Adobe Flash Player is not installed. Please download and install it to listen to audio.
A group of sixth graders shared their stories with Youth Radio about getting suspended from school, and whether they thought it was a fair and a meaningful punishment. They Skyped with us from their classroom in Oakland, CA.
Listen to their stories above.
Their teacher Ms. M., who preferred her name not be mentioned, shared some thoughts after listening to her students speak. “I’m just surprised at some of the situations that my students have gotten themselves into... I feel like in my classroom these students are very respectful to me, they’re generally not behavior problems. None of these students have been sent to the office by me this year,” she said.
In general, she senses from students that suspension is not seen as a punishment. It’s the opposite. “That definitely is the feeling among kids - suspension is a time to take off or play around, a break from school... It depends on what is going on at home. If you have a parent that cares a lot about their child getting suspended, then the kid is going to be at home doing chores, and doing their homework. Other kids come back to school and say, ‘I was at Six Flags when I was suspended,’ or ‘I was watching tv,’ or ‘I was playing video games when I was suspended,’” she said.
Read more...
By: Denise Tejada, Turnstyle News
On Wednesday, 20 students -- along with a civil rights group, BAMN (By Any Means Necessary) -- will file a lawsuit against UC Berkeley administrators, the UC Police Department, and Alameda County Sheriff's officers. The lawsuit is demanding compensation for police brutality and false arrest, and the violation of students' First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights, during a peaceful demonstration on Berkeley's campus on Nov. 9.
On that day, police were filmed shoving and beating protesters, many of whom were UC Berkeley students, on campus during a peaceful demonstration. Some of the students were arrested after the ordeal.
Students were shocked by the treatment they received from police. “A police officer jabbed me three or four times in the lower abdomen,” said Ashley Pinkerton, a UC Berkeley Peace and Conflict studies student. “Each time it was a jolt more than the pain because my adrenaline was rushing so much, so I didn’t really feel that stuff till much later.” Pinkerton found herself standing up against campus police after helping another student who she saw being “strangled” by officers.
Pinkerton has been a supporter of the Occupy movement and has attended the general assemblies in Oakland. She said she's now proud to support the Occupy movement at her school. “I think, overall, just being in something that is so collectively active, it gives you this really righteous feeling...you share something really intense."
Read more...
The following originally aired on KCBS.
By:Tajah Jones
Back in May, I put on a cute but professional outfit. Black pants and a button up. I was ready to search for a summer job.
The manager of an Oakland bagel store looked at me as if I was wearing ripped jeans. His first question: Was I was a student? (Like it was a bad thing.) Second question: Had I ever worked in food preparation? No.
I had all of the wrong answers, and in this economy I had bad timing too.
I understand. For employers it’s easy to decide between someone with a degree and a teenager in high school. In the back of my mind I knew I might not get a full-time job. I tried anyway. But it was still frustrating when I got looks that read, “are you serious?” just because I didn’t have experience. How will I ever acquire any skills?
This summer I had to settle for two part-time jobs. Together, they don’t add up to eight hours a day and they pay minimum wage.
By the end of the summer I wont be putting on my black pants and button up,ill be looking for babysitting jobs. Maybe next year i'll try again the professional route.
Read more...Adobe Flash Player is not installed. Please download and install it to listen to audio.
(download mp3)
In 2008, President Barack Obama promised that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan would begin in the summer of 2011, and troops would be coming home from the Middle East. Summer's almost here. What will these new veterans do next? And are we ready to support them financially with open arms?
This is the third year that the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill will be available to veterans as an educational grant. The bill pays for a veteran’s tuition and fees, provides a housing allowance, and a stipend for books and supplies. Since the bill was made available in 2009, the amount of veterans taking advantage of it has increased by thousands.
According to the National Center for Veteran Analysis and Statistics (NCVAS), 34,393 veterans took advantage of the Post 9.11 G.I. Bill in 2009, and that number jumped to 221,900 veterans in 2010. Imagine how many new student veterans will claim this benefit for the next academic year.
What Veterans Are Facing
For veterans that have their sights set on a diploma, the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill is a godsend. However, taking advantage of this grant can be hell. Coming out of a rigid, no slack environment, where most decisions are made by someone of a higher rank - it’s now up to the veteran to:
a) choose a school
b) fill out applications
c) write the essays
d) take the SAT’s
e) retrieve your high school transcripts
f) take advantage of your veteran benefits... and the list goes on.
At San Francisco State University, the student veterans organization on campus has seen a 30 percent increase in numbers since 2009, according to Rogelio Manaois, the director of the Veteran Services Program at SFSU, and he expects more next year. J.P. Tremblay, Deputy Secretary at the California Department of Veterans Affairs said that on average, they see 30,000 vets come home each year, but he expects more this year.
