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Four students from Bronx middle school CIS 339 wrote about their school’s Parent Expo on Thursday. Here are their (edited and condensed) accounts of the event, providing a unique student view of the Expo. As you will read, the Expo was a chance for students to show off their work so far this year to their families, highlight technology integration at the school, and celebrate together over dinner. The four authors are Bintou, Yctor, Aurelie, Osafo.

Bintou, a 6th grader, let us know how people were feeling as the night commenced:

People are proud to see how much work their kids have done. Some students are excited to share their work and nervous. The presentations are cool and interesting. Even I presented, and I was shy.

Here’s more from 6th grader Yctor:

Ms. Wolk is talking about our accomplishments…. Justin is talking about Champions Book of the Month and how he really liked the book, The Outsiders. Next are Ruby and Darbo, who are talking about cool people like Mr. Levy and Mr. Martin, and what they do and why they are cool. Next is Henry, who is talking about crazy stories. One of his funny stories is ducks vs. elevators.

We are going over to the math room to see our PowerPoint on fractions. I almost forgot — me and my friend are recording in iMovie. Now Ms. Midkiff put our math PowerPoint in the SmartBoard. And my friend who is also helping is recording the parents and we are recording the presentations. And if some students aren’t here the teacher skips their presentations.

Aurelie, an 8th grader, gave us up-to-the-minute updates as events unfolded:

Today is the year’s first Parent Expo Night at CIS 339. Students spent two weeks preparing their projects, so parents could be satisfied by their progress this year. The extraordinary thing is that our school is using technology (laptops) in every class. We want to see the reaction of parents to how strongly this technology has been integrated in our school.

5:25 pm All classes are empty right now. Teachers are a little bit tense and hope that parents and students will all be there for the rendezvous. Some students are preparing some of the speeches they will present in front of the class when parents arrive. The entrance of the school is crowded by people signing in. Balloons and some small tables are placed just where people walk by the principal’s hallway.

Our principal is walking around each class room to see if everything is fine and working perfectly.

6:00 pm A few 8th grade parents are here now. They are signing in. After that they will each receive a raffle ticket.

In class 801, Mr. Blanchard, a math teacher, is explaining how the web site MathScore can help students in home and class. Most of the parents in this class came. Each student is sitting with her or his parents to show them the work they have done since the beginning of school. All the work students show is in Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or PowerPoint.

A parent of one of the students has a big smile on her face when she says, “I really like the way this school uses laptops. My daughter teaches me how to use computer at home. She shows me all her work in her laptop and it is amazing.”

6:45 pm In the Social Studies room at the library, parents are laughing and impressed about a project based on inventions. The tables are placed in a U, and the teachers, Ms. Kaelin and Ms. Abraham, put the display boards on the tables. Parents are walking around to see all the student creations. Students had to create machines which were never invented yet. The room is filled up with laughter. A parent said, “I really don’t know if all those invention will exist one day. It is so creative what they did.”

In Ms. McKeon’s class, they presented a character journal on Google Docs to parents. Ms. McKeon said, “Some parents didn’t come because they have to work, and the weather, too. And I understand that.” Her classroom is very pretty with colorful posters on the wall. Parents are so ecstatic to see computers in every classroom.

The hallway is filled with movement because students are trying to show all their class projects to their parents. There are some students who are showing where parents should go, giving them all the directions they need. They have sheets where the schedule is written, permitting parents to know what hour to go to what room.

6:50 pm In an English Language Arts class, a student is presenting his project on Ning. Ning is a website made by Ms. John, an English Language Arts teacher, so students can blog about a book called To Kill A Mockingbird. Students pretended to be a character in the book in their reading journals.

In each room, teachers place the laptop of each student on their desk. When parents enter the classroom with their child, they sit beside each other and the child shows the work he or she has done. The desks are placed in groups of four or five.  Some courageous students are presenting their projects in front of the class for parents. Parents are happy about the friendship between teachers and students.

7:00 pm The 6th grade Parent Expo is almost over. Some students present their work to parents. All parents here are very admiring of the way we are using laptops in class. One Social Studies teacher insisted that parents go to students’ blogs to see their work and posts. One little girl did an expo presentation about science energy. However, her parents were not there to see the interesting science project she did.

7:15 pm A 7th grade Social Studies teacher, Mr. Mello, is introducing the new technology in our school. He is explaining how students use Google Docs and diary entries. The current project is the trial of Christopher Columbus. Students in this room know what they are talking about. Parents are listening intently to every word. They are focused on the image projected on the board. A parent says, “It is really nice how they are using technology for the education.”

7:40 pm The cafeteria is crowded. Parents and students are eating. There is enough food and drink for everyone — pasta, meat, rice, and more. You cannot see the color of the tables because of the variety of dishes. There are blue, red, pink, and yellow balloons on the edges of each table. People are walking around to fill their plates. While we are eating, two persons in charge are doing the raffle. As prizes, there are bikes and a computer. I didn’t have a chance to meet the lucky one. Everyone is satisfied with the treats.

Another 8th grader, Osafo, presented the event grade-by-grade:

First-year 7th grade teacher C in the City has just one wish for the holidays:

I caught myself praying as I was writing a self-checklist for my students to wrap up this persuasive unit. As a final check for their editorial, I’m going to ask students to go back to their rough drafts and count how many paragraphs they have and write the # in a space: ____ Then, in a moment of desperation and panic, I added next to the blank “<—-If this number isn’t 5, see me.”

And then, I started laughing and couldn’t stop. I realized what I had written was so absurd. I was thinking to myself, God, I hope it’s 5. Please don’t write 3 or 2 or 4. 5 paragraphs please. 5 is the magic number. That’s the only gift I could really appreciate from my kids. Something to affirm that I know what I’m doing slightly. I marvel that by the end of this week or Monday, all students will have written their first persuasive essay, and that I can say I moved 91 students to write a 5 paragraph essay.

