Xian Barrett, Chicago VIVA teacher who was honored at the CPS Board meeting for his work on the 49 recommendations for the longer school day, says “listen to the people who know how to fix things–teachers, parents, and students (download).”
December 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Longer school day — do it right
Letter to Editor from VIVA Teacher Leader Kori Milroy, Chicago Sun-Times
A Sun-Times story on Dec. 13 had this headline: “Is daily recess a ‘human right’ for school kids?” I believe it is. Currently, children in some Chicago Public Schools enter their elementary classrooms in the morning and, except for a brief 20-minute lunch break, remain seated in the same room for the entire day. Not only does this make for a less than exciting day for students, it negatively affects their health, classroom behavior, and academic achievement.
As part of the Chicago VIVA Project, I just helped write the report outlining the recommendations of CPS teachers for how classroom time can best be used to improve student learning. Our report recommends increasing instructional time for math, language arts, science, and social studies, the core academic classes offered in elementary schools. But to truly maximize learning in these areas, we also recommend increasing time in ancillary classes. Research shows that art, music, library and P.E. show great promise for increasing academic achievement, while providing students with a fun, enriching school experience.
As a part of a 7.5 hour elementary school day, we recommend that students receive:
† Daily 20-minute recess period,
† 180 minutes per week of physical education instruction,
† 90 minutes per week of art instruction,
† 90 minutes per week of music instruction.
† 90 minutes per week of library or technology instruction.
These recommendations, if implemented, stand to have a lasting positive impact on a significant portion of Chicago’s population. It is well known that regular exercise helps in maintaining a healthy weight. Studies also show that it reduces stress and increases students’ ability to pay attention.
But how much is necessary? The USDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both recommend 60 minutes of exercise per day for children and adolescents. The VIVA Teachers proposal would give Chicago’s students an average of 36 minutes of structured physical education per day, along with 20 minutes of free play at recess. This more than doubles the amount of exercise students currently receive.
Arts education, including music, is known to improve math scores. Recent research has also found that these areas of study actually stimulate cognitive growth and help students learn empathy and caring. Art and music improve motivation, providing a fun outlet for creative expression.
The length of the 2012-2013 school day hasn’t been chiseled in stone yet. But any discussion of a longer day should include planning how the time should best be spent. I hope that CPS will consider implementing the VIVA team’s recommendations, in an effort to improve learning and make a CPS school day something to look forward to for every student, in every school.
Kori Milroy, Dunning
August 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment
VIVA takes on the Chicago Tribune
A Chicago Tribune editorial about the test cheating scandals and its recommendation that Chicago officials use precious education resources to investigate whether similar cheating occurred in Chicago merited a strong response from VIVA. Our letter appeared online on Aug. 10. Here’s what we said:
Your editorial of Aug. 4 has it exactly right about the cheating scandals in public schools, but you couldn’t be more wrong about the solution.
The image of teachers and administrators in Atlanta erasing students’ wrong answers and filling in the right bubble — and the prospect that someone at Chicago Public Schools might have done the same — is appalling. But the way to stop that sort of behavior is not to waste more of our precious education dollars investigating whether teachers and administrators in Chicago and elsewhere might have changed test answers or found even more creative ways to cheat on high stakes standardized test. The way to stop the cheating is to change the rules of the assessment game.
Rather than using one test to decide which schools are making grade, which teachers will keep their jobs and which administrators are effective leaders, we should be using a variety of measures over time. Not only does using several sources and multiple years of data provide a more accurate gauge of effectiveness, it makes it much harder to game the system.
That’s what the classroom teachers who joined the VIVA Project’s web-based teacher collaboration said and what VIVA teacher leaders wrote in a national report that was delivered to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and a New York state report delivered to the head of the New York Board of Regents. The full text of both reports is available on our website, www.vivateachers.org.
It is time policy makers, political leaders and the public listened to teachers, like our VIVA teachers, who care about their students. They understand the need for measuring learning, provided the measurements are fair.
– Elizabeth Evans, President, The VIVA Project, Chicago