At the UC Berkeley Veteran Center, Ron William’s door was open, and the flow of student veterans was steady. “If we could multiply Ron Williams by 300 it would be the best thing for us,” said Jose de Lara, 31, who served six years in the U.S. Navy, and is now pursuing philosophy. He said that having a mentor was the most important resource for someone making the transition from the service to school. Other veterans echoed him saying the veteran center where they could find a familiar community was essential to their success.
Unfortunately for De Lara and the other 300 + veterans at UC Berkeley, Williams serves student veterans as part of an unfunded mandate by the state of California, which requires every UC, CSU, and community college in the state of California to provide someone dedicated to retaining and recruiting student veterans. Williams serves this position on top of all his other responsibilities in the Transfer and Re-entry office at UC Berkeley. “It means that no college or university is getting any additional funds from the state to deliver these programs,” he said. Maintaining the program has been a challenge.
Read more...
By Belia Saavedra, Turnstyle News
Shit My Students Write and Dumb $#!% My Students Say are new meme-sites poking fun at the fumbles and goofs of students. Classroom quotes and essay excerpts are posted by teachers and take the basic meme formula from Shit My Dad Says and other quick-and-dirty quotables.
But at a time when schools across the country are suffering severe budget cuts, and students enter institutions with increasingly limited resources, what are these sites bringing to the conversation about education? I once had a particularly tough day of teaching and wrote this as my Facebook status. “2day: A student eloquently explained to his male peers how it's unfair that women be expected to do more housework & childcare. Minutes later, the very same kid threw his unwanted muffin at the wall & clowned me for my big-ass pimple and told me I was hella old and that's why my skin is "falling apart." Cada cabeza es un mundo FOR REALS.”
That last part is a common folk saying in Spanish: “Each mind is a world.” And even though it was a rough day, it was also a beautiful illustration of the way that this student’s head was, indeed, an entire world; he could share thoughtful reflections in one moment and then be completely antagonistic in the next. Just like most of us.
However, there’s a problem. When we publicly share stories like this about young people, as on blogs mentioned above, we don’t have control over the ways these stories will be understood or circulated. In some ways, it’s similar to the problem of losing out on a new job because there’s a random Facebook photo of you drunkenly waving a purple glitter vibrator at a friend’s bachelorette party. We live in public and out of context. And now that teachers are blogging student stories, or tweeting teenage bon mots, the intimacy of the learning process, with all of its embedded mistakes and miscalculations, is open to judgment by complete strangers.
In my case, most of the comments I got in response to the above post, online, and in person, were about “knuckleheads,” “little shits acting up” or how “we’re doomed” if this is the way that kids act these days. A quick survey of comments on the Shit My Students Say blog -- and twitter feed -- reflects the same mixture of dismissal and hand-wringing. After getting feedback on my post, I had to stop and reflect on the compulsion to share these classroom moments. Sure, it’s mildly entertaining to read an essay excerpt where a kid uses the word “urine” in place of the word “yearn.”
Read more...
By Robyn Gee, Turnstyle News
When I heard the news that my former student Andy had been shot, gunshots echoed in my ears. How could he be dead? Andy - who always wore his uniform, even when it had a week’s worth of stains on it. Andy - who would wolf down a whole Subway sandwich at 9am. Andy - who could make everyone laugh.
He was in my 8th grade English class at a middle school in San Francisco. He was only a little older -- 16 -- when he died. I’m not teaching anymore, but I still feel responsible for all of the students who came through my classroom. After Andy’s death, my friends from the school immediately planned Skype dates, phone conversations, and get-togethers to talk. “Who could have seen this coming?” we asked each other.
That was the easiest and hardest question to answer - because it felt like WE could have, should have, seen it. I had 9000 minutes over the course of the year to influence Andy’s life and future. Did I miss a teachable moment??
My mind flashes back to a moment when we were reading a play in class. In groups, we played a version of group charades. The students silently acted out scenes, while the rest of the class guessed what the scene was. The first group took their places, one person lying on the ground, one person standing over her, and three people were whispering. The class was stumped. And then the group revealed it was the scene of a shooting. The class burst into laughter.
It’s not so funny anymore. Guns didn't scare them, and now their classmate is dead.
Teachers have the opportunity to change students’ lives - but we are blinded by the culture in education that exists today. Events like Andy’s brutal death are reminders of the real work that has to be done in the classroom. Andy’s last name started with a Z; he was the last student I called to walk across the stage, to claim his diploma and continue onto high school.
Read more...
By Robyn Gee, Turnstyle News
The image below is a very pretty infographic.
But it doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the U.S. education system. President Barack Obama has acknowledged that the U.S. is behind in science and math, and wants to “out-educate” our global competitors. Therefore, I read this infographic through the lens of trying to figure out which listed factor coincides the most with student achievement level (the last chart that measures test scores). That’s the element we want to change – so that’s the one we’re trying to understand.
