Teacher World

I apologize, but I feel compelled to postpone my Teach for America follow-up blog until tomorrow after hearing some late-breaking news today that I felt was so despicable that it needed to be addressed. It is the story of a former Philadelphia superintendent, Arlene C. Ackerman.

Ackerman is a Harvard graduate who, before being hired as Philadelphia’s school superintendent, had worked in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. schools. In her three year tenure in Philadelphia, Ackerman came under fire in spite of the fact that test scores in the district improved under her guidance and the graduation rate increased, improvements she was hired to bring about.

But this past summer, allegations surfaced suggesting that Ackerman both encouraged and took part in teacher-assisted cheating on the district’s standardized tests. If these allegations are true, she is guilty of knowingly and purposefully deceiving the community into thinking that progress was being made when that progress was really being fabricated and coerced.

Several unnamed teachers have admitted to cheating on these tests due to bullying and pressure from their administrators. (Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?) But the official investigation into Philadelphia’s 2009 testing procedures has not been conclusive. This scandal naturally reflected poorly on Ackerman.

Apparently, she also bumped heads with Mayor Michael Nutter when he reneged on a no-new-taxes pledge in order to raise funds for a jeopardized kindergarten program, after she went ahead and found the needed funds without reporting to him immediately. And she also was reported to have issues with other community members and the district’s teachers union.

On August 19, an embattled Ackerman told hundreds of principals from her district who were gathered for a professional-development meeting, “Sentence me. I dare you. Or set me free. But I admit to you today that I am guilty. Guilty of just being me. Once I understood that being guilty of standing up for children was a good thing, I stood just a little taller, held my head a little higher, and I felt liberated, liberated knowing that whatever happens to me, I have touched the future of thousands of young people in Philadelphia, and for the better.”

Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? But at the same time, rumors were circulating that high-ranking business leaders in the community were receiving calls asking them to donate money to a charitable education organization that would provide money to help buy out Ackerman’s contract. These donors backed out after critics criticized the deal’s lack of transparency.

On August 22, it was announced by Mayor Michael Nutter that Arlene Ackerman would be leaving the district. But she would be leaving it with a sizable severance check. Ackerman’s contract entitled her to more than $1.5 million, but in an effort to limit how much public money was spent to buy her out, she would walk away with $905,000, at the taxpayers’ expense!

Now, that is a ridiculous amount of money, I think we would all agree. So this woman, who was making a handsome $365,000 a year, walked away from a job which she apparently at the very least mismanaged, and at the very worst placed in the middle of a cheating scandal, with almost $1 million in lovely parting gifts? Does this not sound crazy to you?

Is it not ludicrous that the taxpayers of Philadelphia would still be helping to buy out her contract? To make matters worse, the district had to cut $629 million from its 2011-2012 budget, and has $35 million more to cut.

But wait! Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, it was reported today that Ackerman has applied for unemployment!

No way, you say? Oh, yes! A spokesman from the district confirmed yesterday that she applied for jobless benefits and is eligible for $573 a week, the state maximum, based on her former salary.

Ackerman’s attorney claims that she qualifies for unemployment because she is now jobless and she wasn’t fired for cause. And apparently, as part of her separation agreement, the School Reform Commission agreed not to contest any future unemployment claims she might decide to file.

But many aren’t taking the news very well. One of these is Michael Lodise who is the head of the school police officer’s union. Lodise explained that he fought for months to get unemployment compensation for 120 school police officers who were laid off from their jobs in June. He eventually succeeded in getting them compensation.

Of Ackerman’s bid for unemployment, Lodise said, “These people were really hurting, really needed it. And here’s a woman with almost a million dollars, and she wants unemployment besides.  I just don’t understand it.”

I don’t understand it either. Here is a woman who claims to have been standing up for children, yet she has helped rob that district of much-needed money to provide adequate services for the children whose lives she claims to have touched. Oh, she touched them all right; while the district was entrenched in a cheating scandal and she robbed them blind! And now, she plans to pillage the unemployment agency.

It is up to the state employment compensation board to decide whether it will uphold Ackerman’s claim. Please, do the right thing and tell this woman that enough is enough!

low-performing schools, state achievement tests, Teacher-World's Blog Arlene C. Ackerman, cheating scandal, Philadelphia schools, unemployment claims

This will be the first in a two part series on Teach for America, a program developed by Wendy Kopp while she was studying public policy at Princeton. According to its website, the goal of the program is to “recruit a diverse group of leaders with a record of achievement who work to expand educational opportunity, starting by teaching for two years in a low-income community.” In these blogs, we will explore just how successful Teach for America has been.

Over the past 20 years, thousands of college graduates have joined Kopp’s movement whose mission is to ensure that students who are growing up in poverty have the opportunity to get an excellent education. In fact, since 2008, applications for the program have doubled and foundations have donated tens of millions to the program.

Studies indicate that family income is one of the most accurate ways to predict how students will perform in the classroom. For example, only 18 percent of low-income eighth-grade students received proficient or above scores on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

At the center of the debate over how to achieve educational reform is how do schools overcome the challenges that poverty creates? The solution clearly is to fill these schools with highly effective teachers, but statistically, these schools generally have twice as many teachers who have fewer than three years’ experience in schools.

