Relationship Reflections

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, “What! You too? I thought I was the only one!” – C.S. Lewis

This is how I identify with all of the relationships in my life. I build relationships that are based on mutual understanding, kindness, sarcasm, love, and happiness. Through all of the good and the bad I find that all of the relationships that matter just grow closer and closer together.

There are five people that come to mind when I think of my support system. Dad, Mom, Micah, Casey, and Amanda.

My dad is of course one of my biggest cheer leaders. I feel support and love when I think of him. He sternly makes sure I am doing well at work and school. He asks with a furrowed brow if I have enough money. He emails when he sees a funny picture I would like. He has been there to move me seven times in the past seven years. Only a dad would do that! Part of maintaining my relationship with him is being sure to talk to him on a regular basis. It is important to call and talk even when neither of us has much to say. I usually call with a funny story from school. This is one of the two relationships in my life that are never going anywhere.

My mom is the other half of that equation. She is strong and nosey. She is loving and always thinking of me. She was always at my soccer games and made sure to take me to church every Sunday and Wednesday. Because my mother and I were so close there were always fights. We always disagreed and yelled, but we never left it at that. It was always forgotten in the morning. Now that I am grown my relationship with my mother is more of mutual understanding and trust. We talk on the phone and have dinner every so often.

Micah is my boyfriend of six years. He is my confidante. The person who makes me laugh, smile, and cry. He knows me better than anyone else and often knows what I need before I do. Our relationship is ever growing and we rely on each other to be understanding and supportive.

Casey and Amanda are my best friends. They are the two that will be there for me no matter what. I lived with Casey, which means she knows more about me than any one person should. She opens my eyes to culture, music, books, movies, etc. I wouldn’t dare be as smart as I am today without her. Amanda is the calm, peacemaker. She is the “Hey do you want to take a walk at the trail?” or “Do you want to stop and get some tea?” kind of best friend.

Each of these relationships teach me something about myself and helps me relate with other individuals. This will help when I go to meet those that I teach and work with.

When I Think of Child Development...

“Education is a natural process carried out by the child and is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences in the environment.”

“Plainly, the environment must be a living one, directed by a higher intelligence, arranged by an adult who is prepared for his mission.”

“The child can develop fully by means of experience in his environment. We call such experiences ‘work’.”

-Maria Montessori

Testing for Intelligence?

Assessment is such a sticky situation, it sparks controversy and debate anywhere you go in the United States. In fact, a quick Goggle search will ignite a firestorm of response on your screen. Let's look at a few of the pro's and con's of standardized assessment in young children.

Pro's -

• Standardized tests are reliable and effective measures of a students achievement of specific measurable standards.


• "A Nov. 2010 report by McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, found that school systems in 20 countries 'that have achieved significant, sustained, and widespread gains' on national and international assessments, including Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea, had used "proficiency targets for each school" and 'frequent, standardized testing to monitor system progress.' "


• "Standardized tests are inclusive and non-discriminatory because they ensure content and testing conditions are equivalent for all students."


• Competent teachers know not to teach "to the test".


• Standardized testing allows for an accurate collection of data.


• Stricter state standards and accountability have been created because of testing.


• Cheating is very rare and hard to do on standardized testing.
  

Con's -

• "Before age 8, standardized achievement measures are not sufficiently accurate to be used for high stakes decision-making about individual children and schools. Therefore, high-stakes assessments intended for accountability purposes should be delayed until the end of third grade (or preferably fourth grade)."


• "Norm-referenced tests were never intended to measure the quality of learning or teaching. The Stanford, Metropolitan, and California Achievement Tests (SAT, MAT, and CAT), as well as the Iowa and Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS and CTBS), are designed so that only about half the test-takers will respond correctly to most items. The main objective of these tests is to rank, not to rate; to spread out the scores, not to gauge the quality of a given student or school."


• "Virtually all relevant experts and organizations condemn the practice of basing important decisions, such as graduation or promotion, on the results of a single test. The National Research Council takes this position, as do most other professional groups (such as the American Educational Research Association and the American Psychological Association), the generally pro-testing American Federation of Teachers, and even the companies that manufacture and sell the exams. Yet just such high-stakes testing is currently taking place, or scheduled to be introduced soon, in more than half the states."


