Two Years Later...

Well, it's two years after my last post, and times have definitely changed. The changes in the economy have impacted school budgets and the BOCES (that's "Board of Cooperative Educational Services" for those of you outside of NY) for which I work has nearly eliminated the Alternative High School Program for a "lack of demand". We have shrunk from ten teachers to five (two of us are considered "part-time") and a student body depleted from ninety to twenty-five. What was once a four-year program is now a maximum of two years encompassing grades 11 and 12. Are alternative education programs still viable?

I believe it is possible to maintain viable AltEd programs in some form, even if they are the result of several school districts working together to provide them (as is the case with our BOCES-offered program). They are necessary in most areas. Students who have "different" learning styles, or have behavior issues that cannot be "classified" need a place to learn and be successful. Even more importantly, it is essential that these programs be located away from the student's "home school" location. Students who "fit" the profile of the typical student we see at our school need to be away from the environment where their success has been blocked. Placing such students in a separate room in the same building where the "problem" was noted will not usually solve the "problem". This is especially true when the students have a personality difference with administrators, teachers or other students in the home school. As I return to the blogosphere here, I am going to start commenting on some of the positives and negatives I am seeing in the system in which I work.

Power School and Power Grade

Our school uses Power School and Power Grade to manage student information. These programs work fairly well when everyone jumps on-board (or online) with the system. However, when individual teachers reject new ideas or programs, it makes implementation of new technologies especially difficult.

In our school, we have two groups of programs, the vocational programs and the alternative high school. The alternative high school faces different challenges than the vocational programs in terms of accountability and curriculum requirements. After all, the alternative high school teachers are academic teachers approaching traditional curriculum in different, often unique ways. While I teach science, my approach probably is not the same as that used by colleagues in traditional, regular education classrooms.

Our school decided some years ago (apparently before I arrived in September '06) to implement the PowerSchool and PowerGrade systems. These systems work very well for teachers and administrators in terms of recording attendance and grades. The online nature of PowerSchool enables parents and students to regularly track these statistics, hopefully improving academic performance. Unfortunately, I find myself in a distinct minority when it comes to embracing this system. As the only teacher in the alternative high school program to use PowerGrade and PowerSchool exclusively for my gradebook/attendance record, I risk becoming the outcast when the teachers fight against being told it is mandatory that they use the system.

I find the program has problems, but I am willing to work around them, learning how to deal with them, and make suggestions for improvement. Sad to say, this is not always true of my colleagues. Today's society is so reliant upon technology, yet it is a sorry state when the educators of our youth do not recognize the importance of using it in the classroom. I can only hope that my colleagues accept the change and attempt to learn how to work within the system as I am, instead of bucking it at every turn.

Alternative Education Programs: Do they work?

I have to admit, I started reading about some different Alternative Education programs and noticed that there are numerous opinions on how well they work, and how to make them work for the better education of those students who cannot, for whatever reason, succeed in the regular classroom. One in particular caught my eye, about the alternative high schools in place in San Jose, California. The article describes a system similar to the one I work in in New York's Capital Region. Smaller class sizes and college credit or vocational training are significant features of both programs. A significant difference, San Jose's program is located in the students' home schools, whereas the one I work in is centralized as part of the Board of Cooperative Educaiton Services (BOCES) which provides educational services to twenty-four component member school districts. This means we have a single Alternative Education location, which can be located in our BOCES at the Career and Technical School (formerly known as Vo-Tech). I believe that the system of an alternative high school that provides a different approach to teaching is very beneficial to those students who cannot do well in the regular classroom, but cannot be classified as needing special education services. Our students learn the same curriculum as their peers in the regular high school, but do so allowing for differences in learning styles that it may not be possible to address in the "regular" classroom. This is what alternative education in the public school setting is about. Providing a unique setting for those who need a different approach to learn. Our school, like those in San Jose, has had a long history of success in meeting the needs of those students, graduating 25 or more students annually. Support your Alternative Education/High Schools!

Visit http://www.linksnoop.com/more/34812/San-Jose-Schools-Alternative-Education-Program-Saves-Troubled-Students/ to learn more about the alternative high school system in that district.

Visit http://bocescareertech.org to learn about alternative education and career and technical education at the Capital Region BOCES CTE division.

Back to School

After a busy month of August, I am now back at my regular school, with all the technology it provides. My experiences during the summer school session served to remind me how much we have come to rely on technology in our schools. This year, I am serving on the Educational Technology Committee. I am awaiting word on its first meeting.

Summer school was a challenge for me after the year at CTE. I found that upon returning to the school that had previously been my employer, I could not use the facility's computers except as a student, which meant that many websites were blocked from me that would not have been blocked from other teachers. In addition, all students at this school use a generic log-in, which meant that anything I put on the computer could be seen by all the other students in the school. This is disconcerting. I would have recommended to the school that they give a unique log-in to all students for security and monitoring purposes. I cannot believe that they do not do this! It would enable the IT personnel to monitor visits to inappropriate sites and inappropriate use of the computers by students. How difficult is it to add a user to the system? They do it for the teaching staff and assistants, why not for the students as well.