Tim Knowles, director of the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago, who served as the founding director for Teach for America in New York City, said, “The reality, particularly in urban centers in America, is they [highly effective teachers] aren’t there.”

Teach for America believes that it can create a corps of highly effective teachers to fill these schools in a short period of time. However, research has supported the simple fact that experienced teachers tend to be more effective in the classroom, while beginning teachers tend to improve with experience.

One Harvard study which focused on students in Texas, for instance, concluded that a teacher’s level of education, experience, and scores on their licensing exams had more of an influence on student performance than any other factor they studied. Research done in North Carolina on various teacher training programs, which included Teach for America, revealed that when elementary students were taught math by a first-year teacher, they lost the equivalent of 21 days of schooling compared to students who had teachers who had four years of experience.

So how are Teach for America candidates recruited and trained to prepare them for the challenges they will face? First, most of those who apply only consider teaching as an option after speaking with a Teach for America recruiter or program graduate; most of them have no education background and have never even considered teaching as a career.

Ryan Winn, for example, was won over when his recruiter showed him a picture of his third-grade Phoenix class. When the recruiter told Winn that half the students in the photograph would probably drop out by the eighth grade, Winn said, “That struck me as incredibly unfair and I was upset about it.” He is currently a teacher in Memphis, Tennessee.

Once a graduate is accepted into Teach for America, they begin their training with thick packages of reading materials. Next, they spend five weeks co-teaching a summer class, usually in an urban school district, with students who are taking remedial coursework in order to move on to the next grade.

While co-teaching, they are overseen by another instructor, who might be a more experienced school teacher or a current or former Teach for America corps member.

Sarahi Constantine Padilla, a recent Stanford University graduate teaching at Holmes Elementary in Miami, said of the training program, “It was a real steep learning curve.”

After this short summer experience, these “trained” Teach for America teachers are sent to the districts they have been assigned to where many of them don’t even know what they are going to teach until just before the school year begins. The districts which hire these teachers pay up to $5,000 to Teach for America for each corps member who gets hired on, as well as paying the teacher’s salary.

Interviews with nearly two dozen Teach for America corps members were mixed. Many described classroom victories, but many also admitted to feeling uncertain about their abilities as first-year teachers.

Brett Barley, who taught in the San Francisco Bay area, said,  “I struggled personally with my ability to be effective, and I think the gains my kids achieved were largely in spite of me. I thought the key thing I was able to bring to them was communicating the urgency of the predicament they faced and having them buy in to the idea they could be successful.”

Barley had reasons to be dismayed; most of his fourth-grade class started the year at a second-grade level in reading and writing. Two of his students were classified as blind, and roughly 30 percent weren’t native English speakers.

“The biggest challenge was trying to learn on the job to meet all the kids at their different skill levels,” Barley said.

Kopp’s book, A Chance to Make History, tells the stories of several Teach for America corps members who achieved extraordinary success in their classrooms, but there are many teachers whose experiences were far from successful, like Megan Hopkins. A Spanish major in college, Hopkins was assigned as a bilingual teacher in Phoenix, but she received no training regarding how to teach English language learners.

“I had no idea how to teach a child to read,” Hopkins said. “I had no idea how to teach a second language learner to read in Spanish, much less in English. After five weeks of training, I really had no idea what I was doing. I felt that was a big disservice to my students.”

She was encouraged by Teach for America to set a goal to advance her students one and a half grade levels, but she had no idea how to attain the goal. She had to work with other teachers to develop a plan.

She said that she was praised “up and down” for increasing her students’ reading levels, but she questioned the validity of the results. She claimed that one of her students, who was a native Spanish speaker, was able to read fluently in English as a result of her efforts, “but if you asked him what he read, he had absolutely no idea.”

So how effective is Teach for America, and how effective are the teachers who the program “trains?” These are questions we will explore tomorrow in the second part of this blog.

Educational Reform, low-performing schools, Teacher-World's Blog effective teachers, low-performing schools, Teach for America, Wendy Kopp

Awhile ago I wrote a blog regarding the push to place severely overweight children in foster care if their parents were either unwilling or unable to get their child’s weight under control. Well, the precedent has been set; according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer an 8-year old boy from Cleveland Heights was removed from his home and placed in foster care last month after case workers claimed that his mother wasn’t doing what she should be to control his obesity.

This third-grade boy first came to the attention of county workers in early 2010, when his mother took him to the hospital because he was having breathing problems. He was diagnosed with sleep apnea, a condition which can be related to weight, and he was given the breathing machine. At this time, social workers began to keep an eye on him under what the county calls protective supervision.

And for awhile, there was an improvement; the boy did lose weight, but recently he began rapidly gaining it back. The boy’s mother stated that other children and a sibling might be giving him extra food, but she said she tried to stop this and explained to him that he could only eat certain foods. She said she was also trying to follow doctors’ recommendations by getting him a bicycle and encouraging him to get exercise.

Yet, in spite of her efforts, her son weighs over 200 pounds and is considered at risk for developing diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. Even though Cuyahoga County doesn’t have a specific policy for dealing with obese children, it removed the boy from his home. According to Mary Louise Madigan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Family Services, medical neglect prompted his removal.

