Molino Park Elementary School said goodbye to beloved teacher Sharon Smith last week with a poem penned by a fellow teacher.She died Friday, May 30, the last day of school, moments after waving goodbye to her students. That Friday were her last day before retirement; her retirement party was set for last Thursday.
As the Class of 2020 finishes up their last day of school today, we recognize the end of their senior year did not go as expected. Our students did not get to say goodbye to their classmates, teachers, or the walls of our school as they close this chapter in their lives and enter a new one. Luckily, Mrs. Baker assigned students in her English Class to write a Goodbye Poem to Saint Martin. Read their poems below and the ways our students are saying goodbye to their high school journeys.
Poem Goodbye My School And Teachers
The last day of school is a time of celbration and change. Most kids are thrilled; there are a few that would rather have the structure of the classroom. But whatever their preferences, they are likely to enjoy these short poems about the last day of school.
Poems for teachers can compare teacher to a force of nature, as this thank you teacher poem does. This poem for teacher is one of my best Teacher Day poems. Looking for an inspirational teacher poem? This might be the one.
Teacher poems can be rhyming poems or free verse, as this teacher appreciation poem is. This thank you teacher poem can be used by students or administrators. To make this Teacher Day poem usable by a principal or administrator, change it to say, "I'd show you the positive effect you have had on this school." This is an inspirational teacher poem.
Looking for a thank you teacher poem? This sonnet is a teacher poem for older students and adults to give to their teachers or professors. Put this inspirational teacher poem on a classy looking card. It's a teacher appreciation poem certain to make an impact. It's one of my best poems for teachers.
Teacher poems can talk about different kinds of teachers. We've all had teachers we remember all our lives, the star teachers. This teacher appreciation poem is for that kind of teacher. A poem for a teacher like this is really special.
Teacher poems can be for students of different ages. Just as I designed "Sonnet For An Unforgettable Teacher" for advanced high school or college level students as a poem for teacher, I also wrote preschool teacher poems. Here they are.
As in Miami, Crew included New York City's local teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), in crafting this school improvement plan. District and union representatives held joint meetings to discuss changes in the affected schools.
Crew did not limit support in the Chancellor's District to just teachers. Joseph Colletti, UFT's special representative for educational programs, says Crew reviewed the record of "every single principal" and then removed those he believed were not working or encouraged them to retire. He moved some to other schools that might be a better fit and supported those in the Chancellor's District with professional development, much of it similar to what the teachers received.
In the "Extended Time Schools," the school day was lengthened 40 minutes, and the school calendar was extended by one week. Generally, teachers in Extended Time Schools provided tutoring to their own students from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. in small groups for students who needed help in reading or math. Teachers who chose to work in Extended Time Schools received a 15 percent pay increase for their heavier workload.
According to Colletti, before the virtual district was implemented, district and union officials went to individual schools and spoke to the teachers. Those who did not feel that staying in their schools was a good fit, "were able to get out with their rights and dignity intact," Colletti says, which was important since some teachers had family and other obligations that prevented them from working an extended day.
Mary Atkinson, a social studies teacher at the High School for Health Careers and Sciences in Manhattan, was sorry to say goodbye to the virtual district reform. A teacher for 10 years, Atkinson was just starting her third year when her school was placed in the Chancellor's District. The smaller class size (25 students then, compared to the union's contractual limit of 34 now) allowed her to give a lot more individual attention to kids.
Atkinson also recalls that teachers in the Chancellor's District could request that the district provide extra money to sponsor afterschool programs, like a book club that Atkinson ran at her school. "It's not the kind of thing you would get funded now," she says.
She also misses the professional development in the Chancellor's District. Teachers had a say in making sure the courses related to their work in the classroom, she says. Professional development she had attended before the Chancellor's District focused on such basic topics as writing lesson plans, even if some of the teachers in the class had been teaching for 20 years and had written hundreds of them, Atkinson says. But the Chancellor's District's professional development centered on topics like research-based reading instruction, a really useful topic for high school teachers who often don't know how to provide literacy instruction.
This focus on professional development, curriculum, and materials is based on the argument, which several education experts have made, that if teachers and administrators in low-scoring schools had the capacity to fix their own problems, they would do so.
The visits are not punitive. According to Randy Biro, director of educational policy for the United Teachers of Dade (UTD), "In the vast majority of cases, it's handled in a way that is truly supportive. But there are times when we've had to intervene." In one Zone elementary school, reading teachers adamantly refused to allow a particular support specialist back into the school because her attitude was demeaning; that support specialist has since been reassigned and her attitude has improved.
Woodard is also trying to find out what students know. That's why she periodically meets with principals to review student data, which she did three times in the first half of this school year. She and the principals review student assessment results by subject area, teacher, and student. If she notices that a student is continually achieving only 20 percent out of a possible 100 percent on an assessment of say, reading mastery, Woodard will ask the student's principal what is happening with this student. "That alerts them there's a problem," explains Woodard. The principal would then find out from the teacher what's holding the student back and what could help. Again, the goal is to make sure teachers get the support they need.
At individual Zone schools, principals should be doing ongoing data checks with their teachers, and teachers should be doing such checks with their students, "so that everything is connected to data in order to improve instruction and learning," Woodard says.