In the Class Size vs. Cost of Teacher Salary Per Student chart, the U.S. and Korea spend equal amounts of money, but Korea has a much larger class size (26) than the U.S. (15). You might think that the U.S. has an advantage here.
Not according to these charts.
Korea ranks second on the chart for test scores in reading, science, and math – while the U.S. falls towards the bottom.
AND teachers in Korea are getting paid more over the course of 15 years of experience. While Korean teachers work an average number of hours and have the highest salaries over 15 years of experience, teachers in the U.S. work the highest number of hours, and after 15 years of experience, their salaries are close to the bottom of the list.
If students could have it their way, they would be allowed to bring their own technological devices to school and have unfiltered Internet access via school computers, according to the Speak Up 2010 survey conducted by Project Tomorrow.
300,000 students took the survey, along with 43,000 parents, 35,000 teachers, 2,000 librarians, and 3,500 administrators. The survey asked how they currently use and how they want to use technology in school.
Many schools ban mobile devices because they distract students from the lesson, and may get stolen. In addition, the Children's Internet Protection Act does require schools to block certian obscene websites. However, high school students surveyed listed several reasons that having phones in the classroom would be helpful, including checking grades, conducting research, taking notes in class, collaborating and communicating with friends, keeping a calendar, accessing online textbooks, sending emails, learning about school activities and creating / sharing documents and videos.
According to the survey results, 67 percent of parents said they would buy their children a mobile device if the school allowed it.
Over 60 percent of middle and high school students said that they would like to access the websites they need. Often YouTube and social networking sites are blocked on school computers, and students feel this is an obstacle to certain projects.
Republican representatives in Wisconsin just voted to eliminate collective bargaining rights throughout the state, an action taken without any Democratic support. In fact, Democratic representatives tried to prevent a vote by leaving the state so as to prevent a quorum, but Wisconsin Republicans removed the collective bargaining provision from the Governor’s budget proposal, and voted on it separately, “overcoming the need for a quorum,” according to the New York Times.
Teachers will feel this legislative change strongly, and Slate poses a good question - how will this impact students?
We can predict some effects based on a study that was done by the Yale Law Journal recently. The study looked at the state of New Mexico because within the last three decades, New Mexico has mandated and prohibited collective bargaining rights for workers. The study looked at how students performed academically during periods when teachers HAD collective bargaining rights, and periods when they didn't.
Interesting study results:
- Mandatory teacher bargaining laws cause an increase of about 8.59 points in state average SAT scores
- Mandatory teacher bargaining laws cause a decrease of 2.65 percentage points in state high school graduation rates.
What is behind these number trends?
“If one can assume that lower performing students tend to drop out of high school and that higher performing students tend to take the SATs, then these results suggest that mandatory collective bargaining shifts the focus of schools away from low-performing students toward higher-performing ones," according to the study.
In addition, without collective bargaining rights teachers could not transfer to other schools based on their experience. Therefore, more experienced teachers could NOT leave low-performing schools for higher-performing schools. The study reports that this could have contributed to lower-performing schools getting a boost, and higher-performing schools dropping in achievement levels. However, because teacher unions needed to maintain good relationships with school districts, they were less aggressive. This resulted in lower morale among some New Mexico teachers, and some left the state.
Students in Wisconsin and all over the country have organized a walkout in support of their teachers' bargaining rights. The Facebook event has over 2,600 attendees so far, and is scheduled for this Friday at 2pm CST.
Read more...
The following was broadcast on 2/5/11 WABE-FM, Atlanta.
By Mason Gepp
Adobe Flash Player is not installed. Please download and install it to listen to audio.
I am normally a big fan of games, so when I mailed off my college applications, I looked forward to the waiting game. You know, the time between dropping my forms off in the blue postal box and the time when a reply letter comes back from the college. I was really excited, since all I had to do was sit back and wait until the responses were sent to me.
Unfortunately, it turns out I don’t have the patience needed for this game -- not in the slightest. I have heard back from three out of the six schools where I applied, so I am only halfway there. I am feeling plenty of stress and anxiety lately. I’m a good student, so it feels like unnecessary torture. Each college sets their own arbitrary dates for when they feel like notifying applicants. On days when these letters are scheduled to arrive, I find myself rushing home from school to open the mailbox, to find anything but my letter. As a result, the U.S. Postal Service and I have a less than cordial relationship.
My last year of high school will be over soon, so I’m supposed to be suffering from senioritis – where my classmates and I just goof off. But because of this ongoing waiting game, I have not been infected by this yet. That's probably a good thing since I'm keeping my grades up.
When I do go to college next year, I think the only game I’ll feel like playing is baseball– the ball moves a lot faster.
Previously on WABE:
* Brother
Read more...