Madigan stated, “This child’s problem was so severe that we had to take custody.” She claimed that the boy’s weight gain was caused by his environment, and stated that the mother was not following the orders she had received from his doctor, a claim which the mother denies.

The mother’s lawyers feel the county has overreached in this case when they argued that medical conditions that the boy is at risk of developing, but doesn’t have at this time, can be classified as imminent danger to his health. Further, they question whether Children and Family Services considered the emotional impact this boy would suffer by being taken from his family, friends, and school.

Juvenile Public Defender Sam Amata said, “I think we would concede that some intervention is appropriate. But what risk became imminent? When did it become an immediate problem?”

Amata argued the fairness of this decision, when he has watched children being left in homes with parents who have severe drug problems or who have beaten their children, and yet Children and Family Services has determined that the child is not in immediate danger. He further cited the fact that the boy was an honor roll student who participated in school activities. Additionally, his medical records reveal that the only medical problem the boy currently has is sleep apnea, a condition which is being treated.

The boy’s mother told the Plain Dealer, “They are trying to make it seem like I am unfit, like I don’t love my child. Of course I love him. Of course I want him to lose weight. It’s a lifestyle change, and they are trying to make it seem like I am not embracing that. It is very hard, but I am trying.”

She said that her son was taken from his school on October 19 by social workers and placed in a foster home. She is only allowed to see him once a week for two hours. A trial to determine what is in the boy’s best interests will take place next month, on the boy’s 9th birthday.

This national debate regarding the legality of stepping in when parents fail to deal with their child’s weight problems was spurred earlier this year by Dr. David Ludwig, a Harvard University professor and expert in pediatric obesity, who stated, “In severe instances of childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable, from a legal standpoint, because of imminent health risks and the parents’ chronic failure to address medical problems.”

But there are others, like Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics and medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, who says that before taking this approach, broader public-policy issues need to be explored.

“A 218-pound 8-year-old is a time bomb,” he acknowledged. “But the government cannot raise these children. A third of kids are fat. We aren’t going to move them all to foster care. We can’t afford it, and I’m not sure there are enough foster parents to do it. ”

Additionally, he brings up legitimate concerns that families with the least resources, which are quite often minorities, will be the ones whose children will most likely be removed from their homes.

Caplan stated, “It’s completely hypocritical, or to put it another way, a schizophrenic stance. It’s OK to threaten to take a kid away or charge someone more for insurance. But it’s also OK to advertise unhealthy food and put toys in kids’ meals.”

County workers for this young boy in Cleveland Heights believe that removing him from his family, at least temporarily, might help him, stating that he has already lost a few pounds.

I can’t help but wonder if his weight loss has more to do with missing his family and being traumatized by the separation than anything the foster parents have done to monitor his weight. Especially since the mother’s lawyers have been told that the foster mother who has the boy going to school in a neighboring suburb now, is having a tough time getting him to all of his appointments. Amata said that children services was even discussing the possibility of getting the foster mother additional help or placing the boy in a new foster home with a personal trainer.

What a slap in the face to this mother! They removed her son because she couldn’t resolve her son’s weight issue on her own, but when it is apparent that the foster family isn’t being successful either, they offer them additional resources. Why weren’t those resources offered to the mother allowing her to keep her son where he wants to be?

Amata agreed, saying, “I wonder why they didn’t offer the mother that kind of extra help.”

Is this another example of too much control by government agencies? How can this case possibly warrant the removal of a child from his home when more imminently dangerous situations do not? And how does the government plan to provide the resources to remove other obese children like this young boy from their homes?

I’d love to hear your input on this one because this is a powder keg. Do you agree with the decision made by the Department of Children and Family Services, or is this overreaching?

Let’s hear from you.

child obesity, Teacher-World's Blog Arthur Caplan, child obesity, Cleveland Heights, Department of Children and Family Services, Juvenile Public Defender Sam Amata

A survey conducted in May and June of 2011 by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), released in early November, revealed that 48 percent of middle and high school students who were surveyed said that they were sexually harassed at least one time during the 2010-2011 school year.

The survey polled a nationally representative sample of 1,965 students from both private and public schools between the ages of 12 and 18. The results of this survey may be very surprising and troubling for parents and teachers alike.

The survey revealed that girls were more likely to experience harassment than boys. (For the benefit of this survey, harassment was defined rather broadly as “unwelcome behavior that takes place in person or electronically.”) While 40 percent of boys said they have experienced harassment, 56 percent of girls reported being sexually harassed at least one time in the past school year. Of these, 44 percent said that they were harassed in person, and 30 percent said they were harassed through Facebook, text messaging, or email.

Additionally, the survey was able to glean information, according to the students who responded, regarding which students were more commonly harassed. Girls whose “bodies are really developed, more than other girls” are most likely to be harassed, followed by girls who are either considered to be very pretty or “not pretty” by their peers. According to the report, boys who are “not very masculine” and overweight students in general are more commonly the targets of harassment.

A third of those who reported being harassed said that had been the target of unwelcome sexual comments or jokes. Eighteen percent said that they were called gay or lesbian in a derogatory manner. In fact, the most common form of harassment which boys reported experiencing was being called “gay.”

“I was told I was gay because of the way I had dressed for a school spirit week event,” one eighth grade boy said.

