Thanksgiving, 2011

Tomorrow, I will be going to Iowa to celebrate Thanksgiving with some of my wife's family.  It is a tradition that we have done every year since we were engaged, and one I have grown to love dearly.  It is a wonderful time to see members of her family I don't get to see very often.  It is also a time to relax and unwind. I get a few days off to stuff my face with food, shop, and otherwise, take it easy (I usually catch up on a lot of reading on this trip).  

 Photo from holidaywallpapers.org

So I am definitely thankful for that.  But there are plenty of other things I am thankful for this year:

• I am thankful for the fact that my wife and I are both now working.  While I would certainly prefer to have an actual teaching job, I am just glad to still be working at all (especially given what a tough year we have had).  I feel very confident that my current position will lead to something better, and we are so fortunate to have the jobs we do given the our economic situation.   Speaking of which . . .
• I am thankful that we are in a decent spot financially.  No, not great; not even that good; but decent.  As I said, we are both working, and we are able to make ends meet.  We are making enough that we are somewhat financially secure from month-to-month.  Hopefully, we can get to a point where we can afford a house, as well as afford to have a child.  Mentally and emotionally, we are ready for both.  But we have to be patent for now.  We are, however, a lot more financially secure than we were when we first got married.  We were basically broke, but we have been able to save since then.  And as with out job situation, we could be a lot worse off given how so many other people are doing in our country.  While we are discussing economics . . .
• I am thankful for the Occupy Wall Street movement.  I won't say I agree with everything they are doing, and I sometimes wish they had more specific ideas (like these).  But it is long overdue that a movement such as this exists.  By that, I mean people actually marching in the streets and bringing attention to all of the damage done by the excesses and deregulation of our economic system.  I don't know what reforms will ultimately come of this movement, but I know that there are a lot of dedicated people who will keep it going. 

Photo from http://weheartit.com/

• I am thankful for Weight Watchers.  That's right, Weight Watchers  I've been on the diet 2 months, and have almost lost 10 pounds.  I am sure I would have lost a lot more if I exercised more than 3 times a week.  I have tried for years off and on to lose weight, but this is the only thing that has really worked so far.  I won't say it's for everyone.
• I am thankful that an old fraternity brother and one of my best friends became a father yesterday.  I mean this especially because I know he has had some of his own personal struggles in recent years, but now seems more focused and at peace than he ever has.  I can't wait to visit him and see the baby.
• I am thankful that after months of going back and forth between a physical rehabilitation program and the hospital, my grandmother has finally settled into a proper nursing home.  And she seems happy about being in the nursing home, which is a pleasant surprise.
• I am thankful for books (especially my new Kindle), video games, and movies.  OK, that is the lazy, materialistic American side of me.
• I am thankful that I decided not to give up on this blog. 
• I am thankful for Missouri Tigers football.  So this hasn't been our best year for football.   But we've got one more game: our final border showdown with Kansas  before we go to the SEC.  M-I-Z . . .

Photo from The Boston 'Zou

• I am thankful that in a month from now, I will get to spend Christmas with my parents and my childhood friends in Central Missouri.
• I am thankful for my dog, and for all of the progress we have made in improving his behavior this year.  It wasn't that long ago he was barking at every little noise he heard, and trying to bite my hand when I reached over his head.  But my in-laws were gracious enough to pay for us to take him to a behavior specialist (you heard me right).  I love you, you crazy little mutt!
• I am thankful for this . . .

 . . . and this . . .

• I am thankful for my wife!  I love you more than anything in the world!

Parenting, Poverty and Academic Success

Photo from Cool Health Tips  

"How About Better Parents?"  That is what Thomas Friedman suggests in one of his most recent editorials in the New York Times.

In recent years, we’ve been treated to reams of op-ed articles about how we need better teachers in our public schools and, if only the teachers’ unions would go away, our kids would score like Singapore’s on the big international tests. There’s no question that a great teacher can make a huge difference in a student’s achievement, and we need to recruit, train and reward more such teachers. But here’s what some new studies are also showing: We need better parents. Parents more focused on their children’s education can also make a huge difference in a student’s achievement.

He uses research from the often-cited Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which decided to look at factors from outside of the classroom to see what made successful students.  There were three major findings they found:

• Fifteen-year-old students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show markedly higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents read with them infrequently or not at all.


