School district to reconsider transgender locker room deal
Associated Press
By CARLA K. JOHNSON
20 hours ago

CHICAGO (AP) — School officials in a suburban Chicago district said Friday they may back out of a newly minted deal with the U.S. Department of Education allowing a transgender student to use a girls’ locker room, over a dispute about a hypothetical: What would happen if the girl decided against using the privacy curtains she’s agreed to use?

Less than two days after school board members approved the settlement, Township High School District 211 Superintendent Daniel Cates issued a statement angrily condemning a top federal official for how she portrayed his description of it.

Cates had said if the student doesn’t use privacy curtains when changing or showering, she won’t be granted unrestricted access to the locker room. Federal officials countered that the agreement does not require her to use a privacy curtain, although the student has said she will do so.

District officials “are outraged by the mischaracterizations in the press by Catherine Lhamon of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and her blatant disregard for the facts of the negotiated agreement,” Cates said.

The office “acted in bad faith,” so the district will convene an emergency board meeting to discuss actions, “including the potential retraction of the agreement,” Cates said. The meeting has been scheduled for Monday at Conant High School in Hoffman Estates.

Apparently, the anonymous student, who was born male but identifies as female, filed a federal complaint when she was denied unrestricted locker room access, kicking off the whole brouhaha. The district had installed privacy curtains in the locker room as a compromise, curtains that any student seeking privacy is to be allowed to use, but federal officials decided the curtains violated the student’s rights under Title IX. The student seems to have since said that she will change behind the curtains, probably because she is getting flak at school. I imagine the social pressure on this girl has become intense.

Here’s the significant line from the follow-up article on this controversy:
“Until the settlement, the district had been at risk of losing millions of dollars in federal funding over the issue.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois is representing the girl.

Eduhonesty: I am sad that this has become an issue worth millions of dollars. I am sad that this school district will now be diverting funding that might have gone toward education into some law firm somewhere in order to answer the ALCU. I am sad that a compromise appears to be coming apart.

What should the district do? They might try scrapping the whole idea of gym clothes. Some districts don’t require a clothing change. The correct dress code can ensure that students are adequately dressed for physical education. My plan would eliminate locker rooms altogether. That solves the locker room problem.

Of course, the ‘anonymous’ transgender girl will get the blame for my plan — or any other plans that might be created. I hope the ACLU, government and district will remain aware of this girl as they push their larger agenda. I guarantee that girl is not anonymous in the hallways of her school. She may now feel that she has a tiger by the tail in the purest sense of that saying.

I hope she has lots of friends. Given the agendas unfolding around her, I suspect she will need those friends.

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Suburban-School-District-OKs-Transgender-Students-Locker-Room-Access-360432641.html

CHICAGO (AP) — A suburban Chicago school district has approved a deal allowing a transgender student a separate changing area in a girls’ locker room.

The Township High School District 211 school board in Palatine met for hours Wednesday, hearing public comments and then meeting in closed session.

The vote came after the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights ruled last month that the district violated federal law by not permitting the student — who was born male and identifies as female — full access to the locker room. But with the settlement, the student has agreed to use the private areas to change and shower.

The district had proposed the compromise allowing access to the locker room but requiring the student to change and shower in a separate area.

The Department of Education said Thursday it had entered into the resolution agreement with the district.

Eduhonesty: Oh, my. We are living in Complicated Times. This sticky situation has lawyers underpinning every move, even as students and administrators try to find an answer for all. I’d like to commend this girl for being willing to use a separate changing area within the greater girls locker room. If she’d insisted on being treated exactly like all the other girls, we could be mired in lawyers.

We get to decide and declare our gender nowadays. I strongly hope parents are providing help and counseling with this transition. According to a study by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Williams Institute, a full 41% of transgendered persons will try to kill themselves at some point in their lives, compared with 4.6% of the general public.

For schools, the immediate problem comes from student histories, I believe. If James decides to become Jasmine, she still has been James to all her classmates for years. Eventually, those classmates may relate to her as Jasmine, but for the first year or two of her new identity especially, she still carries the scent of James with her wherever she goes. And I can see where girls would not want to change in front of the boy from their fourth, fifth and sixth grade classrooms — to change in front of the girl who will remain a boy in their heads for at least awhile.