And a ninth grade boy wrote, “Everyone was saying I was gay, and I felt the need to have to run away and hide.”

Thirteen percent of girls reported being touched in an unwelcome way, and four percent admitted to being forced to do something sexual.

The survey supported the negative effect which harassment has on its victims, with 87 percent reporting detrimental effects from the harassment they faced. A third of those who were victims of harassment said they did not want to go to school. Others reported having a hard time sleeping or studying, feeling sick to their stomachs, or that they quit school activities due to harassment.

In the survey, an eighth-grade female said that she “thought of suicide” after a peer spread sexual rumors about her, and a ninth-grade boy wrote that being called gay by others made him feel “threatened for [his] personal safety.”

One of the report’s authors and director of research at AAUW, Catherine Hill, and coauthor Holly Kearl wrote that even though sexual harassment is considered to be a form of bullying, schools are often reticent to place emphasis on sexual harassment. The report said, “Schools are likely to promote bullying prevention while ignoring or downplaying sexual harassment.”

Hill said that bullying and harassment overlap, and that sexual harassment usually starts in adolescence with comments that are “focused on sex and gender.” She also stated that many administrators and teachers are “more comfortable talking about bullying. It’s hard to talk about sexual harassment.”

Another alarming tendency, according to the survey, is that most students are not fighting back. About half of those who said they have been harassed admit to just ignoring the harassment at the time, the same number who reported that they didn’t take any action after the harassment. About one-fourth of the students said that they told their harasser to stop, while a similar percentage of students reported confiding the incident to a parent, a family member, or a friend. Only 9 percent told their teacher or another adult at school about the harassment.

“There’s a fear of coming forward,” Hill says. “To school principals: If you don’t hear anything, that doesn’t mean you don’t have a problem. We need to do more than just respond; we need to prevent sexual harassment.”

Hill recommends that schools set up an anonymous system where students can at least talk about, if not report, sexual harassment, since there is embarrassment or fear related to these incidents. Additionally, she recommends that every school should delegate an adult who students can go talk to if they have been harassed.

Kearl has called for the need to establish programs that would include all school members, administrators, and parents to address the seriousness of sexual harassment saying, “When we talk about sexual harassment, many people want to think about it as an adult problem. But this is happening to 12-year-olds. It’s a vicious cycle. There needs to be a climate of prevention from all sides.”

Bullying, Teacher-World's Blog American Association of University Women, Bullying, sexual harassment

New York’s SAT/ACT cheating scandal seems to be growing exponentially as more and more students are being arrested for either taking the standardized tests for other students or paying students who have already graduated to take their SAT/ACT tests for them.

The scandal began to unravel in September with the arrests of seven students including Samuel Eshaghoff, 19, who allegedly impersonated other high school students taking their SAT tests for them for a fee of $1,500 to $2,500. In one incident, Eshaghoff allegedly posed as a girl. All seven were arrested. Eshaghoff was charged with felony fraud, and the other six were charged with misdemeanors. Not surprisingly, they have all pleaded not guilty to these charges. 

Since September, an ongoing investigation in Nassau County has uncovered the existence of a much larger number of students involved in this SAT/ACT cheating scandal, leading Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice to make the following statement on Tuesday:

“In September, my office arrested 7 current and former students from Great Neck North High School for taking part in a high stakes, high dollar scheme to cheat on the SATs. Our investigation has uncovered more than 40 students who either took a standardized test for someone else or paid someone to take the test for them. And today I am announcing the arrests of 13 more students for their roles in the cheating scandal.”

“These arrests include 4 students who took the tests for others, and they will be charged with scheme to defraud in the first degree, criminal impersonation in the second degree, and falsifying business records in the first degree. Nine students are being charged with a misdemeanor offense for paying someone else to take the SAT or ACT for them.”

“These young men and women made choices that impacted their families, their schools, most importantly their fellow students, and their futures. These arrests, I hope, will ensure that they are held accountable for those choices, while shining a light on this broken system so that it can be fixed.”

The growing scandal is centered on a group of Long Island communities with top-ranked schools. It has many questioning both the security of these tests as well as the intense pressure in these communities to do well on these tests, at any cost.

New York state lawmakers have convened a hearing to discuss test security, and exam administrators have retained a firm run by former FBI Director Louis Freeh to review standardized test procedures.

“Honest, hardworking students are taking a back seat to the cheaters,” Kathleen Rice said. “This is a system begging for security enhancements.”

Rice suggested a possible short-term solution which could eliminate cheating; taking photos of the students as they take the tests and attaching these to their answer documents. This simple yet effective method could go far in eliminating most of the cheating, especially the most blatant. Whatever method is decided upon, clearly it is imperative that test proctors be able to guarantee that the individuals taking these tests are who they claim to be.

In a region where schools have a reputation of producing students who are high-performers, with an average graduation rate that exceeds 97 percent, where most students plan on attending college, and SAT scores are well above the national average (according to Great Neck North High School’s website) is it any wonder that high school students are feeling intense pressure to perform exceptionally on the SAT and ACT? Is the expectation by these communities’ schools and parents so high that they are subtly encouraging students to do whatever it takes, even if that means cheating, to reach their goal?

