This is Who We Are:

High School of Language and Innovation [HSLI]

There it is. The name is now out there.

And now, finally, for part II of the interview with Principal Julie Nariman. Yes, her name is out there now, too.

What is HSLI's major goal for the 2012-2013 school year?

"Making every student twice as independent as they were when they started."
For teachers, "Every teacher would be a competent teacher of another teacher learning Learning Cultures."

[Editor's Note: Learning Cultures is the guide our school employs in structuring its foundational formats, such as Unison Reading time, independent work time, and student share time each period of every school day.]

How will HSLI implement the new federal Common Core learning standards?

A New York State visitor said last year: "He'd never seen Common Core implemented to such a degree as here...I think we're doing the Common Core, 3-5 elements per Unison Reading session. We need to improve alignment more between writing standards and practices."

"Being a Learning Cultures principal is fun and delightful. It's the most fun job I've ever had in my life."

____________________________________________________________________________

In today's daily Common Planning period for teachers, Principal Nariman stated succinctly how for "millennia teachers have been the holders of knowledge. Now, little HSLI" is upending that entire history.
The base--students--are becoming the new holders of knowledge at least to the degree that teachers are.

"It Smells Like...

...mad shredded cheese in here."

----student in hallway a minute ago (from another high school in the building)

Here are some more quotes, from Mrs. W., a math teacher. This should provide more insight into what teachers do during Unison Reading time. Statements were made on Wednesday, Nov. 21st. Three boys were in this Unison group:  B., from Kosovo; R., from the Dominican Republic; M., from Bangladesh.

"That's okay. You can explain by pointing."

>>M. points to paper.
He soon asks, "Do you understand?"

"If you understand something, you need to share. Right?"

"Wait, wait, wait. When you asked, 'Do you understand?' I'll always say, 'I understand.' How can you rephrase your question?"

>>B. asks, "Can I give a suggestion?"

"Wait, wait. If you are answering this question, you want to ask him (R.) this question, right?"

"You asked, 'Do you understand?' Who did you ask that question to?"

"He (B.) just rephrased and you (R.) were about to say because..."

>>Students go back and forth discussing strategies for solving linear equation: y= mx +b

_______________________________________________________________________
Mr. S. just now to one of our students in the hallway:
"I'll let you in on a little secret: Your teacher's not going to like you buying Dorritos during class. Put those away, all right?"

High Tension

My first period class today was stacked. During the mini-lesson, Principal N. asked if it was okay that C.M. and two teachers came in to help coach my Unison Reading groups. I was happy about the prospect of getting extra coaching. Students in groups A & B, on the other hand, may not have been so excited.

Instead of just me in their faces during Unison Reading, they had the originator of the theory herself there with them. Rather than speaking with the students directly, however, the professor communicated with a teacher coach who then communicated with me who then communicated with the students. It was an interesting process of "active coaching."

Personally, I wouldn't have been stopping the students as much as the coaches do, nor for as long.
But the coaching is teaching me a lot about how to better check for understanding and the social processes therein. As it turns out, the processes are more critical to the Unison format than the reading itself.

Meanwhile, consternation exists among teachers regarding Writing CBM's. These assessments are not fun to grade, to say the least, and debates are in motion relating to how important these assessments are. I was just told the next round are to be graded by next Monday, which seems like a very tall order indeed.



**
Something new I learned today:
Nearly 80% of people in upstate New York live within 25 miles of the Erie Canal.

We Are Back...Hurricane Sandy has passed

Well, that's that.
Not for everyone, of course. A lot of suffering continues.
But our school campus escaped the wrath of Sandy.

I should have probably updated readers during the storm and its immediate aftermath.
But we are okay. The vast majority of our students and staff were not impacted directly. Three teachers lost power, one of whom was evacuated from her place on the Lower East Side. One student I know of lost power for several days.

These past few weeks have been really crazy with Parent-Teacher Conferences (I met with the parents of 28 students), the hurricane, and then grades due. But a certain sense of normalcy is returning as we head into Thanksgiving.