I’d say those girls should have some civil rights here, too. Frankly, I found changing for gym traumatic at thirteen years of age and beyond. I hated it. My body definitely did not meet my standards. I had enough trouble with other girls seeing me. If I had thought the boys could see me too, I think I might have done an eighteenth century swoon, fainting just to get out of the room. If I were this transgender girl, I would not want to change in front of all those male eyes, either.

As I say, kudos to the girl for compromising, for being willing to have her own changing area in the girls locker room. Kudos to all the players here who came to a mutual agreement that protected adolescent rights at a sensitive time in life.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-bullying-kids-autism-parents.html#nRlv

(The story of a blond, little boy with a great mom…)
Bullying harms kids with autism, parents say

January 11, 2013

(HealthDay)—Nearly 70 percent of children with autism suffer emotional trauma as a result of bullying, according to a new study.

The study also found that many children with autism fear for their safety at school and that those with autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or depression had the highest risk of being bullied.

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by social, communication and behavioral difficulties.

Researchers surveyed the parents of more than 1,200 children with autism, and found that 38 percent of the children were bullied over a one-month period, and 28 percent were frequently bullied.

Immediate consequences of being bullied included emotional trauma (69 percent) and physical injuries (8 percent). Nearly 14 percent of the children who were bullied said they feared for their safety.

Eighteen percent of the children with autism were triggered into fighting back after being bullied, and 40 percent had an emotional outburst that led to school disciplinary action.

Eduhonesty: Schools work relentlessly to try to contain bullying, but they sometimes lose that fight. Something in the species seems to spur students, especially students of middle school age, to try to establish social totem poles. Kids work to get on top of the social hierarchy. Unfortunately, some kids can never climb that totem pole. Social interaction is key and autistic kids struggle with social interaction. That’s part of how we identify suspected autism.

That 40 percent outburst that led to disciplinary action particularly pains me. How much stress do we expect kids to take before the tantrum erupts? Somehow kids recognize the weakness in their autistic, ADHD and depressed classmates, and I believe they often react unthinkingly, isolating these kids and leaving them to feel alone, leaving them to feel like the kids in the Echosmith song:

“She sees them walking in a straight line, that’s not really her style.
And they all got the same heartbeat, but hers is falling behind.
Nothing in this world could ever bring them down.
Yeah, they’re invincible, and she’s just in the background.
And she says,

“I wish that I could be like the cool kids,
‘Cause all the cool kids, they seem to fit in.
I wish that I could be like the cool kids, like the cool kids.”

Eduhonesty: Sometimes, we can win this one. My daughter had an autistic classmate in elementary school. I’m a little hazy on the details now, but I know that mom went into the classroom and explained to the class that her son had a brain problem and needed their help. My daughter’s class was no collection of sweet, little fluffy bunnies. Down the line, they would throw a book at a sub’s head and send a sub out of a gifted class crying. They could be sarcastic and mean. But that class treated the autistic boy in their midst pretty well. They seemed to protect him. He eventually graduated from high school among friends.

This post will work best for elementary teachers. Having mom or dad come in to talk with the class may be a good preventative move to prevent future bullying. Younger students can often be persuaded to help the less fortunate. I suspect it helped that mom threw great birthday parties in elementary school. What that mom did, though, was to ask kids for help. They responded to that earnest appeal.

By middle school, I doubt this approach would work. But in a self-contained elementary school classroom, a teacher might be able to make an autistic child’s whole future easier by creating the view that “Allan” or “Madison” were classmates who should be helped and protected, thus setting up a shield to forestall or diminish future moments of meanness.

I have visited this topic before, but I return to it sometimes because I see a larger problem reflected in foreign language studies that ought to be on the table.

Teachers are taught to emphasize information retrieval skills using available technology. They are taught to use critical thinking questions to stimulate making connections between disciplines. I would like to observe that these approaches do not work well in early foreign language studies, except as an occasional visit into language roots and interconnections. Learning languages requires drilling and memorization.

