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Will Teachers Rap The 3 R's?

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By MARILYN BROWN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 17, 2008

Updated: 08/17/2008 12:22 am

TAMPA - When Hillsborough County middle and high school students return to classes Monday, many of their teachers will be struggling along with them.

With just two to four days of training this summer, more than 3,000 language arts and math teachers will be changing the way they teach those basics.

No more standing and lecturing.

Reading a chapter and answering a few questions is out.

Solving an algebra problem only one way? Gone.

It's a giant shift for Hillsborough, which plans to spend more than $30 million in taxpayer money in the next five years to improve the odds of more students going to college.

The Hillsborough school district's new program is called SpringBoard, created by the College Board, the company known for the SAT test and Advanced Placement courses and tests. SpringBoard is designed to help students get ready for Advance Placement courses and, in turn, college.

Hillsborough is the first to implement districtwide a package of programs that includes SpringBoard.

The program changes how students approach and process information.

"You're going to see Shakespeare and you're going to see rap - and that's OK," Liz Brown, the district's secondary language arts supervisor, told principals during two days of training in late July.

During the training, principals took turns reading lines in a workbook rewritten from Shakespeare - in standard English, another as a text message, another as hip-hop.

"To be successful in translating Shakespeare, you have to understand the symbolism," Robert Sheffield, a College Board trainer from Volusia County, told them. In order to convert the words, students have to understand them, he said. The lesson also shows students, "Shakespeare does speak to me," Sheffield said.

The two-day summer training for principals and some assistant principals was an introduction for most.

Teachers were skeptical on their first day of training; by the end, there was much enthusiasm.

The Technique

When two dozen Algebra I teachers gathered at Plant High in late July for training in SpringBoard instruction, they were moved into a hallway.

Strips of tape marked each foot on the floor. One teacher wore a sign identifying her as "Ladybug," another as "Senn T. Pede." Once each minute when the group clapped, Lady Bug moved three feet, Senn T. Pede, five.

The role-playing activity is to get students engaged. It's quick, visual and helps students understand the concept behind the symbols on paper: Distance equals rate multiplied by time.

That was the beginning of a multiday lesson leading to the understanding of linear equations with workbook activities and group problem-solving.

During training, the teachers formed six groups to attack the same word problem. Each group solved it a different way; two groups got the wrong answer.

"I don't care how you get it as long as it's logical," trainer Joanne Patchin told them. Teachers get wrong answers for the same reason as students, she said: "They use the wrong data - they're so used to this stuff that they speed-read."

Patchin, in her 39th year of teaching, is a math coach in Palm Beach County, where SpringBoard has been used at some schools for three years.

"I can see the kids are involved, I can see the kids are enthusiastic and I see them develop confidence," she said in an interview. "I see test scores going up.

"Sometimes students learn more and faster from each other than the teacher," Patchin told the teachers. "It's noisy, but they have fun and they're learning."

Getting Buy-In

The program, which combines long-used teaching strategies, is a tougher sell on veteran teachers than it is on students.

"I'm going to have an open mind to it, but reality sucks," Bloomingdale High math teacher Cynthia Newman told Patchin on the first day of training. Last year, Newman said she struggled with time during similar lessons in her 50-minute classes.

Some teachers foresee problems grouping students.

Robinson High math teacher Simone Konner said some of her students with severe learning and emotional disabilities "say flat out, 'I'm not going to be in a group.'"

The learning curve and comfort level for teachers is one reason the district is requiring only a certain number of SpringBoard lessons depending on grade and subject, although schools may choose to use more.

"It's a framework," said Mary Navarre, language arts subject area leader at Smith Middle School. Navarre, in her 10th year of teaching, was on a committee of teachers that chose required units for middle school language arts.

Teachers remain concerned about fitting in their favorite non-SpringBoard lessons, she said. Hers is an end-of-year project creating an "all about me" book.

"I am going to do it," Navarre said.

But she also is sold on SpringBoard because of its depth and focus on higher-level thinking skills.

"They lack basic thinking-on-your-own skills," she said.