Robin Tobin-Hess, a resident of Great Neck was not surprised when she heard the latest allegations of cheating. “I’m not surprised. I think there’s too much emphasis by the colleges on the SATs. Kids are under a lot of pressure to do well and in affluent areas, they’re going to do what they can to do it,” she said.

Social worker, Shawn Eshaghian, claims that cheating is not just occurring in Great Neck, although he agrees that it is probably easier to accomplish it there. He explained, “A lot of people that have money are in this community, and I’m sure the $2,500, as much as it was big money, especially for a kid, I’m sure their parents give them whatever they want anyway.”

While I am fairly certain that parents are not condoning cheating or outright encouraging it, it is pretty obvious that we would not be reading about this scandal if these kids didn’t feel some pretty intense pressure to produce appropriate scores in order to get into highly respectable colleges and universities.

Finally, this scandal has spurred a healthy debate as to whether these students who are involved in the cheating should be facing criminal charges or whether their alleged involvement in cheating should be handled by the schools they are enrolled in.

Brian Griffin, an attorney for two of the defendants said, “You’re talking about students cheating on tests. You’re not talking about violent crime. You’re not talking about drugs. No one condones, but it does not belong in the criminal justice system.”

Attorney Michael DerGarabedian agreed, stating, “When we glorify Wall Street guys who make money cheating and baseball players who take steroids, how can we condemn kids trying to achieve that same success?”

It seems to me that this scandal points to a frightening tendency in our society to rationalize that honesty and ethics can be sacrificed if the cause is great enough. Somehow, these young people heard the wrong message along the way, at school or at home, or maybe in both places. The message they learned was that success is measured by outward appearances, whether earned or bought; where you live, the grades you get, the school you attend, the job you take…

But none of these are the true measure of a man. It is about how you live; your integrity, your commitment to do your best for yourself and for others, your willingness to give back along the way, your perseverance and dedication to fulfill your goals, your desire to leave this world a better place for having been here. No one can do these things for you, no matter how much you can afford to pay.

Rice stated, “Educating our children means more than teaching them facts and figures. It means teaching them honesty, integrity and a sense of fair play. The young men and women arrested today instead chose to scam the system and victimize their own friends and classmates, and for that they find themselves in handcuffs.”

Missed lessons. Missed opportunities. And so many young lives forever changed as a result.

Teacher-World's Blog ACT, District Attorney Kathleen Rice, Long Island, Samuel Eshaghoff, SAT, test cheating

Recent information from the Norton Online Family Report, which looks at the effects of growing up in a digital age on young people, revealed a rather sobering trend in schools which can be very harmful to teachers. It is called cyberbaiting, a phenomenon, according to the report, that twenty-one percent of teachers have either personally experienced or know of another teacher who has experienced it.

This study from Symantec included interviews from kids and their parents from 24 countries including the United States which revealed some interesting statistics. For example, it found that 62 percent of kids (more than six in ten) said they have had a negative experience while they have been online such as being bullied, downloading a virus, responding to an email scam, or being pressured to do something online that they thought was wrong.

Symantec also found that 82 percent of kids who broke their “Internet house rules” experienced something negative online, compared to 52 percent of kids who “follow house rules.” Additionally, it found that 95 percent of parents know what their children are viewing online.

But the most troubling news for teachers was the report’s findings on cyberbaiting. What is cyberbaiting? Symantec Internet Safety Advocate Marian Merritt describes it as a situation in which students deliberately provoke a teacher into doing something that is out of control and stupid. Someone tapes the teacher going off on their cell phone, and the destructive video is posted online.

“This of course has the net effect of embarrassing the teacher, taking a momentary lapse of judgment in a classroom and embedding it onto the web,” Merritt explained.

I became curious after reading about cyberbaiting, as this was the first I had heard of this phenomenon. (Obviously I am not in the 21 percent from the report.) I decided to launch some Google searches trying to find some reported incidents of cyberbaiting. But my attempts came up empty; I found nothing. In fact, it was as though the internet had no idea what I was asking for.

But in a podcast interview with Marian Merritt, she said that she had Googled “teachers lose it” and discovered a multitude of posted videos which were derogatory to teachers. So, I tried it myself, and like Merritt, I was astounded at the plethora of awful videos out there.

The report further found that because of the widespread prevalence of cyberbaiting, 67 percent of teachers reported that they felt it was too risky to friend students on social networks, although 34 percent continue to friend their students. Additionally, about 51 percent of those interviewed said that their schools have social media codes of conduct which control how students and teachers can interact with each other online.

It should come as no surprise that 80 percent of teachers feel that there should be more education provided in school regarding online safety, and 70 percent of parents agree.

Merritt warned against becoming fixated on the findings that 21 percent of teachers said they had “experienced or know another teacher who’s experienced cyberbaiting.” In her interview, she said that it is likely that a very small number of teachers have actually experienced cyberbaiting themselves. However, she acknowledges that even though the numbers are low, the findings do indicate that it is an issue.

So, I’m curious. Have any of you experienced cyberbaiting? Drop us a line if you or someone you know was the victim of cyberbaiting.

Bullying, Teacher-World's Blog cyberbaiting, Marian Merritt, Norton Online Family Report, students, teachers

It has become a tradition for me, at this time of the year, to share with you what I am grateful for. So, before the family mayhem begins and the feeding frenzy commences, I wanted to take this quiet time to share some grateful thoughts with my readers.

