WINNEMUCCA - Humboldt County School District is undergoing many changes.
With a new assistant superintendent, administrator additions and shuffles, along with teacher transfers and new folks signing on, it should be an exciting year ahead. Hopefully the team will all pull together so that by August a smooth-running organization is operating.
I was somewhat distressed this spring as rumors ran rampant in regards to the staff at the junior high. The negativity shocked me as I had taught at WJHS for many years and have maintained a close relationship with administrators and staff through my role with Great Basin College as well as longstanding personal and professional associations.
If you were ever in junior high, you remember what a crazy and wonderful time of life this is. During those years that also spill over into high school, kids become wise and perceptive. They recognize angles and edges; ways of doing and being; methods for learning and manipulating.
It is a trying time for parents, a head-scratching time for outsiders, and a marvelous instructional time for teachers.
Junior high students for the most part can be described as zealous. They are grown up in so many ways, especially in the worldly sense due to videos and television programs that display family and friends in diverse situations, many of which appear to be simple but are actually quite complex, i.e., sexual relationships, family dynamics, or drug use and abuse.
In many other ways they are children, lacking the wisdom that only comes through years of living and a vast number of experiences. Discipline is critical at this time, with rules and procedures well established. Parents know that you cannot "lay down the law" at fourteen when the preceding years have been a free-for-all. If you wonder why schools have rules, it is so that an education can be gained.
Upholding respectful behavior is just one aspect of teaching adolescents. We worry about bullying on the one hand, but question things like age-separated lunches or divided physical education classes.
We demand that students exit our schools with a strong education that will bring success in future endeavors, but then we allow them to skip assignments, sleep in, or miss school.
I have always been willing to accept credit for lessons well taught and to suffer agony when a child does not succeed. I studied lessons, attended classes, read books, and conversed with colleagues hoping to find the secret ingredient that helps every child achieve at high levels.
An intense work ethic helped me model expectations for actions and completing classroom tasks. I never met a child for whom I did not want the best in learning opportunities. I believe that most teachers feel the same.
I now fret with teachers over the Common Core Standards in English and math. I am a believer in "common" as students move and yet are expected to learn certain concepts regardless of where they live.
- See SCHOOLS, Page 23 -
The English CCS seem well designed with expectations for K-12 clearly delineated realizing that text complexity increases with grade level but the definition of a theme or figurative language remain constant.
The math CCS appear more difficult in that this subject has a variety of concepts that stand individually was well as integrated. Consider the ways in which addition, fractions, decimals, and matrices interconnect and how they also work separately.
When a child cannot add and subtract with automaticity by grade 3, how can they master multiplication and division concepts?
There 180 days of school each year, with approximately five hours of academic instruction. That's 900 hours! While I am shocked at so few, I know that most days in most schools in most classrooms are packed with learning. Toss in music, p.e., and art for rounding out brain expansion through rhythm, activity, and conceptualization and well-balanced children materialize. Study the CCS (online at the Nevada Department of Education website).
Divide these into those precious hours of school, and then accept that teachers cannot do it alone. They need parents who care, cooperate, require respect, and who cheer the virtues of excellence in education. Advance your child's outlook and intellectual development.
Challenges for this year:
limit television and video viewing
set perimeters for gaming
participate in brain activators like jogging, handball, or kick boxing
establish a homework routine
fill your home with a positive attitude about all aspects of education
support our child as well as his/her teacher and school
honor learning
Results will be astounding!
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