By Ron Avi Astor
Imagine attending nine schools before graduating from high school. Dealing with the emotional strain of having to end and restart friendships every year. Never establishing a lasting relationship with a favorite teacher. Being barred from participating in a favorite sport because you don’t meet residency requirements.
Further imagine the frustration of falling academically behind because completed courses in one state aren’t credited in another. And all this is happening while mom or dad is on his or her fourth tour of military duty overseas.
For the 1.3 million children of military families currently enrolled in public schools, this world is not imaginary. It’s a cost of national security that doesn’t show up on spreadsheets. Yet many struggle through public schools that are unaware of — and unprepared for — the special challenges of the military lifestyle.
In January, President Obama took an important step in addressing the generations-long neglect of military children by issuing a directive, “Strengthening Our Military Families,” that proposed ways to help these children get the best public education possible. Congress, meanwhile, can make an important difference now as America continues its longest war in Afghanistan and remains engaged in Iraq and Libya.
Since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 2 million children in military families have attended public schools. Most of these schools are near military bases. But because both campaigns relied heavily on the Reserves and National Guard, many military students also enroll in schools far from a base.
How are they faring academically? A Rand Corp. study released in April shows how a parent’s deployment can affect their children’s work in school. Researchers looked at the achievement test scores of more than 44,000 Army children in North Carolina and Washington state whose parents were deployed 19 months and longer between 2002 and 2008. They found that the students’ reading and math scores were significantly lower than their civilian peers, and that falling achievement was greater the younger the student.
Problem is that teachers, principals and staff in public schools are ill prepared to provide support for military students with falling grades. Only a handful of university schools of education currently offer any program or course on the special challenges of the military lifestyle — frequent mobility, prolonged deployment and sudden death. In addition, educational research literature doesn’t coherently provide guidance for teachers on how to handle the classroom challenges surrounding this lifestyle.
No wonder a 2010 Blue Star Family survey found that one of the main reasons why military families believe that the general public does not appreciate the sacrifices they make was the absence of support for their children in the public schools.
Not all schools are unwelcoming. With the help of the U.S. Navy, some in San Diego and Hawaii, both hosts of major military bases, offer a one-stop shop on the first day of school where entering military students and their parents can survey potential classes, check out available tutors, learn about extracurricular activities and meet new classmates. Other schools celebrate military culture by setting aside days – the Marines’ birthday, for example — to recognize important events in military history.
The upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act offers several opportunities to help military students.
For starters, Congress should fund an electronic system that would send the acade
Guess what?? I'm going on a field trip tomorrow! (I know that makes me sound like a third grader, but I love field trips just as much as a teacher as I did when I was a kid.)
We're taking our 7th graders to the river to release the baby salmon that they raised from fertilized eggs in their science classroom.
Then we're putting on hip waders and collecting macroinvertebrates for a watershed survey.
And then we're having a picnic lunch and lounging on the grass and reading our novels until it's time to go back to class. Now that's my kind of school day.
My students have also been working on another interdisciplinary English-Science activity called the River City Project. We're participating in a Harvard University School of Education research project to determine how video game concepts can best be adapted to engage kids in academic settings. In this game, kids travel back in time to a 19th century river town where residents are getting sick. Students work online in collaborative teams, use their 21st century research skills to gather data, form hypotheses about the causes of the illnesses, and design experiments to test their hypotheses. Afterwards, they write letters to the mayor of River City explaining their conclusions and making recommendations to improve the city's health. You can read more about the River City Project here.
I thought this was all worth posting because there's been an awful lot of talk online lately about No Child Left Behind and the damage that high stakes testing has done to many schools. It's a huge problem -- one that's chasing many great teachers out of the classroom. (Read Jordan Sonnenblick's heartbreaking SLJ column.)
But there are also lots of teachers like ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
cfaughnan, whose recent post on testing reminds me to keep fighting the fight for authentic learning.
We don't test our kids to death at my school. We don't have them fill out bubbles in workbooks for weeks on end. We read and write and think and question and get outside and learn. I have faith that these kids are going to be critical thinkers and real-life problem solvers when they leave us. And you know what else? When it comes time to fill in the bubbles on the test, they do just fine.
I love goals! And at the start of each year, I make some poetry goals. Now this might seem to go against my theme of Losing Control in my Writing, since goals seem very contained and controlled. But it doesn't, really. I want my words themselves to be out of control, but I want to be dedicated and consistent in my poetry habits.
So, my Pinch of Poetry entry for January is Poetry Goals (yeah, I know. Catchy title.):
A lot of people seem to think poetry is all about the muse. It’s the mood; it has to strike you; it’s out of your control.
For me, that’s a bunch of…baloney.
Poetry is a craft. It benefits from discipline and practice. People have varying amounts of talent and creativity. But these things can be increased and improved by simply working at it. Well, simply might not be the right word. But you know what I mean.
In 2007, I wrote 10 poetry books for Capstone Press, kept a photopoetry diary (where I tried to take a daily picture and write a 15 Words or Less poem based on the image), and worked on several trade poetry projects (all unsold, as of now). I was writing poetry on an almost daily basis. Many days, I wrote more than one poem. Some days, I wrote 5 or 6.
But for 2008, I don’t have any poetry book assignments. And that makes me a little nervous. Will I keep my skills sharp? Will I improve? Will I get lazy and let weeks go by without writing poems?
You can read the rest of the column here, where I share my 2008 poetry resolutions and offer a few guidelines for creating your own. If you'd like to share your poetry resolutions in the comments, I'd love to read them!
I've been thinking about going back to submitting some stuff for magazines...mostly poetry, but maybe some other stuff, too. I've had a few stories, poems, and articles in various children's magazines, but that was mostly several years ago and I haven't kept up with the market very well.
So, I was happy to reacquaint myself with Kid Magazine Writers, an e-zine published by Jan Fields, a talented writer/organizer/editor (among other things, I'm sure!). This e-zine is now on Issue 39, and I'm pleased that one of my former Pinch of Poetry columns is in it--the one about scanning your poems to figure out where the meter isn't working. I'm even more pleased to remind myself about this terrific publication. In this month's issue, I learned about a new site run by Rosanne Tolin, a former Guideposts for Kids editor who bought a few things from me. Terrific! Here's a new market for me to check out.
Features include things like research tips, specific analyses of an issue of a children's magazine (which are incredibly helpful--especially if it's not a magazine you have easy access to), new markets, editor interviews, and all sorts of cool stuff. Oh, and there's a great magazine market guide where you can look up a magazine and see not only their submission guidelines but also what has appeared in Kid Magazine Writers about that magazine. What a great resource!
If you have any interest in submitting stories, poems, articles, or activities to kids' or teens' magazines, this site is a great place to get a monthly dose of info and encouragement. See ya there!