First, I want to thank Teacher World and all who work behind the scenes there for giving me this amazing opportunity back in June of 2009, to share information as well as my opinions with anyone who feels like reading my blogs. This has been an awesome journey for me as it combines two of my greatest loves: teaching and writing. I have been so grateful for the free rein I have enjoyed to write about things that I am passionate about. And in the process, I have learned from so many of you what you are passionate about, too.

Which brings me to the second thing I am grateful for, and that is all of you who have followed my blogs and who have left personal comments. I have welcomed both the support and the arguments, as both have caused me to look at each situation in a new way. Some of your comments have touched me deeply, and I know what they cost you to share them with all of us. Thank you for helping to make Teacher World an interesting site to visit.

Third, I am so grateful for the many inspirational people who I have come to know through the blogs I have written. I think back to the victims of bullying who have stayed strong and have shared personal messages about their struggles with other young people experiencing similar harassment. Young people like Alye Pollack with her eloquently silent message about being bullied, and Devin Lewis who forgave his bullies. And adults like Dan Savage who created a website, “It Gets Better,” to encourage young people who are being bullied to stay strong. I have been proud to stand up for victims of bullying and their families and advocate for stronger action on the part of schools in controlling this epidemic.

Over the years, I’ve met so many inspirational people who come in all shapes, sizes, and ages, like 97-year old Agnes Zhelesnik, the oldest teacher in the United States. And Martha Rivera Alanis, a kindergarten teacher in Mexico who protected her students when members of warring drug cartels began a gunfight outside her classroom windows. Or the Salwen family who has learned the joy of giving half of what they have to others.

I have been deeply touched and moved to tears by the struggles and the courageous resilience of the victims of the terrible tornado in Joplin, Missouri. I followed the tragic tales of victims searched for, and some who were eventually found dead, like Will Norton, an amazingly talented, young man whose life was cut far too short. And I was grateful to be able to honor these brave people in my blogs, as well as to spread the word of ways that we could all help this devastated community.

Through this website, I have had the unique opportunity to speak out against injustice, abuse, intolerance, indifference. There is deep satisfaction in being able to stand up for what is right, or at least what I feel is right. And I am so grateful for the platform Teacher World has provided for me to do so.

So, thank you Teacher World, my readers, and all of those who have inspired me throughout the years. I look forward expectantly to more inspirational stories in the future.

Teacher-World's Blog gratitude, Thanksgiving

Imagine being a mother of one of Jerry Sandusky’s victims. Imagine the frustration you would feel if you could not get people to believe or to act upon the allegations your son was making about this man, whose reputation was so great that people were willing to turn their backs on so many clues of terrible misconduct. What would you do if, because your son had come forward, he faced threats and harassment at his school? The mother of the first victim to come forward in the Jerry Sandusky case is speaking up on behalf of her son and on behalf of all of the unfortunate victims of Sandusky’s alleged sexual abuse.

You probably already know about the young boy from Central Mountain High School in Mill Hall, PA, who was the first to blow the whistle on the ex-Penn State assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky. But in a recent interview, this victim’s mother reveals some frightening information regarding how this school mishandled her son’s allegations. To say that her recollection of the events is different from the school’s recollection would be a major understatement.

The mother claims that her son had been active in Sandusky’s Second Mile program; Sandusky’s charity to work with underprivileged kids. She even recalls meeting him at the camp once. Things seemed to be going well with her son until the end of his eighth grade year (at a school where she frequently saw Sandusky in the hallways) when she says he was “getting mouthy and nasty at home.” She explained that she called the school psychologist asking for some help, but they chalked it up to puberty, told her he was a good kid, and that it would all work out.

She said that she didn’t suspect anything was wrong at this point, so she let it go, until his first year at Central Mountain High School, where Sandusky continued to be a constant presence. It was at this point that her son asked her how he would go about looking up “sex weirdos” and indicated that he wanted to look up Jerry because he was a “weirdo.”

When she tried to question him further, she said, “He didn’t come out and say anything directly about Jerry at first. He started telling me that he was upset about his school and his grades and that he felt everyone hated him. At first I thought he was just saying what any child says when they’re stressed out or in trouble. I reassured him that no one in the school hated him. That’s when he told me that they did, because he was always getting pulled out of class.”

She said her son then revealed something she was learning for the first time; several times a week and sometimes daily, he was being taken out of school by Jerry Sandusky, all without her permission or knowledge. Now, this is totally against any school policy I have ever known. No one can take a student from their school without the direct consent of that child’s parent or guardian. Why did this school ever allow this to happen?

“I didn’t know about that,” she said. “I was never aware that he [Sandusky] did that.” In fact, she learned later that it was Steve Turchetta, who was the assistant principal as well as the varsity football coach, who granted Sandusky access to this boy without ever requiring her permission or notifying her in any way.

According to the grand jury indictment, Turchetta defended his inappropriate actions, saying that it wasn’t an unusual occurrence to “call a Second Mile student out of activity period at the end of the day, at Sandusky’s request, to see him.” When the dust settles on the Sandusky case, Steve Turchetta needs to be held accountable for the part he played in this alleged sexual abuse scandal. It seems that he allowed his respect for Jerry Sandusky’s reputation to cloud his judgment when it came to protecting his students.

