Author Archives: Kimberly Moritz

Teacher Appreciation Day

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Just want to take a moment to thank every teacher in G-Town for the tremendous effort you put forth each and every day. Here’s what I appreciate most:

your creativity, passion for kids and for your subject, energy, willingness to just make it happen, excitement and enthusiasm, quiet hard work, child advocacy, dedication to our success, sense of humor, ability to overlook or forgive my shortcomings as your leader, and your spirit of adventure.

On behalf of the other parents, our community and our students, thank you for making it happen here in G-Town. It’s a privilege and a pleasure to work with you.

And for every other G-Town reader who’s a teacher out there, getting the job done, in case no one else says it, thank you.

Live and Let Live

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Several of our students attended the workshop portion of our Board of Education meeting last night to talk about the organization of the GSA (Gay Straight Alliance). Long time readers of this blog will recall my posts at the beginning of this school year about our kids and their desire to meet as a group.

I thought last night’s workshop was productive, our kids well spoken, and the conversation worthwhile. Our superintendent and Board of Education explained to the students about the different kinds of groups that exist in and around a school. One, the outside groups, like the Boy Scouts and youth basketball, who use our buildings in the evenings. Two, the school clubs which are currently in the teachers’ contract and follow all of the school accountability measures with their student activity accounts. Three, student groups such as the GSA, which are Gowanda students, supervised by a faculty member, with access to all of our “communicative means”, like announcing meetings and hanging up signs. The Board recognized our kids as this third type of group.

Somehow, between last night and today, a different message was found. It definitely wasn’t the one I heard last night. Some of our kids were talking about how the Board denied the club and that they thought they should stage a protest. Two of the kids were even at the meeting with me. How they heard that it was denied, I can’t imagine.

So here we were today, with several students getting all worked up about a group that came together to promote acceptance. I’m stymied because I look back and think that we did everything right. The kids were respectful at all points along the way, their advisor phenomenal, and I think I’ve been supportive of all students.

And guess what bothers me most about this topic? While my students are all worked up about a topic to which most don’t even have their facts straight, and several stand divided and intolerant where they weren’t before, I’m left wondering who’s thinking about mathematics, English, Science, Art, Social Studies, LOTE, and PREPARING FOR THE REGENTS EXAMS?! For the first time all year, I’m sorry we headed down this path because a “debate” is consuming our youngest students and pushing our primary business out of their heads. And I suspect for some, it’s just the latest drama to get worked up about while for others, like some of the organizers, it’s a topic about which they feel passionately. 

Teachers, help me out, this cannot become the focus of our learning in G-Town. What we’re experiencing may be normal in the growth process, but it needs to just be a part of our school discussions, not all of it. The only way I would NOT support this group is if it’s existence became completely disruptive to our educational process.

Let’s get a grip please, there’s a lot more to us than two viewpoints on one group. No one has the right to tell anyone else how to think or feel on any topic, that’s up to each of us, as individuals. If I’m hearing everyone correctly, we need to “live and let live.”

“Education Week” Writes About G-Town

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So Will, thanks to you and the fact that you pointed the Education Week reporter our way, we have some word about principal blogs getting into the “traditional” media which should, ultimately, lead to more of my colleagues joining the discussion about education. That means I get access to more great ideas from all of the talented educators working hard every day. Thanks to Jeff Archer for a great article.

Leaders’ Blogs Offer Candid Views on Life in Schools

Welcome to the new readers who are linking from Education Week and who are commenting here. Please consider stepping in, reading, and writing–I have much to learn and you might have the big idea for which I’m searching.

The Personal Side of the Graduation Rate

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cross posted on LeaderTalk

What if there isn’t a darned thing I can do to prevent some of our high school students from dropping out? What if there really isn’t any way to leave no child behind?

Here are some of my statistics of our G-Town drop-outs from September 2004 through January 2007.

  • 40% signed out, 60% just stopped showing up
  • 45% are white, 53% Native American, 2% Hispanic
  • 49% are male, 51% are female
  • 58% of the white students are male, 65% of the Native American students are female
  • 40% are aged 17, 30% are aged 18, 31% are in grade 10, 25% in grade 11, and 25% in grade 12
  • 33% are passing and on track when they drop out, 53% have major attendance issues
  • 77% were retained, 52% once, 43% twice, 5% three times
  • 56% live in poverty

What does that data tell me that will truly help me change the course of those students’ lives and get them to graduation?

You can see that 53% of my drop outs are Native American while only 30% of my population is Native American. A significant problem. We have a tri-district “Native Voices” initiative, in which we study our Native American students by meeting with our kids one on one and in small groups, face to face, to talk about their learning. Our mission is to learn more about our Native American students so that we can make our schools the best possible places they can be, working together to understand what works and what doesn’t work.

We’ve worked together as a team, three neighboring districts who all share the students of the Cattaraugus Territory. We are administrators, counselors, psychologists, Title VII support personnel, and parents. It’s been an incredible experience, one ripe with opportunity to improve culture, climate, and pedagogy. 

We’ve realized lots of things that we can do better and our next meetings will focus on implementing change. I think we’ve already made great gains in climate and culture. Our discipline reports and daily attendance support this premise.

But what about those students who remain unaffected by all of the positive changes, who despite us and our endeavors, will choose to leave?

We need another alternative for them. And not typical alternative education that’s just sending our kids who won’t play by the rules to another location, same time, same days, same Bat channel. We need real options for kids who won’t/can’t succeed as we are today. We need a different time, a different delivery mode, a new approach, a real solution, a different system.

