By Kayla Gahagan

I’ll be the first one to say that, as in many professions, there are far more good teachers than bad teachers. But, what does a district do when a tenured teacher has behaved badly and should be fired?

An English teacher in one Long Island district has not lost her job, and earns an annual salary of $113,559, even after pleading guilty earlier this month to drunken driving charges — her fifth DWI arrest in seven years.

It brings up an interesting debate about whether states should change the protocol for disciplining a tenured teacher, which in most states is an expensive, drawn-out process.

Should the teacher stay on payroll while being disciplined? If so, should taxpayers foot the bill for it?

Read more about the debate in an Associated Press story here at Education Week.

 

Congratulations to School of Mines student Melanie Satchell, named the student representative on the South Dakota Board of Regents. This is a two-year, voting position in which Melanie will have the important role of shaping higher education policy in the state, and also of representing students’ views to people who are years removed from first-hand knowledge of student issues.

I had the chance to meet and interview Melanie when Kayla, I and Kevin Woster did a series of stories this spring on the lack of women in the state Legislature.

I think I’m about eight years older than Melanie but I was impressed by her maturity. She was poised, confident, articulate, etc. and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her name on a ballot at some point in the not-so-distant future.

We didn’t talk about politics as far as her opinions and views, but Melanie had a strong grasp of the issues on campus and seemed more than able to organize others to get things done, which is crucial no matter your party or platform.

By Kayla Gahagan

Longer school days. Saturday and summer school. Teachers “on call” during off-school hours for homework questions.

A growing number of KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) academies are showing up around the country, particularly in rural, or low socio-economic areas and are founded on the above agenda.

Proponents of the program say it has been widely successful in larger cities and has garnered attention because of high test scores, and that it teaches students, as early as elementary school, they are already on a one-way track to college.

Is a more rigorous daily schedule and more teacher availability needed for struggling students and would a program like this be good here in South Dakota?

Read more about KIPP here at The Columbus Dispatch.

 

By Kayla Gahagan

Maybe it’s because I attended a small high school in the northwest corner of Wyoming or maybe the times have changed since then, but I didn’t read about the debate of a school’s role in providing birth control/and or abstinence education to teenagers until I was well into college.

Regardless of which side of the fence you fall on this issue, the recent Associated Press story that has reported that a group of teens at a Massachusetts school made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together is alarming.

But perhaps more than it a debate about how school officials will handle 17 pregnant teenage girls attending math classes come August, swollen bellies and all, it will become a debate about how the role of their parents and the community play into lives of these young women and the decisions they’re making.

Check out the story, here at Time.

 

By Barbara Soderlin

Seventeen years ago this summer, I “graduated” from eighth grade. At our small school it was the tradition after the ceremony for the grads (about 20 of us) to head outside the school to a line of about six or seven waiting convertibles, driven by anyone in town who happened to have one. We’d sit on the back of the cars, feeling glamorous in the evening light, and the drivers would cruise slowly by the home of every graduate, and honk. After that, we went back to the school gym for punch, I think.

Too fancy? Not fancy enough? Apparently the latest thing for parents and schools to fret about is whether too much is made of the eighth-grade graduation. This story talks about how Barack Obama even brought it up in that speech he made recently, taking the black community to task for a lack of fathers’ involvement. “You’re supposed to graduate from eighth grade,” he said. Some, like Obama, argue that too big a party confers too much importance on eighth grade, rather than encouraging kids to finish high school.

Really? Can you make too big a deal of a kid’s accomplishments in school? It seemed to me as a 13-year-old in a new white dress, riding the back of a convertible, that the eighth grade graduation was not so much to reward me for finishing eighth grade, like that was some big deal, but to ceremoniously mark the passage from kid to teenager, to the world of high school where so much more was expected. It was the community saying, we have confidence in you that you are ready for high school and will do great there. I never dreamed that the celebration meant it would be OK for me to end my education then and there.

I imagine every school here handles this differently. Did anybody who went to an eighth-grade graduation think it was too much partying? Or should we make an even bigger deal of it?

By Barbara Soderlin

Remember when social networking was driving around town, looking for a party? And if you found a party, and took some pictures, they were Polaroids, or you had to go to a film shop to get them developed. Teachers and principals didn’t know what you were up to, unless maybe you got in enough trouble the police were involved.