The prescribed lessons are helpful for a beginning teacher, said Elizabeth Ely, 24. She holds a new master's degree in history and a new job teaching language arts at Smith Middle.

"It gives you everything, but I see a lot of room" for bringing in other lessons, Ely said.

Every teacher in the same subject districtwide is supposed to keep a similar pace. That consistency is a major change and seen as a strength by district officials.

Veteran teachers remain concerned.

"A lot of people are very disgruntled," said Jeanna Whiting, an English and Advanced Placement art history teacher at Sickles High School. "It's not something people are embracing."

Whiting, like others, appreciates the emphasis on critical thinking and the ease of having a student workbook that includes the lessons, reading passages and activities.

"All of the steps, including the assessment, are written down in the book they have... The parents will know what their kids are doing in school, what is going to be graded."

But the idea of covering less, but more in depth, concerns Whiting: Last year, her 10th grade honors students read two required novels, "A Separate Peace" and "Fahrenheit 451," plus "A Tale of Two Cities" and "The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera."

This year, her 10th grade honors students must read just one: "Things Fall Apart," an African novel that goes with the curriculum's theme.

"This whole year is cultural diversity for 10th grade, but all teachers have to be very uniform," Whiting said. "That's ironic."

During training, teachers were told that required SpringBoard lessons would take up about half the classes. When she returned to school last week, she discovered that SpringBoard lessons would be taught most days.

Each grade has certain novels to choose among for the required units, but may add others, said Eric Bergholm, the district's general director in charge of EXCELerator, which includes SpringBoard and three other programs. When teachers see how long required units take, it should be only about half their time, he said.

Time and the complexity of SpringBoard lessons, which include layering of skills, were a major problem for teachers at the four high schools that tried EXCELerator last year.

EXCELerator increases organizational skills and provides online programs for job information and college resources.

After the pilot in the four schools last year, Superintendent MaryEllen Elia got school board approval to take it districtwide. Some school board members knew little about the program; principals and teachers even less.

Reports from the pilot schools - East Bay, Leto, Middleton and Plant City high schools - reached other teachers who had been told nothing about the program.

Officials acknowledge the district communicated poorly and required too many lessons. That's why the district limited the number of required lessons and spent the summer training for the SpringBoard program.

The cost of paying teachers for the summer training was $3 million, Bergholm said. This year's total EXCELerator budget is $6.4 million, paid with federal money and a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Dawn Thompson, a sixth-grade language arts teacher at Burns Middle School in Brandon, said her main concern is "being able to implement the lessons in a way that children can be successful. Even as a teacher in training I did a lot of the activities wrong.

"It's a little overwhelming," said Thompson, who will co-teach five classes of 38 to 45 students each.

Beginning her 18th year of teaching, Thompson likes the way lessons are laid out and the hands-on work. But planning with the other sixth-grade teachers is taking a lot of time, she said.

"Even though the lessons are there, you have to look at them and know - 'What do my children need to know about before they begin the lesson?' When you get 44 of them sitting there, that's going to be hard."

Some teachers will have to work hard to break patterns that have earned them outstanding evaluations for decades. Teachers who capture student attention with dynamic personalities must learn to step aside more often.

"This is one of the hardest things for SpringBoard teachers - to step back and close their mouths," Patchin, the trainer from Palm Beach County, told the math teachers.

Shifting to the new program takes time, she said.

"By the end of the second year, beginning of the third year, they should be on board."

WHAT'S DIFFERENT

Here are some changes middle and high school students will notice in English and math classes this year when the district's EXCELerator program goes districtwide:

•Desks forming small groups or pods

•Makeup of the groups changing often

•Lots of discussion and movement

•Students leading; teachers moving around to assist

•Classes in hallways, engaged in three-dimensional activity

•Video clips, music and drama incorporated into lessons

•Student workbooks requiring diagrams, graphing, written answers

•Workbooks that allow parents to monitor work

•Hand-held white boards with dry-erase markers

•Students and parents may access SpringBoard work online

Reporter Marilyn Brown can be reached at (813) 259-8069 or mbrown@tampatrib.com. Keyword: Springboard, for a Q&A on the program.

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