My primary goal now as it relates to this blog is to get anecdotals weekly from fellow teachers. I want to share their stories with the wider world.

Stay tuned and get ready for a ton of great stories--as well as part II of the principal interview and an upcoming interview with the mastermind behind this entire operation of a school...

EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Principal N., Part I

On October 11th, Principal N. was interviewed. This is the first ever posting of her responses.

What are 3 things setting our high school apart from others in New York City?

"We give students responsibility for their own learning and I think that's super unique. I think teenagers are treated like (older people in our school)...but I think our society turns them into useless people...and they're not responsible for their own selves. We actually hold them responsible for learning, for creating a safe school environment, for the behavior of their peers."

"I think teacher evaluation is a really big thing...an important thing..but I think we've lost focus from the point of how much learning is happening, who is responsible, and how well they are doing it. Teacher evaluation has something to do with that. But our rubrics put responsibility on students and teachers for quality of learning. Students have a huge responsibility for carrying out their own intentions and creating an atmosphere where people can speak freely and feel safe and learn."

"I think we have genuine distributed leadership. Our SLT (School Leadership Team) is a real leadership team. We have a system where people are empowered, where every adult is a leader in some way and it's not a top-down school. And kids take leadership in school structure--such as the Uniform Committee (student-led enforcement of uniform policy, class by class)."

"We didn't create a system where we hired more people to boss others around (for example, no Assistant Principal is to be found). Summer school is led by students. Their jobs are to teach each other. It's super fun to see all this and a majority of people seem happy. In general, people are very happy here."

What is 1 major thing that sets our school apart from other high schools nationwide?

"We believe in students' capacities to take responsibility for themselves. And we believe students can solve their own problems, with coaching and help with how to. Solutions nationwide are to have more adults solving students' problems."

FOR NEXT TIME: School goal for 2012-2013 school year & how school will implement the new national Common Core standards...

What Will it Take...

...to engage a student brand new to the United States, who speaks no English and understands very little about what is going on in school?

A new girl from the Congo, D., broke down during my Global class yesterday. She was in tears and a fellow French speaker in class, K., asked if she could go out. I thought she was ill but it turns out she was very distraught about not understanding English, missing her home country, and being lost in her assignments. K was very promotive--talking with her, telling her how things were the same for her just one year ago. K now understands what I say to her though this time last year she says she spoke no English and could not understand.
Remarkable.

A Bengali-Indian boy in class, not known for always being especially promotive of others, also stepped in and told D. she needs to keep trying and not worry. He also knew no English when he arrive in New York.

D was back in class and on time, as usual, this morning. She answered questions on paper--although I know that must have been a struggle. But she made an attempt.

So many of our kids here really want to learn.
Today I posted up the new group leaders for next week. D will lead. She chose a reading today and folks signed up for their Unison Reading groups. I hope this experience will help engage her more in our "formats" and mission.

Next up: posting an exclusive interview conducted last week with Principal N.! Please stay tuned...

"Furthering..."

3 beautiful, large, new signs when up in school today. In purple, white, & gray (our school colors). We designed them as a staff a few weeks ago. The middle sign reads: "pro.mo.tive adj.: tending to promote. Contributing to the progress or growth of; furthering."
On the left: "Helpful," translated into eleven languages.
On the right: "Supportive," also translated.

Evidently, three boys were not so promotive earlier when they got to reading class late. Each boy was spoken with at the door and reprimanded. Although the reasons for their tardiness were innocuous by the standards of my old school, they missed several minutes of classtime--a cardinal sin here.
Leaving a binder in the bathroom is not a good excuse. Coming to class late requires a student to apologize to others.

The class was asked, what should be done about these boys?

Several students in class responded, they need to be there on time to be ready to work--for the teacher's mini-lesson and with the students around them.

Meanwhile, the principal's barren office space now has a lamp. A fairly nice one, at that. I've told her I'm getting worried. She may get too comfortable.
Alas, she responded, one of the (now) two filing cabinets in her office belongs to the secretary. The principal does not even have the keys.
Maybe I'll take the table and chairs out of the room at some point, she said, and just sit on a yoga mat.