• "The time, energy, and money that are being devoted to preparing students for standardized tests have to come from somewhere. "


• Standardized testing creates a socioeconomic division that is unparalleled.


• Standardized tests are unreliable forms of measurement due to uncontrollable variances in testing atmospheres and students lives.


• Tests narrow the curriculum leaving out important, valuable life information and skills.
  

Even within the Pro and Con lists above you can argue the facts and see the discrepancies. In the state of Florida standardized testing starts in kindergarten and is judged in third grade. Are students cognitively ready for such a test? How do we consider socioeconomic disadvantaged students? What about the student with the flu? Or the one that had to walk to school today because mom had no money for gas? Or the student that didn't have breakfast and was beaten that morning for asking about it? How about the student that has severe testing anxiety? There are far too many important factors that do not get attention from policy makers. In my humble opinion, as a teacher in a high poverty area (1/3 of my students are homeless) to put the future of a child on a one day standardized test is, to say the least, ridiculous.

Children should be tested using standardized tests. However, they should not control whether a student will pass or fail, and they should not control a teachers pay. Standardized tests are very helpful in detailing what standards students need help on. They create a guideline for lessons and direct units.

After doing some research on the Asian culture, and their take on standardized testing I found a very interesting article by the Denver Post:

"Teaching in Asia, I encountered a system that, while effective there, may not transfer here. For example, Taiwanese students are required to "test" into their middle schools, and many are eliminated from college opportunities by age 12. Additionally, most students attend "cram schools" in the evening to prepare for their tests. The South Korean government has at times shut down all airports nationwide while prospective high school students take the listening portion of their entrance exams.

Japanese schools literally lock their gates at the start of school, and any tardy student is out of luck. Additionally, nearly all these countries use standardized tests to separate students early in life, and most countries offer graduation at the age of 16.Read more: In education, U.S. isn't Singapore (but should we be?) - The Denver Post"

It would seem that we have a fairly relaxed standardized testing system compared to Asian cultures...who knew!?

Sources:

http://www.denverpost.com/voices/ci_14472758

http://www.caesl.org/briefs/Brief5.pdf

http://standardizedtests.procon.org/

http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/staiv.htm

A Story of Poverty & Development

My father was born in Mechanic Falls, Maine in the 50's. He was born into what we would now call a "broken home". His mother had two other children from two previous relationships and his father was an alcoholic. My father's mother, Ellen, raised him and his three brothers on a meager wage. She worked at a nearby shoe factory. Standing all day attaching leather heals with a large, hot, smelly, machine. Ellen would come home to her tiny three bedroom trailer to her three boys. They were often taken care of by the neighbor, Ada, who was also poor and a mother. She would watch the boys until the were old enough to go to school. Ellen often tired and sore from manual labor would come home and do the wash, cook, and clean. Leaving the boys to play outside and develop on their own. From what I know of my grammie's education she was not the most studious person. She can read and write, but she never read to my dad. Not that he can remember. She is a very warm, person now. However, when she was a young single mother times were harder, and so was she. Because my grammie was unavailbale to her young sons they turned to each other. They developed a very strong bond, fighting in school to protect each other. This picture of strong family bond leads me to think that my father compensated his father figure with his older brothers, developing his psychosocial development.

My dad, developed a strong sense of touch. He was often outside, around different textures. I have a picture of him in a washtub filled with water outside playing in the mud. He didn't have many toys, but did have what was around him in nature to play with. When he was old enough he got into sports and played basketball and softball. His gross and fine motor skills were very strong. Because my dad was an outdoorsman he developed strong math and science skills. His left brain cogitive development was fully formed. Dad is a very strong problem solver, wonderful at budgeting, and can build something from nothing. He does not enjoy reading or writing. Leaving me to think that his right brain cognitive development was less developed. My father is a very smart, successful business owner. I believe that every family, every individual, has less than ideal developmental domains. Nobody is perfect and nobody can live up to the perfect developmental model. Each family does the best they can to develop well educated, well rounded, adults.