Our colleagues at Livable Streets Education (like us, an initiative of The Open Planning Project), have been “encouraging students to explore and question the environments around their school and in their neighborhoods, and to voice the changes they want to see on their streets.” Here, they present some advice to drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists from 1st graders at Manhattan’s PS 87.

Marni Goltsman, whose son is autistic, says she and her husband have pushed the boy to take part in activities against his wishes because over time, he has come to enjoy and learn a lot from those experiences. But now that he’s five, she asks, should they begin respecting his preferences?

[T]here are two problems with this approach. The first is a new problem: Brooks is getting older. It’s one thing to ignore a toddler’s protests—it’s quite another when a increasingly verbal 5-year-old describes to you exactly what he doesn’t like, and asks you point-blank why he has to do it. And the second is a an old problem that’s been around ever since he was diagnosed: How far can we push him without sacrificing his self-esteem? If this is simply too challenging for him at the moment, which may very well be the case, then why are we torturing him by having him face his deficits in front of us and his peers week after week? Should we instead be taking a break from soccer and working on something else? Or should we design a more appropriate intervention, like having his physical therapist work on ball skills with him one-on-one?

New York City elementary school teacher Peace in the Classroom is dismayed that her school has been designated as under “corrective action” according to the No Child Left Behind law:

Just because we are a community school and we take EVERYONE who walks in the door, including children from a transitional shelter that is in our catchment area, we suffer the consequences of having low-performing students. It is not a reflection on the actual teaching or achievement of our “home grown” students, the ones we keep from Pre-K through 5th grade. What do they want schools to do? Shut their doors? Only let in a select few? I am proud of the fact that we educate everyone equally. I am proud to have over 80% ELLs in my class. The media always puts down these “underperforming” schools and it’s so sad that my school has been categorized this way.

Educators have been worrying about American students’ math performance for decades. 1939 saw the introduction of innovative teaching techniques to some New York City math classrooms: Rather than learning “to compute for the sake of computation,” students learned arithmetic by applying it to baseball statistics, electrical bills, and other real-life situations, “informal, human and vital.”

At the time, some claimed students’ failure in high school math classes could be attributed to Regents exams:

On the high school level, where algebra, geometry, and trigonometry are still rigid, formalized subjects, a 25 percent failure record still exists. Officials have blamed the Regents examinations, in part, for this condition.

The rest of the article is after the jump.

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Last year, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said he wanted to increase the number of students passing Advanced Placement tests. But for high-achieving kids with special needs, taking AP classes can be near impossible.

This week, I talked to a parent about how hard it was for her to find a high school that says it will offer AP classes to her child, a high-achieving eighth-grader who is legally required to be placed in a team-teaching setting.

Specifically, this student must be in a Collaborative Team Teaching class, where two teachers, one with special education certification, work with a class made up of some students who have special needs and some who do not.

Despite her careful research, the mother told me, it hasn’t always been clear which high schools will meet her child’s needs. In the high school directory released each year by the DOE, most selective schools say they will offer special education services “as needed.” Some schools have reputations for including kids with all kids of special needs in their most challenging courses, but others do not. (more…)

Blogging at Time Out Kids, New York City mom Susan Avery wonders how to respond to this modern-day dilemma:

It was 10am on a school day when my middle school-age daughter called. “What’s wrong?” I answered, knowing something was up. She’s not the kind of kid who sneaks in calls during the day, so I was sure it was something bad.

“I totally forgot my homework and English is in 20 minutes!” she whispered. “Can you e-mail it to me?”

I breathed a sigh of relief before becoming annoyed. Remembering her homework is her responsibility. Yes, I could send it to her with a click of a mouse, but should I? What kind of message would I be sending along with her essay?

After a talented co-worker left their “dysfuctional” Brooklyn public school to work at a charter school, he told Ariel Sacks:

I didn’t fully realize it before, but all the craziness that was constantly going on around me was clouding my teaching. With all of that gone, I can identify my weak points and improve on them.

Sacks ponders what that “craziness” looks like — computers that don’t work and no money to pay a technician, chronic absenteeism among students — and how it forces teachers to plan for unexpected obstacles. What does it mean to compare teacher effectiveness in such different environments, she asks:

Teachers at schools like mine get used the multitude of x factors. In fact, we stop expecting everything to be “just so” and start going out of our way to plan for all of the unexpected things that might happen. Does this make us less effective? Maybe it does, in a way. It is harder to address problems quickly and effectively, when new problems present themselves simultaneously. But is it fair to call us less effective? Is it actually fair to measure my effectiveness in the same way my former colleague’s teaching is now measured, when the playing field is not level? Is the job of teaching in these very disparate environments even the same?

If the quality of my teaching is measured by my students’ scores on the same test that Joe’s students also take, and soon, I am compensated based on this same determination, then tell me—why should I keep on working at a school that can’t provide me everything I need to reach my full potential as a teacher?

A map of the schools where air pollution is greatest, from USA Today.

PS 20 on Staten Island is more polluted than nine out of 10 schools in the country, according to a a USA Today investigative report.

The newspaper looked at air pollution levels at schools across the country and found that hundreds of thousands of students are exposed to high levels of air pollution at the schools they attend. But the study emphasized that environmental scientists haven’t devoted much attention to determining how much pollution is safe for kids.

The report found PS 20 to be the city’s most polluted public school. But Brooklyn has it worst of the five boroughs, with the greatest number of schools ranked among the most toxic. (See the schools with the worst pollution problems in each borough.)

Some good news for New Yorkers: None of the city’s schools were among the 435 worst polluted in the nation. (more…)