It was at this point, that the victim’s mother knew that something wasn’t right. She said she contacted the counselor at her son’s school to express her fears and suspicions. She said, “I finally said to the counselor, ‘You’re a mother. I’m a mother. I have a gut feeling that something isn’t right.’”

She also talked to Karen Probst, the school’s principal, telling her that she did not appreciate the school giving Sandusky the right to take her son out of school without her knowledge and demanded that these visits stop. But she claimed that the principal acted as though her suspicions were groundless and there was nothing to be concerned about.

“The principal just waved it off, saying, ‘You know; it’s Jerry. He’s around the school a lot and talks a lot with Second Mile kids. He has a heart of gold.’ I was furious. They were defending this guy,” she said.

Giving up on the principal, who was clearly not listening to her, she asked to have the counselor speak to her son. Just a few hours later, she said she received a phone call from Probst who asked that she immediately come to the school.

She recalled that when she got to the counselor’s office, her son was crying uncontrollably, and the principal told her that her son thought something inappropriate might have happened with Sandusky. At this point, he told his mother that Sandusky had been abusing him.

After hearing what she had dreaded the most, his mother announced they we’re going to call the police. But she claims that both the counselor and principal suggested that she think it over and consider how it would affect her family if she were to call the police. “I repeated the line three times. I said let’s call the police. Right now. Let’s do it. And they continued to stare at me,” she said.

She said that at this point her son began rocking in his chair, shaking his head and sobbing, “See! They don’t believe me!”

According to this mother, neither the principal nor the counselor responded in any way to her or to her son. She said that they offered no condolences. “I remember saying, ‘I’m not playing. This isn’t funny. I mean seriously, look how upset he is! Something happened.’”

Instead of coming to this boy’s rescue, his mother said that Probst said, “Jerry has a heart of gold, he’s been around all these kids and you really should just go home and think about what this is going to do to your son and your family if you do that.” When the dust settles on the Jerry Sandusky case, Karen Probst and this counselor need to be held accountable for the parts they played in this sexual abuse scandal. Whether it was misguided reverence for Sandusky or fear over the part the school played by its misconduct coming to light, these women did not perform their duties to protect the safety of one of their students. And their unwillingness to comfort this boy and his mother who were clearly devastated is beyond reprehensible!

At this point, this distraught mother took her equally distraught son home and called a friend who worked with the state’s Children’s Youth Services program, who took them to the Services center. It was here that they met Dr. Mike Gillum, a licensed psychologist who has a private practice in Williamsport. He has worked with the state on child abuse cases and has been working closely with these two ever since. It was Gillum who called Probst to inform her that Sandusky was the subject of an abuse investigation and that he was not to be allowed near the school or this boy.

It has never been explained by Turchetta or Probst, or any other school official, why Sandusky was allowed to take this boy from the school without his mother’s permission. Sandusky was barred from the school, but according to his mother, her son has faced terrible repercussions for stepping forward.

She said that only Child Youth Services, the police, Gillum, a few school administrators and immediate family had been told what happened to her son. Yet, she was shocked to discover that Turchetta, apparently angry over the removal of Sandusky from school grounds and the football team, talked openly about her son’s case at his weekly football parent meeting. She learned this from a grandmother of one of the football players, who also told her, “Coach Turchetta said these charges are never going to stick and he’ll walk away.”

The mother claims that after her son developed a close bond with a 28-year old volunteer coach, Turchetta approached her son, got in his face, and yelled, “With what you’ve done already, no 28-year-old man needs to be around you.”

She said, “I think he was accusing my son of having some kind of relationship with him. That’s how my son took it, too.”

Recently, she learned that some students were threatening her son, so she immediately reported her concerns to Principal Probst, telling her, “I heard that some kids were going to do some gang beating on my son. I want to make sure you are aware of that and that Mike Gillum was going to talk to the county to see if we could get some police up there, to take whatever measure’s to keep him safe.”

Probst told her they would discuss it and get back with her. But when she finally heard back from Probst, she said, “There was nothing about her meeting, nothing about my son’s safety. No response to the threat that some kids were going to hurt my son. Instead she brought up the BB gun they apparently found over a month ago. She said that he left the school distraught and had a BB gun. And I thought, ‘What are you getting at now?’ What’s that BB gun have to do with this? That BB gun is rusty and probably 100 years old. It’s been sitting in his car forever.”

This mom finally had enough. She removed her son from Central Mountain High School and is hoping that in a new environment he may be able to heal.

I hope that when the dust settles on the Jerry Sandusky case, this school and its officials will be held accountable for the horrendous way they handled this family as well as the potential danger they placed other young boys in by allowing Sandusky free reign in their school.

Ironically, on Nov. 7, Central Mountain High School was praised by Pennsylvania State Attorney General Linda Kelly for “doing the right thing” regarding the Sandusky matter. According to the indictment, the school immediately called the police when it became aware of the abuse, a fact that this mother firmly refutes.

In a statement Gillum made regarding the actions of the school compared to their statements regarding their actions, he said, “Given the disparity between the actions taken when the initial symptoms were observed and the mother requested intervention to determine whether or not he was being victimized by this man, and then for the school officials to resist pursuing law enforcement or children and youth services, then later down the road to have officials claim that they were suspicious of Jerry Sandusky, or concerned about him, is obviously not congruent.”