So we enter year two of Native Voices, knowing that we’ve figured out some ways to make our schools better for the students we keep. Knowing that we’ve got to find a solution for those who walk. There isn’t anyone who can dispute that every child desperately needs a diploma to meet with any kind of economic success.

Here’s my problem. I’m a change agent. If you’ve read this blog or worked with me, you know this. I’m constantly thinking about what we can do better and I work hard to make meaningful change for our students, faculty, and community. I want our students to succeed and I aim to climb the “rankings”.

But it’s so darned slow. Our results on the State measures are changing only incrementally. We’re a school in good standing making adequate yearly progress, with a 73% graduation rate for all students while the state standard is 55%.  But my personal standard as the administrator most responsible is 95-100% and no “progress is adequate” for the students who are still dropping out.

How long does it take to see significant results? How long does it take until every kid sticks with me until the diploma?

Four Years to Graduate Or No Goal?

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At the conference I attended on Friday, I was very pleased to hear Chancellor Bennett’s response to my inquiry about cohort outcomes after four years of school and cohort outcomes after five years of school. Chancellor Bennett’s response to my question was extremely positive and in favor of the idea that it’s okay to take five years for students to get to graduation.

Currently, under NCLB, the four year path is the only one that counts favorably toward our graduation measure. This is a crucial measure for high schools and in one like ours, is a significant difference. I have argued here before and have written to the Commissioner about the fact that we’re keeping kids in school, we’re getting them back for the fifth year, and that should be a positive outcome.

On our most recent school report card, for the 2001 cohort, we jump from 68% graduating in four years to 76% in five years. For our male students that same figure jumps from 60% to 72%. Our students with disabilities jumps 21% in five years versus four years. Yet we continue to be held to the four year path as our standard of success.

No goal, no win at the federal level. Not fair and too narrow minded in its view of success.

Cosmic Forces At Work

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Any time I change this presentation, like I have recently with the Tarski presentation, I experience problems. James Farmer at Edublogs is working on this theme, but G-Town Readers’ comments have shown up on the wrong posts. So here I am, back with my original theme. The other presentation afforded me some features I don’t get here, but readers’ comments are the most important part of blogging so we’ll just stick with this one until it’s worked out.  Sorry for the confusion.

Let’s Ban Students Too

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I absolutely cannot believe that a kid in my class would have been able to use an MP3 player during a test to cheat. Maybe in the schools where cheating is happening with electronic devices they have much larger classes than I ever did.

So here we go again. Instead of doing our due diligence, teaching our kids appropriate uses and giving consequences for those who are ill intended, we ban electronic devices.

Does anyone remember that prohibition didn’t work?

My Own Learning

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The last thing I wanted to do this morning was attend a conference sixty miles away in Niagara Falls.

I was pre-registered and my Title VII friends had paid for my registration fee so I felt obligated to attend. I called my colleague in the middle school who assured me he would handle any “emergencies” and off I went to the conference.

This was the very best thing I could have done today. It was an excellent conference on Indian Education with sessions that really got me thinking about the “big issues” and about good instructional strategies. I’m so glad that by attending I got to see Dr. Lloyd Elm receive an award. I hold Dr. Elm in extremely high regard, as he’s one of the finest educators I’ve ever known.

Attending this conference reminded me of the big picture, of the real reason I’m here. Allowing myself to get away from the day to day operations, the sometimes difficult “trouble shooting, plug your finger in one hole as another one pops open” kind of day, reminded me of why I do this job.

I concentrated on my own learning and it was invigorating. I wish I had unlimited professional development dollars so that I could send every teacher in my employ to a two-three day state or national conference from which they could return refreshed and ready to roll with new ideas.

I hope every teacher out there who is fortunate enough to work in a district with those kinds of funds truly appreciates it and takes advantage of every session.

Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This

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It’s nearing the end of a long day in the midst of a longer week. Thank goodness my mother in law is preparing dinner for us at 7:00. I can look forward to a nice meal with my family. I have no explanation for those weeks when we walk around saying, “when it rains, it pours” or for the repeat lyrics in my head of, “Mama said there’d be days like this. . . ” I’m pretty sure much of it has to do with the pressure of the end of the year coming and graduation and grade advancement.

I’m sure every administrator has experienced the days when your spouse looks at you and says “how was your day?” and you can’t even remember/articulate everything that happened. It’s literally going from one phone call to another impromptu meeting to yet one more kid melting down.

If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that every person who comes to see me or calls deserves a “refreshed screen” without me dumping whatever just walked out of my door onto them. I like to think I managed that well today but can also say how much I appreciate those people like Sue R., my secretary, who can see through it and give me some support. On this Administrative Professionals’ Day, I appreciate a gazillion things about our office staff, but nothing more than when I can close the door and say to Sue, Lori, or Carol, “HOLY CATS, what was that?!”

Once again today, I realize that remaining calm, despite how upset the parent or student may be, is the only way for me to effectively listen to the problem and then attempt to solve it. And when we consider that 98% of the time parents only become upset because they are advocating for their children, the people most important in the world to them, it makes it a whole lot easier to be quiet, to listen, to respond effectively. To understand. That’s when we need to remember, this isn’t about me and my response to your behavior, it’s about truly listening and solving the problem.  

He who yells loudest doesn’t win.

G-Town Readers Rock

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Thank you to the 46 53  67 (and counting, think we’ll let this experiment ride a while) readers who responded to the referers/readers survey! I’ll give it a couple of days to be sure everyone has responded who wanted to, and then post a summary of who YOU are–and James said you wouldn’t comment if asked. 🙂