Yet drilling and memorization are trumpeted as examples of older, outmoded pedagogical methods that show a teacher is not up-to-date on the latest best practices. To say a teacher uses drilling and memorization as part of class expectations has become a criticism of that teacher, proof that he or she is not creating a “child-centered” classroom. Pity the poor classroom teacher who has students seated in rows memorizing words on paper if an administrator walks in nowadays. He or she will certainly receive criticism, even if that criticism comes in the form of helpful suggestions about creating group work or gallery walks. A gallery walk is a discussion technique in which students walk around the room looking at pictures or writing on posters. I like gallery walks. Students need to get out of their seats sometimes. But flashcards — alone or with a partner — will be more efficient for my purposes when my goal is to teach new vocabulary.

Putting a word into long-term memory requires repeating words over and over. The amount of repetition will vary depending upon the student, but that repetition is not optional. How does a person become fluent in another language? A bit of magic comes into play in language-learning. Students practice until suddenly, one day, words begin popping onto their tongues and those words somehow keep rolling.

Eduhonesty:

Modern education theory has created a climate in which too many students consider memorization an imposition. Students want learning to be a game and I am sympathetic to them. I would like all learning to be a game. But language learning goes much faster when students deliberately memorize words.

By all means, students should play online language games. But we should force them to work on flashcards alone, too. They need to make their own cards for words that cause them problems. After the game is over, they need to learn to write lists and definitions, covering either the word or its definition and and working their way down their lists in a memorization exercise. Asking friends to practice new vocabulary in pairs or groups is great — but, in the end, we learn a great deal of language alone, from books especially. Students who are taught to regard learning as a social exercise will always fall behind students who read and consciously work to learn new words.

I believe that teachers must explicitly explain this aspect of language learning to their students. Drilling and memorization will quickly improve vocabulary. We do our students no favor when we always try to make learning fun and easy. Students then may reject learning opportunities that lack entertainment value — and, in the work world, that strategy mostly proves a huge, long-term loser.

Obviously, no one needs physical cards today. Many sites such as http://www.studystack.com/flashcard-1269248 are available to provide practice. A search on (Whatever — Polish, Korean, Spanish etc.) language flashcards will get would-be language learners all the resources they need to get started.

(Another post for newbies and anyone interested.)

You brainstormed with your class. You created the list of rules for day-to-day operations. Students maybe even made the class poster, decorating that poster with hearts, multicolored dots and stickers. But somehow the rules keep falling by the wayside. That poster does not appear to have captured the hearts and minds of at least a few students.

What’s next? You have to tighten up. Your students understand the rules. Now they have to understand the consequences.

You might try a version of the following. Note that my rules have been laminated, the better to discourage graffiti. Printed on simple 8″ by 11″ colored paper, this represents a quick fix. Let your class know your chosen nonverbal signal. The refocus form can be a canned sheet, a creation of your own, or a simple assigned essay designed to help a student reflect on the behaviors that are complicating learning and instruction. The student should acknowledge problematic behaviors and specifically write out solutions to prevent repeating those behaviors. I recommend separating that student from the class to fill out the refocus form. Continued isolation for the remainder of the class period may also reinforce your point.

Consistency will be vital to making your consequences system work. Students must know that the nonverbal cue puts them one step from refocussing. Don’t accept substandard refocus forms, either.

For example, do not take, “I was bad. I will be better.” When a student hands you the form, look at that form. If the specifics are not there, that student needs to start over. You may hit some resistance at first. But perseverance will improve class conduct for the rest of your year. Reflection often does improve misbehaviors, especially thoughtless ones such as talking to friends in class.

Frankly, if nothing else, isolating a problem student improves the class atmosphere. Kids mostly hate to be located away from their peers. They will often pull themselves together simply to rejoin the class.

While I am reconfiguring American education, I’d like to offer the following idea for consideration. Perhaps we should consider adapting or even getting rid of our chronologically-based school systems. Why does a six-year-old have to be in first grade? Why does a ten-year-old have to be in fifth grade? We base student placement on age. Is that our best choice? Is that our only choice?