Added time for both student and teacher learning is another key feature of Zone schools. Zone schools start two weeks earlier than the district's other schools. They also have an extended day four days a week that is an hour longer. The extended day consists of an "Academic Improvement Period," which is typically held the eighth and last period of the day. In it, teachers tutor small groups of students who are below grade level and who need extra help in reading or math. Such tutoring lasts as long as it takes to get students up to grade level. Students who don't need this remediation can participate in enrichment activities like internships at the local hospital and doctors' offices or other extracurricular activities, such as chess clubs or tutoring other students.
Teachers in the Zone are paid 20 percent more than other teachers and participate in a minimum of 56 hours of professional development annually. To ensure that students receive consistent instruction, teachers in Zone schools must work in their school for a year before requesting a transfer.
Every Wednesday, students in Zone schools are released one hour early. According to the district's memorandum of understanding with the United Teachers of Dade, teachers use that time for collaborative planning.
Making sure these schools continue to improve is a tall order. But union officials believe they have helped lay the foundation for the Zone's continued success. A key to the initiative was explicitly stated in the contract that the Zone would last for three years, says Karen Aronowitz, president of UTD. "We had a timeframe for this so that it wasn't going to go away." What happens with many teachers is that they just get so burned by new programs, she says. "People turn themselves into pretzels trying to comply." Then six months later, a year later, the money dries up and the program and the administrator that implemented it are gone. "After a while, teachers don't believe in new programs," Aronowitz says. "They find if they just wait long enough it'll go away." But with the Zone's three-year timeframe written into the contract, teachers knew that the effort they put into the Zone's reforms would be worthwhile.
After all the give and take, UTD helped market the Zone to teachers. UTD ensured that all teachers had the opportunity to transfer out if they couldn't commit to the longer day and year. Only about five percent of the teachers chose to transfer before the Zone was implemented midyear in January 2005, Biro says. In addition, less than two percent were asked to transfer by their school administrations who felt it was in the school's best interest.
Passing It On, Or, How I Met Tiff CATHERINE HUNTER Once - yes, once - my daughter got into some trouble at school. I believe she was in the sixth grade then and she came home from school very dejected. With hmniliation and sorrow, she handed over to me the dreaded "incidentreport" her teacher had sent home with her. I read it with great trepidation. The incident report was most interesting. For one thing, it was horribly misspelled - but we'll let that slide for now. In official tones, it informed me that my daughter had been caught red-handed in the criminal act of passing a note in the classroom. This behaviour, I was further informed, was disrespectful, and it was absolutely "not exceptional," by which I surmised that the teacher meant "not acceptable." Attached to the incident report was a xeroxed copy of the offending note. A xerox! The original was being kept, I suppose, in the evidence locker, in the event of a plea of not guilty and an ensuing trial - I knew from reading detective novels that the chain of evidence had to be cautiously protected. In any case, the copy was quite legible. There were the incriminating words, in my daughter's own handwriting, no denying it. The note read: "At 3 o'clock, stand up and do the conga. Pass it on." Of course, I punished her severely. * * * Now why does this incident remind me of Timothy Findley? Is it because he is not acceptable? No. "Not exceptional?" Certainly not. Perhaps it is because Timothy Findley, like my daughter, can be said to be guilty ofconspiring to dance. That's part of it. But most of all, it is those three beautiful words: Pass it on. I first met Tiffin 1985 or 1986, when he was, all too briefly; writer-in-residence at the University of Winnipeg, where I was an undergraduate. My daughter was in diapers then, and I lugged huge, clumsy bags of them back and forth from the daycare through the halls of academia, along with huge, clumsy bags of Milton, Blake, the history ofWestern civilization and other burdens. Two ofmy teachers, Uma Parameswaran and Don Jewison, had somehow talked me into submitting some ofmy poems to be read by this visiting author before he arrived. After I surrendered them, I was filled with a sense of shame (not unlike the shame I experience to this day whenever something appears in print), and awaited his visit to our school in a manner similar to that of aprisoner awaiting trial. Then, one fine scary day, I was summoned to appear before the great man. I arrived at the appointed hour and there he was, himself, sitting all alone in the office, in all his splendour - Bill Whitehead! Phew! I believed I was to be spared the meeting. Mr Whitehead would let me down gently- Mr Findley was of course too busy to see me, etc. - and I could go 38 Revue d 'itudes canadiennes Vol. 33, No. 4 (Hiver 1998-99 Winter) safely back to my little life. But no - the writer-in-residence was only a bit late, you see, so I squirmed and waited with Bill, who was really, really, unbelievably kind and very nearly successful in calming me down. Findley appeared after a few minutes, and introductions were made. We chatted a bit, though I was ill at ease, unaccustomed to their urbane, Toronto-style art of conversation. And then Timothy Findley began to talk to me about my writing in a way that nobody had ever done before. I won't reveal what he actually saidand I especially won't admit to the astute criticisms he made. The point lies in the way he talked to me. Seriously. As if! were a writer! I sat there rather stunned. Did I say, "Sir, I am in awe of the genius of your books? The Last of the Crazy People took my head offmy shoulders? The Wars made me weep? It is an honour to meet you?" No. I just sat there stupidly, said goodbye stupidly, Wandered stupidly back out into the halls in a - well, in a stupor. I was a... 2ff7e9595c
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