Now school officials find themselves in the awkward role of police, as kids post too-personal information, party pictures, suicidal poetry and more on their Facebook and MySpace pages. This story from Education Week explores how some schools have handled that role.

Many try not to go actively looking for signs of students behaving badly, but feel obligated to address the issue when evidence turns up.

Here are five tips the magazine offers for how schools can responsibly deal with problem behavior online:

1. Establish a policy for dealing with incidents in which students break school rules and their inappropriate behavior is showcased publicly on social-networking sites.

2. Outline clear guidelines for administrators that spell out how schools should discipline students based on information garnered from social-networking sites, and let parents and students know about those rules.

3. Educate students about online-safety issues and how to use sites such as Facebook and MySpace responsibly.

4. Have a policy in place for dealing with cyber bullying.

5. If teachers are using social-networking sites for educational purposes, they should establish clear guidelines for how they intend to communicate with students via those sites.

By Barbara Soderlin

I remember my first year of college as one constant embarrassment. I was embarrassed I didn’t have a giant closet full of J. Crew sweaters like my roommate. Embarrassed my grades weren’t as good as in high school. Embarrassed I didn’t know how to get into a frat party, or what to wear if I did get in. Embarrassed I was late to class when I couldn’t find my way around that huge campus. Embarrassed I really didn’t know what I wanted to study or who I wanted to be when I grew up.

I’ve often thought since then I could have used a year off to work, to mature, to develop more self-confidence, to figure out who I was and what I was interested in without running up a big bill at the U.

Seems like some kids today have this better figured out. The trend is to take a “gap year,” like this girl did in Ghana and Italy. Students can work and volunteer, learning more about themselves and broadening their horizons. (Of course, maybe some do it just to look better to colleges in today’s very competive admissions climate.)

Whether you go to Ghana or just get a job in your hometown, it seems like something people ought to consider. Anybody know anybody who’s in the gap right now?

By Barbara Soderlin

In education there’s an association for everything, and here’s one that works to promote year-round education. It’s called, of course, the National Association for Year-Round Education.

Every now and then school districts suggest year-round school, wanting to keep kids in the classroom longer to improve test scores and keep them from spending three months playing video games. The obstacles are the cost of paying teachers and staff for the extra work, parents who want their kids free to go on family trips and take part in sports and camps, and even the kids themselves. The benefits would be more time to learn, and less hassle for working parents who have to find day care in the summer.

As it is with nearly every education proposal, the issue comes down to money. In Casper, Wyo. where schools are flush with money from the energy boom, summer school programs have flourished in the last few years. They’re optional — keeping families happy — but a boon to students who need extra help. The programs help high school students graduate on time and help younger kids keep their brains active. The programs include classroom time but also enrichment activities like field trips, gardening, cooking, art, music and more.

This seems like a good balance — if the community can afford it.

What are your kids up to this summer? Do you wish Rapid City offered more summer school options?  Are the offerings just right?

My second favorite summer school memory was of an elementary school science class. We got to take home baby chicks and raise them. When they turned into giant ugly chickens we got to bring them back. Don’t know what happened to that bird…

My favorite was a high school consumer ecnomics class. We had to find jobs in the newspaper and then build a budget around that salary, including the cost of housing and operating a vehicle. For homework I went to a luxury car dealership and checked out the cost of a yellow Lamborghini Diablo.  I decided I could afford it if I lived in the car. My teacher didn’t agree, but still he gave me an A for effort. Today I drive a rusty Chevrolet. Guess life didn’t turn out like I thought it would.

By Barbara Soderlin

Hello readers,

There are many new blogs at rapidcityjournal.com these days, and we’re pleased to add to the mix. Kayla Gahagan and I will be the primary writers of Learning Curve, a discussion forum dedicated to all things education-related, from preschool through Ph.D.

Kayla is the Journal’s education reporter, and I’ve covered education at other papers in the West, but between the two of us we don’t know everything there is to know on the subject, and that’s what keeps our jobs interesting.

We hope you’ll join in as we talk about school funding, curriculum, school board news, trends in colleges and universities, how to pick a good day care, and more.