In the past, age-based placement made sense. With all of our test scores on paper and many of those papers requiring months to receive after states had given their annual tests, placements based on academic mastery would have added a possibly insurmountable level of complexity to placements. But those placements can be simplified now.

Social factors cannot be trivialized in what I am suggesting. A student who is years older than the other kids in a classroom suffers self-esteem issues based on his or her age. Sometimes that kid can be a disruptive or corrupting influence. I have taught children who have been retained for multiple years in their pasts. We can’t just stick an older student in with a bunch of much younger students. But we can prepare individualized, computerized courses of independent study.

In one scenario, we might have our ten-year-old, fifth graders meet for morning classes together, go to gym, recess and lunch together, but then split off after lunch into cohorts based upon mastery of material. Many computerized courses of study have been created in the recent past. Currently, we tend to put entire classes on one program, looking for robust programs that offer multiple levels of difficulty. We might do better to look at past results and then choose or even create individualized programs that build off each student’s previous learning.

Last year, I received a program called LearnBopTM for my class. At first, the program’s instruction began at the fifth grade level. Later in the year, an update added fourth grade material. But I had many students who were testing at a third grade level or below. They could not use LearnBopTM independently. My strongest students were unquestionably benefitting from LearnBopTM, but other students were in over their heads, wasting that computerized learning opportunity.

Eduhonesty: Too often, we merely pay lip service to differentiation. We based materials and programs on student ages, rather than student abilities. We can do better. I particularly favor using computers to differentiate instruction because students who have fallen behind don’t stand out when they are sitting at a computer station. They end up competing with themselves, rather than other students. Our new technology can be used to create truly individualized instruction. Let’s go for it!

A post for new teachers and anyone interested, taken from a post by a teacher friend on Facebook:

“Correct me if I’m wrong but a student-led conference shouldn”t result in the student crying and a group of adults on the offense visiting all of their past bad behavior. At this point I feel something has gone dreadfully wrong. It should be about empowerment for the child, not shame.”

I read this post and I could see the whole scene in my mind. The student in question must have numerous referrals, a track record of trouble by this point. Multiple interventions will have been attempted by different teachers. Phone calls home will have been made. The Dean knows this kid well.

I am not upset by the idea of this kid crying exactly. Sometimes, when you realize how badly you’ve screwed up, crying comes naturally. What does concern me is the spectacle of a gang of adults bearing down on one child. Even one adult in attack mode can do lifetime damage.

I still remember when my second-grade teacher angrily accused me of stealing a set of flash cards and scattering them outside. I hadn’t stolen the cards and I was stunned speechless by the accusations, which I am sure made me look guilty at first. Eventually the truth came out somehow. The elderly, gray-haired woman who had frightened me so badly even apologized.

But I never quite forgave her. I never forgot. And I never trusted the system or adults the same way again.

Who knew when the next “Terry” would steal the next set of flash cards and blame me? What would happen then? What if the next teacher believed “Terry”? In less than ten minutes, my whole world had become a scarier place forever.

Eduhonesty: Some kid will drive you to the brink someday. Let’s say you’ve been up late preparing data, grading papers, and planning the next day’s instruction. You start work tired and that monster coffee from Dunkin Donuts only makes a slight dent in your level of fatigue. Maybe the coffee just adds a layer of nervousness on top of your exhaustion. You ask for the homework. Only a few papers come in. A student tells you that the website was not working. Some kid then mouths off.

“It was a stupid assignment anyway,” “James” tells you. “I am tired of all this fucking work. Why can’t you leave us alone?”

The class giggles at the curse word. They all look at you expectantly. James has been trying to push your buttons for weeks, largely because he does not understand the new material and he is afraid to be embarrassed. He is not letting you help, though. He keeps skipping tutoring. Suddenly, you are absolutely enraged.

THIS IS THE POINT WHERE YOU CONSIDER CALLING FOR BACK-UP. You might want to step out into the hallway to take a few deep breaths. Force yourself to laugh if you can. The idea that you should leave your students alone is pretty funny if you can just recapture your sense of perspective.