After all, a dozen of our students have such mats available for a chosen enrichment class on Fridays.

Force Fed

Many students in American high schools are force fed.
Information is poured into them.
Especially in the inner-city, it is difficult to get the attention of many students as they wander into school from foster homes, shelters, jails, and the streets.
Although there is always a core group of students eager to learn & participate (with numbers varying wildly from school to school and neighborhood to neighborhood), the true challenge remains:

How do we get an overwhelming majority of high school students engaged and learning?

This is where my new school comes into play, above & beyond so many others.
We are testing the boundaries of that question.

One experiment (also read: possible solution):
"Independent Work."

Within our 70 minute periods, the teacher's mini-lesson at the beginning of each class is to last no more than 10-20 minutes. This is a tall order for teachers, like myself, trained more in the conventional, old-fashioned methods of both "chalk & talk" and even newer, supposedly different methods such as PowerPoint slideshows.
Even with much additional training & creative planning, " classroom museum gallery walks," "pair shares," & group readings only go so far. The end result remains largely the same: Students act at the specific directions of a teacher. Even with a certain amount of independence for walking around the room, posting comments on gallery walk chart papers, and sharing within pairs and groups, students still act mainly at the teacher's behest.

The new paradigm shift is this:
Each student is free to decide for him or herself what will be best to accomplish during the approximately 20-30 minutes of independent work time in every class, every school day.
A teacher may list several ideas, or options, on the board. Some may think of this as a "choiceboard," which I have employed in past years.

But the big difference is that this is not choosing a project idea.
This is truly a shift in the culture.

Yasmin must decide for herself: Do I stay with my Unison Reading group today, working with partners to complete Renaissance curriculum questions (which have been spelled out by the teacher on handouts posted on the front wall).
Or, would my time be better served by reviewing a PowerPoint--on a classroom laptop-- Mr. H. has e-mailed me?
Should I watch more of the movie clip on Renaissance architecture we didn't have time to finish during class?
Or, do I add more new words (as both a history student & English Language Learner) to the Vocabulary Log sheet I have out from Unison Reading?

The teacher observes students. Occasionally, in between individual conferences with students & formal observations of two Unison Reading groups per class, the teacher employs students to be promotive. Without spelling out exactly what students are or are not doing, the teacher motions toward a problem, compelling others to discern what potential problems may exist.
Oh, okay, students note. Willy is wasting his independent time.
A student or two talk with him about what it is he can be doing to make good use of his time.

If numerous problems exist, perhaps it's time tomorrow to put some content on hold for the mini-lesson and emphasize RASP--Routines And Social Processes. This could include projecting for students segments of a work rubric, specifying how students are to be held accountable during their independent work time.

In the end, our goal is for each and every student to not be an automaton. As William James once said, "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

"Hey bro, that's not being promotive"

~freshman male student to fellow freshman male in hallway

Even if said in jest, it's still noteworthy to hear freshmen boys talking about being promotive. Perhaps our message really is sinking in.

Many of our students truly are promotive. I have two Dominican girls in class 10A who are so enthusiastic about learning it's contagious. This has to be filmed. One girl speaks little English while the other, written about in another posting, works extra super hard at everything--even while understanding extremely little English. In Unison Reading, both girls always have vocabulary sheets at the ready and are never off task. During the mini lesson both girls have taken to sitting up front, always alert.

Two other boys in the same class are not so promotive. Though they've been in our school and New York City the same length of time as so many of  our students--approximately 1-1.5 years, it seems to be--they remain largely disengaged and off task. Principal N. acted as supreme interlocutor yesterday as we sat in on their Unison Reading group. Student An. was the largely disengaged Group Leader (GL) who counted for the group to begin ("Okay, 1-2-3..."), but whose heart was otherwise not really in the work. Principal N. did not hesitate to stop the three boys in mid-sentence numerous times and interrogate them about how to help each other.

Student Ad. sat smiling, as usual, but otherwise remained silent. The principal really pushed back at him, wondering why he was not communicating with the other two. One lesson I learned is needing to really jump into the reading group more to help facilitate when students are not communicating well or helping each other effectively.

