Warming up for August

PSS teachers report to their campuses tomorrow to finalize the setup for the deluge of children into the school system at the start of this curriculum year. On the third of August, an estimated 10-percent increase from last year’s student population will be added to an overcrowded, understaffed, ill-equipped and logistically challenged educational system. With but a sixth of the minimum cost to retrofit schools for the opening of classes still to be released, smart administrators and teachers have already supplied their first aid kits with analgesics to calm the frayed nerves and twitching muscles that will surely accompany the start of the 10-month marathon to improve the reading, writing and ‘rithmetic knowledge and skills of our young.

The months of June and July saw a flurry of activities to prepare teachers to meet certification standards and secure additional knowledge and skills to meet educational objectives. On teachers’ ability to pass professional assessment measures, review sessions for the PRAXIS test were held. The anxiety level must have been very high. Show up rate for the sessions were high. Some were not accommodated due to the high number of respondents.

The widespread sentiment among the veterans within the teaching corps is that they shall endeavor to pass PRAXIS II. Afterwards, they will make the case that passing PRAXIS I is redundant, given that the later is an entry level qualifying test for those enlisting in an academic training program for the profession. This makes sense, of course, but as a colleague was quick to point out, “being reasonable has hardly been the criteria for making decisions in the BOE/PSS ranks.” In any case, movementalizing this sentiment is very well in order. Hint, hint, Teachers’ Reps!

To meet the literacy goals of our school, teachers were exposed in the last two months to three programs that are a smorgasbord resource for accelerated learning. We began with the Renaissance Learning program for language acquisition and its accent on listening skills as foundation for learning. Then we joined the Texas Reading Academy, a systematic professional development in comprehensive reading instruction. Lastly, a full orientation on the practice of Direct Instructions, a program already though partially used by some CNMI schools, but fully implemented by the Guam School District, assaulted pedagogical presumptions currently in place.

Direct Instruction (referred to both endearingly and derisively as DI) emphasizes lessons designed around small learning increments and clearly defined teaching tasks. It is based on the theory that clear instruction that leads to a mastery of content and skill greatly improves learning. The program discards the popular notion that teachers’ creativity and autonomy is sovereign in the classroom. Teachers are tasked to willingly follow scripted instructional practices designed by professionals elsewhere, on the belief that all students can learn, if properly taught. This series of drill type pedagogy toward mastery of subject, with a top-down organizational set-up, is very proprietary and merciless in its exclusiveness. It is a program chosen as an either/or proposition.

Both issues on teacher certification and appropriate pedagogy preoccupied most teachers over the summer. To be sure, there were those who attended PSS organized sessions on the principle that “here, and for the ten thousand ¥en per day, go I.” Regardless, the challenge was clear: upgrade, or, there will be teachers left behind!

The Teachers’ Rep in the BOE, of necessity, became an inevitable item of collegial conversation. Embroiled in a messy controversy, our current appointee recently issued a public and written ‘apology’ to the members of the board, but with a caveat that sounded like “I’m sorry, but it was all your fault.” Thus, teachers think the current impasse of animosity prevails. The signature campaign to ask Governor Babauta to hold a special election to gauge whether the current appointee still enjoys the mandate of his constituency continues.

How warmed up are teachers for the influx of children into the classroom? One of the gems of wisdom that came out of the DI session is the idea that identifying a problem is not intended to parcel out blame but to seek needed change. For sure, teachers’ out-of-pocket expenses on classroom materials and supplies, will remain an irritant that will color ones attitude, but the governmental budget process remains a smoke-and-mirrors game deftly played by alleged grownups in the legislative and executive branches of government, so we will not interfere in their entertainment affairs. There is, however, an arena where technical and system change does not require federal effort. Only the local will to decide.

This has to do with access to the Internet by classrooms. For the last two years, my school had been trying to connect my Social Studies class to the Internet. Three weeks before school closing, we finally got hardware and software, network line and password, broadband and server, coordinated to get my classroom unit connected to the World Wide Web. It lasted 15 minutes. Everyday thereafter, we clock our connection time. We were lucky if we maintained connection for an hour before access was discontinued.

Briefly, the situation is likened to a 100-lane highway where there is only a single traffic control system. An aberration on one lane shuts down operation in all the lanes. A virus in a Kagman school shuts down the whole system for repairs. Parceling a number of lanes that can remain open when one lane is incapacitated is not a difficult engineering and architectural adjustment choice. And at a minimal cost, I was told. “So, how about it?” says the teachers’ chorus line to Dr. David Borja?

Our four-member core curriculum teaching team at SVES for the 6th grade level has yet to meet to map common strategies and tactics. As in the past, carefully crafted lesson plans will be aided by plenty of intuitive teaching. One thing is expected: Johnny Angel of fifth grade, turns Johnny the Daredevil at sixth; Annie the teacher’s pet at fifth, becomes bewitched at sixth and turns, as my rapping colleague would say, into someone that rhymes with ‘witch.’

August is come. Let the formal learning process begin.

(Strictly a personal view. Vergara writes a weekly column for the Saipan Tribune.)