For new teachers, if you do not have an arrangement with a fellow teacher to take your students or even briefly swap classes, you should set this up when you return from Thanksgiving break. You have a number of options in a scenario like this one. You can send James to the Dean with a referral. You can send James to another teacher. You will have to write James up and call home. You should immediately give James a detention if school policy allows this. Otherwise, curse words will start erupting in your class like popcorn in the microwave.

If you feel you are about to explode, though, getting James out of class may not be enough. You may have to get yourself out of class. Find a colleague to take your class. If necessary, swap classes for a few minutes until you can pull yourself back from the brink. But do whatever it takes to avoid unloading your anger on your students.

The wrong words directed at the wrong kid can leave a lifetime of invisible scars. You may not mean what you say. You may not even say what your students hear. You might angrily lash out and exclaim, “Not doing your homework is dumb!” You are criticizing a behavior, but that subtlety can get lost in translation. That girl who heard you call her dumb? Even after you apologize, she may believe you anyway.

Mrs. Harding felt terrible about falsely accusing me of taking those flash cards. I know that. I knew it then, even at seven years of age. But the world never went back to way it had been before Terry took the flash cards.

Eduhonesty: Teachers can easily forget how powerful they are.

Caption for a pin at Pinterest:

“Principal requiring you and your students to track data? See how this teacher has her students keep track of their data using Student Data Tracking Binders! They are super easy to implement any time of the year and your kids will love them! I love them too!”

The accompanying picture shows cute, little, elementary school kids at their desks, their hands enthusiastically raised.

This may be an idea whose time has come. Let the little nippers keep track of their own data. Learning to manage a binder always helps students. Teachers can easily justify this maneuver, probably more easily than they can justify having students grade their own papers. I am not quite sure how Student Data Tracking Binders work, but the packages are available at Teachers Pay Teachers for $10.00 from Kristine Nannini. Use “Student Data Tracking Binders” as your search term.

Net pay will frequently decide whether or not some people leave teaching for more lucrative fields. I have seen excellent teachers exit the profession for financial reasons, especially those in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). Quality teachers in these fields are hard to replace. Almost all our students still learn programming in college because we lack the staff to teach this skill in our public schools.

The increasing burdens from nonteaching responsibilities are falling on teachers in all areas. During some weeks last year, I spent more time preparing documentation for the administration and/or delivering standardized testing to students than I did preparing and delivering instruction. For years, my distribution of time has been skewing towards the creation of data and away from actual teaching. My hours kept getting longer, but my pay raises never reflected this fact. In the meantime, my evaluations keep getting longer and less friendly. The last one ran over 20 pages, taken from a cookie-cutter rubric that evaluated myriad tiny details, sometimes whether those details had been observed or not.

Teachers teach because they love teaching. As teaching becomes less and less a part of educational positions, STEM teachers develop a greater incentive to slip away into alternative fields. Young STEM teachers are particularly likely to exit education. Why not take that programming position that pays double and frees evenings for videogaming and fun? If you are lucky, you may even be able to work at home in your pajamas. As education’s reputation as a fun and rewarding, if not particularly lucrative, field becomes tarnished by negative press about teachers and punitive evaluation systems, we will lose teachers to other fields where they can make more money and receive more praise.

Periodically I read articles about how we ought to teach programming in high school. I have friends who are programmers and I don’t know a one of them who would consider working in a public school. Realistically, less money and tougher working conditions, combined with punitive evaluation systems designed to “improve” performance, will ensure that capable programmers avoid education, while simultaneously ensuring that aspiring programmers have no choice except to pick up their skills in college.

Eduhonesty: When will we start trying to attract teachers to the profession? Fortunately for America, teaching is a calling. Many people will enter the field despite worsening working conditions. Fortunately, too, new teachers don’t remember a time when they had autonomy in selecting materials and could then tailor those materials to students. Still, the crazy’s getting crazier out here, and I am frankly baffled by these people who expect programmers to decide en masse to enter the teaching profession. Umm… what would motivate these highly employable professionals to enter public education?

P.S. I didn’t create the above meme, but I have found this horse all over Facebook and the internet. He resonates with teachers, that’s for sure. They keep sending him on to me. In one picture, my meme explains why programming will remain a college or university subject, at least in the near future.