Published Tuesday, September 23, 2008
It's hands-on exercises that pupils seem to enjoy most
The Times-Herald
Kati Ferrell admitted she was "very nervous" about the skit some of her fifth-grade boys were about to perform in class that day at Northside Elementary.
The Coweta County school teacher stared at the clock and then walked over to a small group of 10- and 11-year-olds giggling in the corner. They had about five minutes to rehearse. She cued them to take positions.
"Bill of Rights, Act Four. Take One. Action!" she shouted above the class' giggles.
The boys whispered last-second instructions to each other, and then one stood next to another seated in a swivel chair and fell, belly first, over the other's lap so his classmate could pretend to spank him.
The chair teetered left and right, balancing their weight. The boy on the lap hung motionless, his hands grazing the floor. The spanker, convulsing in giggles, repeatedly told him he had "been bad" and valiantly tried to proceed with the script. But much of the dialogue became unintelligible amidst the children's laughter.
Ferrell, a social studies teacher, stepped in for the rescue. She asked the class, now all winded with laughter, which one of the amendments had been enacted. All hands shot up in the air with the answer that it was the Eighth Amendment, the one that guarantees American citizens the freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.
Across the hall, Helen Scandrick was exposing her fifth-graders to another brand of exercises -- science experiments that involved students learning about good and bad microorganisms.
After her students learned how yeast, a good microorganism, was used by baking their own bread in the class, the fifth-graders were then asked to grow bad microorganisms. The children were encouraged to swab areas where they thought there would be bad microorganisms. The bad bacteria would then be rubbed on slices of potatoes that were sealed in sandwich bags so they could observe and document the bacteria as it grew.
Enough about the experiment was understood when Scandrick explained the school's bathrooms became one of the popular spots to gather swabs of bad bacteria.
The Coweta teacher explained it's these types of hands-on exercises that the students enjoy and learn from the most.
The catch with both of these scenarios is not that the students are learning and having fun, but that the classes are being taught by students themselves.
Ferrell and Scandrick are seniors at the University of West Georgia (UWG) participating in a pilot program only offered in Coweta County Schools.
The program -- in the making for about two years and an extension of Coweta's long-standing Teacher Pipeline program -- is being eyed by the state as a possible model for other school districts, according to Coweta Schools Superintendent Blake Bass and Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Wayne Outlaw.
The program, a collaboration between the Carrollton-based college and the Coweta school system, is supported by the Georgia Department of Education because it could be another program the state can expand on to strengthen its teacher quality, recruitment and retention -- one of the goals the Alliance for Education Agency Heads has been working on this year to help Georgia's students receive the best education.
State Schools Superintendent Kathy Cox, who chairs the Alliance, has offered lots of support to Coweta's program.
"Mr. Bass and I both have been in conversation twice with Mrs. Cox about our program, and wanting to know more about it. She is very interested and very supportive of it, even offering some more of the professional learning activities," Outlaw said. "It's unique, and we're the only system in the state right now that's trying something. She's seen a program in Scotland that is somewhat similar to this so that's what actually spurred her interest in the program. She's very impressed with it."
Over the summer, state DOE representatives were on hand to show and assist the interns with the state's performance standards, its online resources, differentiation of instruction materials and a host of other tools to strengthen their teaching skills and experiences.
"[Cox] is committed to providing that service all year long so they can get the best training," Outlaw said.
Bass and Outlaw were also asked to make themselves available to talk about the success of the program in state Senate hearings on how Georgia can better train its teachers.
Eighteen of UWG's interns started teaching this year in nine of Coweta's elementary schools as part of the program. Two interns were assigned to each of the schools and are accompanied by a mentor teacher who alternates between the students' classrooms. The mentor teacher supervises as well as assists in the classes. The mentor has no other duties other than to guide and help the interns.
At Northside, the mentor teacher takes on one of the teachers' classes once a week so that the interns can observe other teachers' classrooms in the school and learn from their strategies.
"Honestly, right now I don't know how I can do it without a mentor," Ferrell said. "I don't know how first-year teachers do it."
Both Ferrell and Scandrick said having a mentor for consultation and to assist with the many "little things" that overwhelm and consume a teacher's time is invaluable.
Scandrick seized the chance to be in the program at West Georgia because she had heard so many "horror stories of people going into the classroom" in that first year. Having a mentor gives her the added assurance that she will do well in her first year of teaching after she graduates.
"I felt it was a great opportunity to work with a mentor... and their only objective was to help me. To have someone there full-time puts you in a comfort zone."
Ferrell and Scandrick's mentor teacher is Katie Fleck, a 10-year veteran who remembered her first year as a teacher in a Pennsylvania school system as so "traumatizing" that she considered changing careers, until she moved to Georgia.
"That first year was never out of my mind. It would leave a lasting mark on me," she said.
When she learned of the mentor teacher opportunity, she applied for the job so she could help others avoid many of her same bad experiences. She felt it would be a worthwhile challenge.
Ferrell and Scandrick said Fleck has been most helpful in dealing with the overwhelming amount of administrative upkeep that's a large part of a teacher's job -- the forms, student permanent records and parent conferences.
The college seniors are paid a starting teacher's salary and earn a year of service on their salary schedule and in Georgia's Teacher Retirement System. Bass said they're also guaranteed to receive a job offer from Coweta Schools when they graduate.
This year's team of interns was assigned to elementary schools that had vacancies. Interns are teaching at Arbor Springs, Atkinson, Canongate, Elm Street, Glanton, Newnan Crossing, Northside, Ruth Hill and White Oak elementary schools. The interns were dispersed among the kindergarten through fifth grades and among Coweta's schools that have low and high numbers of low-income students.
"It's a good variety of Title I and non-Title I schools," Outlaw said.
Those selected for the first year of the Pipeline program were the "cream of the crop," and came out of a pool of about two dozen.
To qualify, applicants had to be in an approved program at UWG and pass state-required content and GACE (Georgia Assessments for the Certification of Educators) tests. The interns had to excel in interviews administered by a panel of administrators and educators from the university and the school system.
While they are students, the interns have completed all the coursework required to teach.
"The only thing they lacked was one semester of student teaching. With the program, instead of doing one semester, they're doing a full year of teaching," Outlaw said.
He said the full year of teaching under another teacher's guidance will not only keep the teachers in the classroom much longer, but it will also train them better.
"It's important to us so we can better train these new teachers to become better teachers, and it also helps to train them the Coweta way," he said.