The bottom line here is to help make students into leaders. To help them learn responsibility. It's baptism by fire for many, as they learn a new language concurrent with leadership skills that so many adults do not have [just ask my father who is a management consultant & coach for corporate leaders].

Alas, our school's recurring statement about "being promotive" is not empty.
And many students are getting the message.
Although I've only been her for a month so far, the proof is in the vegan pudding, so to speak.
Today's attendance is 94.5%.
Overally average for school year so far is approximately 94-95%. That's about five kids absent per day out of about 170 students in our school (which is only freshmen and sophomores as of now).

No More Passing Out of Papers

That's what the principal just told me.
Students should take responsibility for getting handouts themselves.
Course outcomes will be posted on the walls, written on open folders which will also contain pertinent handouts.

"I feel like I spent 10% of my teaching passing out and collecting papers," Principal N. said.
She is very concerned about students and teachers not wasting time.

Another element which sets our school apart.

I was disoriented upon entering the principal's office for our meeting.
Before me was a conventional large wooden desk with desktop computer and stacks of important papers. Beside me were windows looking into a barren space. And there sat Principal N.

"Oh. I thought that (pointing to the conventionally large desk) was the secretary's and your office was in here," I said, entering the barren space.

"It is," she responded.

All that is contained in her office is a small round table, a laptop computer, a two drawer filing cabinet, & a clipboard in the window.
No pictures. No stacks of papers. No books. No desk.

The principal doesn't want to be comfortable in her office. She wants to be in the halls, in the classrooms, talking with students and teachers.

This is an interesting place indeed.

Friday!

Even though this school is great, it's still nice that it's Friday.
We do have an obscenely large number of days off each school year, all things considered, but at least our students here attend for about 40 more minutes each day than the average NYC high school student.
That is critical for getting folks to read and write more.

A near altercation occurred in 10D yesterday. An Albanian boy took a blue ball from his bag for some reason and somehow a small Dominican boy ended up passing it around under desks with his friends. The Albanian boy--Kosovar, actually--tried to get it back to no avail. He then told the Dominican boy, "I got you after school"==with stern eyes.

A Yemeni boy, who looks about 30 years old and is supposedly married and moving back to Yemen at some point in near future, then came in with the Albanian boy: "I  got you after school," he said to the small boy, purely without humor.

I pulled the Albanian and Yemeni boys out and had them speak with Mrs. C. next door. The Albanian boy came back in and asked me meekly if he could rejoin class. The Yemeni boy must've been unrepentant because Mrs. C. kept him out.

Thankfully, nothing seemed to come from this. It was sad seeing this in our school. In my old school it would've been the order of the day, in fact not much of a situation at all comparatively speaking, but here those things are not in abundance, thankfully.

All else is pretty well, though.
Entire campus was on a "hard lockdown" earlier, as a black briefcase with duct tape was found outside the building. No student was allowed to leave rooms they were in. This made our kids about 12 minutes late in leaving the cafeteria and students were crazy while arriving late (delays and adverse situations like that tend to always set off teenagers). But, as they say, all's well that ends well.

Things are Moving

Now we're starting to go.
Every classroom just got two brand new "short" bookcases and three round wooden tables.
Ms. W. and I, who I share the sophomore Global Studies room with, have assigned classroom leadership roles for each class:

~Timer
~Tech
~Sign-ups Organizer (for weekly Unison Reading groups)
~Intern (for most trusted & reliable student in each class)

Yesterday, in the midst of a sophomore class I looked around. To one side, a student explained to others at her table the meaning of an English word.
Next to me, students worked together reading in unison---"Okay, 1-2-3..."
Across the way, a group of Dominican boys--only one of whom understands much English--read in unison, without much supervision.
Two students on a computer in the back of the  room were not trying to sneak onto Twitter or look at junkfood on the internet. Instead, they researched the meaning of "cultural diffusion." Earlier, a boy alone at the same computer was reading about Leonardo da Vinci.