Anyway, I am now back in the land of SmartBoards, Online Course Management Systems, Curriculum Mapping Software and PowerSchool/PowerGrade, and will be regularly posting commentary on these and other technology uses in Alternative and Career/Technical Educational settings.

Summer School Half-way Done!

At the beginning of the summer, I found myself beginning a "hiatus" from my high-tech school to return for the summer session at my previous position. This school is extremely "low-tech" and it has been a challenge adapting my technology-based lessons to the different setting. I have been fortunate that I am still able to use the single classroom computer to access my Blackboard account and allow my students some time on the computer. However, using the computer lab has been much more challenging. It is extremely important not to test the patience of my alternative education students in this facility, and the "ancient" machines found in the school's science computer lab test even this laid-back teacher's patience. Nevertheless, I am finding it possible to deal with the lack of high-speed Internet access, computers that lock-up and now am counting the days until I return to my "real" job. I am looking forward to exploring different options in the days to come.

Funding alternative education

While visiting another blog yesterday, I found I had to comment on a post about the "extortion for education" mentioned there. I also decided to follow it up here. The cost of everything is going up all around us (just check out the gas pumps if you haven't already). Education is no exception, especially public education. As we educators know, we are tasked with doing much with very little more times than not. As an alternative educator, this becomes more challenging when my "school of choice" does not enroll the number of students needed to balance the budget. Even though we are part of the local Board of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES) and receive funds from member public schools, our school of choice still charges each district "tuition" for those students who enroll in our programs. When those member districts fail to send us their students, we lose out. Our Alternative High School program, which had been found on two campuses, is now being consolidated to one location because there were insufficient students enrolled in the second location. Purchasing supplies was frozen for most of last year for our Division (Career and Technical Education), resulting in the teachers becoming creative with what we had stockpiled to make it through the year. No Child Left Behind has put forward mandates that programs such as the Alternative High School be available so that ALL children learn. However, we need to determine what the Alternative High School is, and how it is different from the programs available in the member districts for students with difficulties participating in regular education programs. This is a continuing challenge, to make the alternative program sufficiently different and successful in meeting state and national education standards. This is being done at our school through the development of unique programs such as a PreTech program for younger (ninth and tenth) grades, and other elective courses not usually offered at regular high schools. These programs and electives better meet the needs of the students sent to us, usually resulting in these At-Risk students completing school instead of dropping out. Many even continue on to colleges and rewarding careers that they had never considered before. I invite you, especially those of you who consider "Alternative Education" to be a negative option for students, to visit http://bocescareertech.org and learn about two alternative education graduates who will be moving on to success, instead of dropping out into failure. These programs can be, and often are, successful. However, we are also not likely to "blow our own horns" and let you know about it. Alternative Education programs are not always the solution, but they can be successful if supported. Two keys to this success: (1) programs and courses that are significantly different from that of the "regular" school, and (2) different locations that remove those At-Risk students from the environments in which they are experiencing so much failure and trouble. You need to shop around and determine what will work for your student. No Child Left Behind leaves little choice to school districts. Support your Alt. Ed. programs!

Teaching Science Through Case Studies

As a science teacher in an alternative high school, I spend many hours trying to develop lessons that actively engage my students, a diverse group of reluctant learners. Today's review of the news ideas revealed a new way to present science to students in the classroom: teaching through case studies. This pedagogical method can be applied in the high school classroom as easily as in a collegiate setting with undergrads. It is at the heart of inquiry-based Best Practices. The key is to present the students with a problem (the case study) that engages them by having relevance to their lives. In developing a new elective course for my school, this is the challenge I face. Fortunately, through my research today, I found out about the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science. I believe this is a resource that can be used by science teachers at all levels. Please check it out!

Follow up on Technology in Alternative Education

As my summer school assignment has now begun, I find myself faced with once again teaching with limited technology available. Today, I went to the principal to determine if the computer lab for my department was available for use by my classes one day a week for the duration of the summer school program. The first thing the principal told me was, "Yes, if the computers are working." Limited resources in the private non-profit school in which I am spending my summer prevent the school from purchasing even 6 new computers, which would provide a class-set for this special education setting with class sizes limited to six students. The desktops in the computer lab are over five years old and the mother boards are going down almost daily. My curriculum, already available on the Blackboard CMS (http://www.blackboard.com), now must be converted to paper and pencil assignments, which these alternative education students balk at completing. However, they instantly become motivated when allowed time on the computers and the assignments are presented with the animation, bells and whistles present in many software packages available today. Finding the alternative teaching methods that match the different learning styles of the students makes it important that this school begin to look at their IT systems more carefully, and seek grants or other funding to provide such resources to the teachers. As a follow on to that, of course, teacher professional development must become part of the plan. Keep an eye out for future reflections on encouraging teachers to use instructional technology to reach these alternative education students!