• The performance advantage among students whose parents read to them in their early school years is evident regardless of the family’s socio-economic background.


• Parents’ engagement with their 15-year-olds is strongly associated with better performance in PISA.

Friedman also cites a study by the Center for Public Education, and the Center's Director, Patte Barth, to support this.

“Monitoring homework; making sure children get to school; rewarding their efforts and talking up the idea of going to college. These parent actions are linked to better attendance, grades, test scores, and preparation for college,” Barth wrote. “The study found that getting parents involved with their children’s learning at home is a more powerful driver of achievement than parents attending P.T.A. and school board meetings, volunteering in classrooms, participating in fund-raising, and showing up at back-to-school nights.”

To say that good parenting is important in the academic quality of a young person may seem blatantly obvious to some.  But the reality is that it is probably the most important component in a young person's success.

This simple truth often get's overshadowed in our current national education debate by issues of teacher quality, and how those evil teacher unions want to keep bad teachers in our schools.  That is not to say that good teachers, or good schools for that matter, can't make a difference.  I would even argue that there are probably some things we could do to improve the way teachers are assessed, and there are reforms that can be made to the way schools manage tenure.

But that quote about how "there is no substitute for a good teacher" can be applied tenfold to a good parent.  All teachers know this to be true.  That doesn't mean they give up on student's who struggle or refuse to work.  Often times, they will make extra efforts to reach out to those students.  This isn't to suggest that there aren't good parents who have children that perform poorly in school, or vice versa.  But that general correlation between good parenting and academic quality becomes blatantly obvious whenever a teacher makes a phone call home to a parent, or when parent-teacher conferences come around (if the parent even picks up the phone or shows up to conferences at all). 

Going back to the editorial, something that Friedman barely touches on is the issue of poverty.

Yes, students from more well-to-do households are more likely to have more involved parents. “However,” the PISA team found, “even when comparing students of similar socioeconomic backgrounds, those students whose parents regularly read books to them when they were in the first year of primary school score 14 points higher, on average, than students whose parents did not.”

I won't say that Friedman was wrong to gloss over poverty in his editorial, because the point of the piece was about good parenting.  Yes, good parenting is a more important factor in a student's academic success than what type of socioeconomic background that student comes from.  But what type of parent a person can be to their child is highly influences by their socioeconomic status.

 

Image from The Affordable Housing Institute

 
There are numerous factors that play into this: Do the children live in a one-parent or two parent household?  Is one or both of the parents working multiple jobs with late hours?  Do they have time to read to their children (or taken them to a museums or get them involved in other enrichment and supplemental activities)?  Are the parents homeless (thus putting the emphasis of their time on finding food and shelter rather than what book are they going to read)?

None of this is to suggest that an adult living in a lower-socioeconomic background can't be an excellent parent, or a child from a lower-socioeconomic background can't be an excellent student.  But the conditions of poverty make parental and academic success a lot harder to achieve.  This cannot be underestimated.  I would like to close this post by citing a post I wrote back in February on the issue of poverty and academic success of students in American schools:

 The truth of the matter is that, all things considered, American schools are no worse than most countries around the world.  If anything, our schools as they exist in many neighborhoods are just as capable of outperforming schools in Finland, China, or any other industrialized nation.  There certainly are things that our country can do better to improve the quality of schools and education as a whole.  But the main reason that a school district usually struggles to begin with is poverty.  The reason that inner-city school districts struggles with lower test scores, higher drop-out rates, violence, increased teen pregnancy, and so on is because of the poverty that most of the students and their parents live in.  Everyone knows this is the case, and has known it for years.  For all of the well-being and economic success our country has had compared to the rest of the world, poverty (and all of the societal problems that are linked to it) is the great albatross around America's neck.

Highlight of the Day: 10/11/11

At my evening, tutoring job, I was told that one of the students I was working (who I have been working on with reading skills), is now reading at home, which she never used to do, and the parents wanted to thank me.  I don't how much of that is actually me, but it still feels good.  It was a great way to end the day.

Highlight of the Day: 9/21/2011

Me and another para are trying to teach a reading lesson to a class of students and it is not going well, because of all the misbehavior and distractions that are going on.  Oh, did I mention this was a class of 2 students.

I ended up taking one student, and he ended up taking another.  That seemed to work quite well.