Obviously it is not, and just as obviously, this school played a part in the alleged victimization of this boy. When the dust settles in the Jerry Sandusky case, I would hope that this school is held accountable for their inaction and the part they played in allowing this alleged sexual offender unapproved access to potential victims!

Bullying, Teacher-World's Blog Central Mountain High School, Jerry Sandusky, Pennsylvania, sexual abuse allegations

The Christian Science Monitor just sent out an encouraging article regarding the job field for college grads. While the picture is far from perfect, things are picking up slightly for jobs after graduation in certain fields.

According to a newly released survey of 4,200 job recruiters by the College Employment Research Institute, the hiring of new graduates with bachelor degrees will increase during this current academic year by about 7 percent as compared with the previous academic year.

A summary from the institute based at Michigan State University in East Lansing, stated, “This year’s market … shows a more consistent pattern of growth across industry sectors,” and that employer uncertainty “has lessened somewhat.”

In high demand with not enough graduates to fill all available positions, according to the report, are computer science majors. Also in high demand are graduates with proficiency in accounting, engineering, finance, and supply-chain management.

The demand has also increased in the fields of agriculture and food-processing, as well as advertising, marketing, public relations, sales, nursing, clinical laboratory scientists, human resources, chemistry, statistics, and math.

However, the report also cautions, “Even with this improved job outlook, the competition will be fierce.” The summary goes on to warn that overall, “employer demand falls short of the supply of graduating students.”

The report also projects that starting salaries are unlikely to change significantly.

Since the recession worsened in 2008, young adults have faced tremendous challenges. With the cost of college continuing to rise, as well as the financing of those costs through borrowing, many graduates are left with staggering college loans in a weak job market. 

In spite of the obvious downside of obtaining a college degree in the current economy, economists still claim that college provides the skills for obtaining significantly higher earnings during an employee’s working career, therefore, they maintain that college is an important avenue to prosperity. Also, statistically, people with college degrees have a significantly lower unemployment rate than those who do not have a college degree.

All facts and statistics aside, the report states that in the current environment, graduates need to make the most of connections with people who can help them obtain a job, such as alumni, parents, and hiring staff in organizations.

Teacher-World's Blog College Employment Research Institute, college graduates, job prospects

I have to tell this story for all the moms out there who have turned their own lives upside down in order to make their children happy. And with the approach of Thanksgiving, this couldn’t be a better story to remind all of us to be grateful for those women who helped shape us and who often went outside their comfort zones for our sakes.

St. Ignace High School, located in a small town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, has a decent football team. But with a student population of only 215, there has been very little interest in the team. In fact, they didn’t even have the support of a cheerleading squad this season because they had no cheerleaders.

When the team made it into state playoffs, they were surprised to discover that they finally had a cheerleading squad, and what a squad it was! About sixteen mothers donned their sons’ football jerseys, did some quick hamstring stretches, and stood along the sidelines cheering their boys on. They even put together a cheer routine for a school pep rally, stunts and all.

Coach Marty Spencer admits that he never really heard the cheerleaders on the sidelines in the 25 years he has been a coach at this school, but with these loud and proud moms cheering on their boys, he couldn’t help but hear them. He told the 7&4 News Team reporter, Andrew Keller, “I haven’t seen a group of moms do what these moms are doing.”

Those who were in high school in the 70’s would have recognized their cheers, since they were revisiting golden oldies like “hold that line” and “defense.” And along the way, the mom’s were also having fun. Paula Mayer, whose son plays for the team, said it “gives me a bit of my youth back.”

The moms claim that they had no choice but to get out there and support their boys. Nate Monte’s mom said, “I know it pumps them up!”

Coach Spencer said, “Most kids do anything for their mother; I know I would, so if it gives us that little edge, that’s a great thing.”

And how did the football team feel about their moms leading the cheers? Nate Monte, a senior on the team, told 7&4, that his first reaction was, “Wow, that is my mom, she’s cheerleading, what’s going on?”

Another senior on the team, Chris Gustafson, said, “To have my mom on the sidelines, it’s pretty crazy!”

Crazy as it may seem, these moms accomplished exactly what they set out to do, because apparently everyone in St. Ignace was on the football bandwagon. In fact, the team was undefeated heading into their game this past Saturday against the Eagles, from Fowler High School, in Fowler, Michigan. Unfortunately, in spite of wildly ecstatic moms on the sidelines, the Saints lost 45-8, dashing the Saint’s hopes of becoming state champs.

But these boys and their moms are hardly losers even though their championship dreams may not have made them football champs. In fact, it really doesn’t matter that they lost because what they won is far more precious than any football title and far more lasting: family. And family trumps football any day of the week.

So, boys, feel bad, but not for long. Say a cheer for your moms who put it all out there for you on the sidelines, because what you won in the last few weeks can never be taken from you, unlike a football title which will be won by someone else next year.

Nate Monte couldn’t have summed it up any better when he said, “I could ask for a blonde, a brunette, but my mom will do.”

You guys could have asked for a state championship title, but your moms will do!

Teacher-World's Blog high school football, St. Ignace High School, state championship games