door.

Teachers work in teams now. At Glendale Primary, for example, teachers at each grade level meet for an hour every Friday morning to compare notes and plan lessons. They ask each other questions like “What can I do to help this child get it?”

Special education is a key area where the team approach is having maximum benefits, said Kate Foley, director of student services in the Lakewood district. Regular classroom teachers work in tandem with intervention specialists, speech pathologists, occupational therapists and school psychologists.

“The staff can be a little nervous at first,” she said. “But it’s neat to see the relationships grow as they work together to develop plans and activities for all the kids.”

Charles Fox, an Illinois attorney who specializes in special-education law and has a son with cerebral palsy, has seen that nervousness, too. Some of the toughest cases involve children with behavior problems.

But every teacher has some sort of system in place to deal with errant behavior, he said. The solution often is in tweaking that procedure for a child with special needs.

“These things always work better in a school that’s open to close collaboration between the special-education and regular teacher,” he said. “Where the classroom is an island — not so great.”

Collaboration of any sort is often built around data, data and more data.

“We are testing all the time,” Landolph said. That includes not only the annual state tests for grades three to 10, but myriad assessments in between to gauge progress and problems.

In addition, the state now has voluminous standards for every subject to guarantee that students are learning what they should at each grade level.

Those standards form “our new Bible,” Landolph said, providing common ground and expectations in a transient society. What a child learns in second grade at one school should transfer seamlessly to a new school — or at least that’s the goal.

Landolph sees the value in that but acknowledges the trade-off is a loss of some creativity. “We’re all stamped out of the same book now, so we can provide exactly the same education for all,” she said.

Technology tools

Perhaps the biggest difference between classrooms of today and three decades ago is the prevalence of computer-based technology.

Teachers can use it to crunch data and tailor an education plan for each child — much like the Individualized Education Program plan required for special-education students, Landolph said.

The children in her class not only use laptops for reading exercises and quick quizzes to measure comprehension. They also use the Internet to see, for example, what tools looked like in Colonial times.

Some studies have criticized schools for not fully utilizing the computers they’ve invested in. But Matthew Shields, a fourth-grade teacher at Lakewood’s Emerson Elementary School, points out the technology has gone way beyond a keyboard.

Shield serves as a technology coach in a district that is retooling all its schools to accommodate the latest innovations.

When he and his co-workers were about to move into a new building, everybody insisted on taking their overhead projectors and transparencies, he recalls. Now those machines are gathering dust as teachers use the new equipment to individualize instruction.

“Everybody learns differently,” he said. “I can explain how a car engine works but sometimes — especially if you’re a visual learner — you get a better understanding when you see one operating, maybe in an animated cartoon.”

Similarly, a student struggling over a Harry Potter book might benefit from reading along with a recording on an MP3 player.

A large section of Shields’ chalkboard is an interactive computer screen, allowing him to move around pieces of a pie graph or highlight sections of type. Students also can send him answers with a handheld device, letting him know immediately that, say, 15 out of 20 didn’t understand a division problem.

The technology can connect students with resources around the globe. When his class studied an orphanage for orangutans in Borneo, they were not only able to see video clips but also e-mailed scientists there and got e-mail responses from them.

And teachers can connect with their peers. Shields might post a flip-chart online that a teacher in Florida then uses, and he might build on a photosynthesis presentation that a teacher posted from India.

“Teachers are being asked to do more and more, he said. “This way we can help each other handle some of that burden.”

Technology also provides a way to keep parents in the loop and involved. It’s common for teachers to post class assignments and homework on a Web site. And e-mail provides a communication link around the clock.

But there are drawbacks, said Bryce Jacobs, a recent Ph.D. who studied the issue for her dissertation at the University of Maryland. Teachers may end up e-mailing at all hours of the day and night, and parents may expect immediate responses.

Parents and children

One more area where Landolph has seen change: The lives led by her students and parents are so much busier than when she started out.

Back then, most mothers didn’t have an outside job. Now, the majority are working and come home tired. And the kids have a slew of activities themselves.

“I’m a parent myself, and I try to understand where they’re coming from,” Landolph said. “For the most part, every parent wants a better education for their child. And no parent wants to get a call about their kid doing something wrong.”

The children themselves haven’t changed, she added.

“A 7-year-old still loves recess best and still loves to be the teacher’s helper. They want to do well. They want the teacher to know and love them.”