Malnutrition

Just today at school I heard the story of one of my students yelling and crying because the lunch schedule was changed that day and he would be going to lunch later than normal. He was in the library and the librarian just fell apart. She couldn't understand why this child, a child that lives in the community we teach in, did not have anything at home to eat. He was so distraught that he had to go to lunch thirty minutes later than normal.

We have free and reduced lunch and free breakfast. However, this child has to walk to school so he doesn't make it in time for breakfast. The numbers are staggering. Every year 15 million children die of malnutrition.In the U.S. hunger and race are related. In 1991 46% of African-American children were chronically hungry, and 40% of Latino children were chronically hungry compared to 16% of white children.One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night. About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age. We need to do more as a society to reach the basic needs of our most helpless residents. I hope to help instate a weekend backpack program for students like mine. The student council will host a few canned food drives each year to build a food bank. Each weekend needy children will be sent home with an inconspicuous backpack full of nonperishable food items from the school food bank.

Food Network has partnered with Share Our Strength: No Kid Hungry to help combat childhood hunger in America. Please visit their website to learn how you can host a bake sale to raise funds to support their efforts. They work in America and keep up with world related hunger issues. Please read the latest on the Somalian hunger plague from the NY Times below:

"DROUGHTS are cyclical in Kenya. Before, they came every 10 years, but now they seem to be hitting us more often and for longer periods of time. My community remembers events and birthdays by times of hunger. We give the droughts names: “longoza” was the drought when many animals died; there was the drought of the “planes” because food was dropped from the air by planes, and one particularly bad drought was called “man who dies with money in his fist,” because, even if there was money, there was simply no food to purchase.

I was born in 1951 in Machakos. From what my mother tells me, that year there was a serious drought. My sister was born in 1961, and I clearly remember the terrible weather and the prevailing hunger throughout the region. I can’t tell you how many times I went to bed without eating. “I slept like that,” is how we described it, which means we went to bed with nothing to eat. I can’t count the number of days when “I slept like that,” or describe the feeling of going to sleep hungry knowing I’d wake up and there would still be no food for breakfast.

Hunger is an unforgivable disease because it is the easiest one to cure. It is devastating to wake up in the morning and look east, west, south and north and see that there is nothing green that you can chew. During a drought everything goes yellow and dry. I would walk the roads and search the ground to see if someone had spat out a bit of chewed-up sugar cane. I am not ashamed to say that I would re-chew what I would find.

Hunger is dehumanizing. It gets to a level where you do not know how you will survive and you will do anything for a simple kernel of corn.

The thing about drought is that it does not just affect farmers and their crops; it affects everyone. If you think about it, during harvest time farmers hire local farmhands to help with their crops. But when there are no crops to harvest, not only does the farmer lose his or her income, so do the laborers the farmer would have hired. There is a ripple effect that affects the whole community. Few have food and even fewer have money to buy food.

My parents did everything they could to feed us. My father would leave early in the morning carrying a little basket to beg for food or ask for food on credit. Each night he would return home around 10 p.m. My mother, after a fruitless day attempting to find food, would try to encourage us by telling me to keep the water in our pot boiling so that when my father arrived we could quickly cook any food he brought in the already prepared water.

I would keep the fire burning and the water boiling. As the hours passed I would watch the water level slowly go down, along with the hopes that we would eat that night. More often than not, however, my father would arrive frustrated and empty-handed. And I would sleep like that.

It is a traumatizing situation as a young child to be without food. You see the fear in the faces of your mother and father, despairing that they cannot feed their children. You feel afraid, too, because your parents can’t provide for you. Your stomach is so empty that even when you are thirsty and you take water it makes you dizzy. You get so nauseated your body wants to vomit, but you haven’t eaten. I think about this now as East Africa faces another drought. I think about all the children who are suffering as I did. We see terrible images of hunger, but I fear that we have not yet seen the worst.

We are experiencing really serious stress. At the moment, the magnitude of the hunger facing Kenya is not well known.

It is incumbent on all of us to band together and fight this very curable disease. No child on earth should ever have to sleep like that."

Written By: Peter Kimeu
He is a small-scale farmer in Machakos, Kenya, and a technical adviser for Catholic Relief Services, a humanitarian organization.
Published By: The NY Times, September 10th 2011