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BROMWELL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (214)
2500 East
Fourth Avenue,
80206-4214
(Columbine Street at East Fourth Avenue)

Telephone:
(303) 388-5969
Fax: (720) 424-9355
E-mail: Bromwell@dpsk12.org

Mr. Jonathan Wolfer, Principal

Teachers' Teachers

Teaching teachers to teach takes its toll on kids.

Some of Meaghan O'Brien's fourth-graders at Cheltenham Elementary School come completely unglued every time a substitute comes in to free her for a training on literacy or math or writing.

Isaiah has spent a disastrous 30 minutes with a substitute in the morning, and another sub is on deck for the entire afternoon. Something has to give. O'Brien hopes it might be Isaiah.

"Isaiah, you cannot behave this way when we have subs," O'Brien says. "What can we do together to help you be successful when we have substitutes in the classroom?"

Isaiah, who usually looks ready to do something he shouldn't, suddenly looks very serious.

"Well, I think there are only two real choices that we have," he says thoughtfully. "The first choice is that you just don't have any more subs. Or ...you can take me with you every time you leave."

In the past four months, O'Brien has been absent from her classroom more times than in the previous four years put together. Most of that time, she's been a student herself, learning new and improved ways to teach.

"It makes me a better teacher," she says. "I think if I didn't have these in-services, I couldn't handle the class as well as I can now. I have so many different levels, and I'm taught how to teach each of them on their own level, how to record all the information, and really how to watch them grow."

Teaching evolves. Curricula change, philosophies change, standards change. So teachers change the way they teach, from year to year, from day to day - or in O'Brien's case - sometimes from one minute to the next. Pressure to meet state standards and do well on the CSAP, or Colorado Student Assessment Program, has both clarified the academic mission and created a huge demand for help.

"But it also adds a lot of stress in the classroom, because we're out of the classroom so often," O'Brien says. "These children are used to substitutes, but that doesn't mean they handle it well."

Once, O'Brien made the mistake of telling her class she would know if they were behaving because she would still be in the building.

"Some of them pretended to go to the bathroom and then tried to find me," O'Brien says.

It's a trade-off: Some kids' emotional needs go unmet for a few hours so that O'Brien can assess and address their academic needs even more effectively when she returns.

"When teachers get together and have a chance to plan instruction and really work on their curriculum, the day that's taken away is given back with triple the intensity," says Carla Santorno, the Denver Public School district's interim chief of curriculum and instruction. "When the teacher is back in there, they're using the time so much better."

For the last three years, Santorno's staff of content specialists has gone from school to school to provide training, professional development and support in reading, writing, math, social studies and science. Each of them runs as many as 25 in-service programs a month.

"Everything that has to do with teaching and learning - you name it, we do it," Santorno says. "The bottom line is, there aren't enough of us to go around."

Specialists such as Debbie Hearty and Rosanne Fulton each have responsibility for at least eight schools. When Bromwell Elementary School wanted to do a training to help teachers with their new math curriculum, Hearty came to help. Fulton did the same for Cheltenham teachers and their new math program, which is different than Bromwell's.

The district provides just four planning days for teachers during the school year, and some of that time might be used for parent-teacher conferences. Principals who want more training for their teachers need to find the money, which can be difficult, and the time, which can be nearly impossible.

At Cheltenham, Principal Kay Frunzi gives up three of her four staff meetings each month to give her teachers time to train and brainstorm. Sometimes, O'Brien and her fellow teachers are called upon to give up their time after school or on weekends.

To make time for a math in-service session with Fulton, Frunzi hires substitutes to cover fourth grade in the morning and fifth grade in the afternoon. At the morning meeting, Fulton and the four fourth-grade teachers discuss the resource book sent out by the state to help prepare kids for the CSAP.

"It's not enough to know which rectangle isn't divided into four equal parts," Fulton says. "For the CSAP, they have to be able to explain why."

"I think it's great," teacher Hank Gilday says wryly. "We just have to add more time to the day."

Fulton understands. All the content specialists are teachers themselves. "I hear what you're saying," she says. "But there are so many places in science and social studies where we can incorporate math."

Fourth-grade classes at Cheltenham might contain kids working at a second-grade level or a fifth-grade level, which means figuring out where each one is and tailoring the work to their ability.

"I have a student whose mother says the homework I send home is too difficult for her," O'Brien says. "But then she says the work I give her child in class is too easy."

"Give her the second-grade work and the fourth-grade work and tell her to do what makes sense," Fulton suggests. "The more collaborative and supportive you are, the more homework you get back."

CSAP has created more work for Santorno's specialists and more anxiety for teachers in general, but it's also brought a certain focus to their jobs. It comes down to diagnosing and prescribing, Santorno says. What problems are these students having with the standards, and what do they need to improve?

"What's happened is that we didn't know all the time what the standard was. So different teachers had different expectations," Santorno says. "The emphasis on standards has really clarified what the expectations are, it has helped teachers focus on specific standards and has aided our ability to help their kids get there."

To Santorno's mind, teaching to the CSAP makes sense.

"The CSAP is a performance-based test - how well a student writes, not how well they answer a question," she says. "CSAP has you write an essay, and it has to be well constructed and well done. Are we teaching to the test? Yes. We're teaching kids how to be better writers."

The CSAP math test has similar requirements. "We're saying, 'Kids, there's your answer. How did you get it? Write how you got it.' Is that teaching to test? Yes. It measures how well they solve problems. Are kids going to be able to memorize something and do well on the test? No."

At Bromwell Elementary, the math curriculum, "Investigations," is just a year old and brand new to some of the staff, so by November, the teachers want some feedback.

"We're all going, 'Are we doing this right?"' says veteran fourth-grade teacher Sue Loftus. "Bottom line, it's fairly different than the other programs we've used, and we're concerned about how the assessments are going to go."

In the classroom, this math looks and sounds different. There's no textbook for the kids, but the teachers draw from six different books to prepare. It's very hands-on - flashcards, play money, materials kids make themselves.

Bromwell teachers meet in the library after school on a Wednesday to talk about it, and Hearty comes to help.

"What initial understanding do we see beginning to emerge from this work?" she asks. "That is what we have to talk about first, before we can say what is good enough. What types of understanding am I expecting here? So when I expect to see proficiency, what does that look like?"

At one table, Loftus shares what she and fellow fourth-grade teacher Andrea Lewis have been doing with their classes.

"They had to look at these problems and come up with a strategy that made it easier to do the final problem," she says.

The kids solved 7 X 8, 7 X 6 and 7 X 10. Then they were asked to explain how they would solve 7 X 16.

The first strategy they suggested was to multiply 7 X 10, then multiply 7 X 6, then add the two products, because 6 + 10 equals 16.

Another child said he just multiplied the numbers the standard way. "He wrote that strategy on everything," Loftus says.

Another wrote the problem as 2 X 7 X 8, because 8 is half of 16. Another child added 16 seven times.

"One of the things we've been trying to do is say to them, give us as many strategies as you can. Don't be satisfied with figuring it out one way," Loftus says. "And now they say it to each other - 'Well, that's just one way.'"

There's always another way for teachers, too.

Would you like to go to the next installment? Click on Schools Optimistic About CSAP.

© 2000 Denver Rocky Mountain News/Denver Publishing Co. All rights reserved.

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