More than half a dozen students so far have borrowed classroom films since the sign-up sheet went up at the end of last week.
And they have not even gone in yet for the typical Hollywood-type films. Or even the historical films from U.S. history, such as those regarding Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, Jr. Rather, they've been watching History Channel films about Alexander the Great (a Bengali boy), the Incan Empire (a full blooded Incan girl from Ecuador), Islam (a Muslim boy with Kosovar roots), & the story behind the battle of the 300 in ancient Greece (a Haitian girl).

A fascinating array of students.

A boy from Yemen brought in his country's flag today to display within our classroom collection. Last week, the Muslim boy learning more about his religion brought in full-size flags of both Albania & Kosovo (a very unusual find, I assume, in most parts of the United States, but not necessarily in this neighborhood). Soon thereafter, two other boys from Yemen came in with the flagbearer, grinning widely as they looked up at their homeland's flag--a nation now plunged into turmoil.

Highlight of the Day

Not all is perfect here, however. Class 10D is being kept behind after school today due to bad behavior in a number--if not all--of their classes. There are many great kids in this sophomore class, but a handful that is disrupting share time--when a student who has conferenced one-on-one with the teacher presents his or her strengths, challenges, resolutions, & a goal(s) to the class.

Many thanks to the teacher who is facilitating this special after school time wtih the students. In my other school, their relatively minor disruptions would not merit nearly as much attention, with riots breaking out in the halls. But here, disrupting a share is serious business.

Meanwhile, the real highlight of the day involved two girls in class 10A. These girls speak little to no English--one speaking more than the other. In the midst of my mini-lesson comparing medieval and Renaissance art, both girls volunteered to share their comments with the entire class. It was incredibly endearing, especially, to hear one girl (brand new to this country) who confidently spoke broken English as she compared a painting of Jesus from the Middle Ages with Michelangelo's David.

And it was extremely promotive to have a girl on the other side of the room chiming in to help the girl translate words from Spanish into English.

Welcome to a New Style...

The blog is back! However, this may be temporary. Hopefully, my new website domain will gets its problems ironed out soon and get up and running (www.radicalbronxteaching.com).
Until then, welcome to the new style.

Bronx, New York. Dispatch #1 from the 2012-2013 school year.

Just came from class 10D. Tenth graders. It seems like most of them got the message today. A few students interrupted a student's share last Friday and my mini-lesson emphasized this early on in class. Of course, I sometimes misinterpret how many students understand what I'm saying in class.

80% of our students are ELL's. English Language Learners. Unlike my last two schools in the Bronx, there is a diversity of languages represented here.

One story from our first two days of school:

In the last few minutes of a sixty minute class I realized a freshman girl in a hijab (head covering) had no idea what we'd been discussing for the period. I immediately felt bad. A boy near her had not understood either, but I discovered that sooner and had a female student, also in a hijab, next to him help translate things into Bengali. I asked this translator if she could translate for the other girl.

"Mister, she doesn't speak my language."

"What language does she speak?" I asked.

"Arabic."

I then asked another girl wearing a hijab, sitting on other side of the room, if she could help translate into Arabic.

"I speak Urdu," she replied.

I then asked the girl next to her what language she speaks; perhaps she could assist.

"I speak French," she responded.

Meanwhile, a small group of Spanish-only speakers sat up front. Several do not yet speak English. Most have lived in the United States for only a couple of months, or less.

This is my new school!
Students are fully immersed in both the English language, reading aloud, and sharing in front of the class.
Students take leadership roles from day one.
Students are responsible for being promotive of others at all times.
Students must conference with teachers one-on-one.
School structure is uniform across classes.
Hallway discipline is maintained and enforced.

"Promotive Richard" is my new name for you. "My man." [a comment I just heard Mr. S. make to a student in hallway]

There will be a lot innovative ideas shared in this blog. This information will be revolutionary in many ways for public schools. Perhaps even more so for public schools in New York City, as they are filled with many students who come in reading and writing below grade level--sometimes dramatically so.

Please subscribe and stay tuned for the new style of this new school year!