• Media Matters in Middle School Years
• The Life and Emotional Issues of Being an Adoptee
• Mentoring Program Aims to Improve Equity
• From Heart Monitors to Video Games
• Bringing Chinese Culture to the Classroom
• Moving Music Education onto the Web
• Faculty Spent Summer Learning Better Ways to Teach
• A New Way of Looking at MCAS
• Nursing Safer Schools
• Historical Writing Bridges the Gap for Freshmen

Foundation note: Teddi Jacobs and Nicole Disher are not your average physical education teachers. Jacobs is the Coordinator of Physical Education for the Brookline Public Schools, while Disher teaches K–8 Physical Education at the Driscoll School. In 2005, Jacobs and Disher received a collaborative grant from the Brookline Education Foundation to attend a "Jumpstart P.E." Workshop at Polar Headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Polar is the leader in downloadable heart-rate monitor technology. In addition to training in fitness concepts and assessment, both received heart rate transmitters, heart rate monitors, and pocket personal computers to organize data. The following article, which appeared in the January 31, 2008 Brookline TAB, provides an update on the way that this grant has influenced the teaching of physical education in the Brookline Public Schools.

by Neal Simpson/staff writer

While their classmates dribble basketballs between hoops, Jenny Beizer and three friends jog in place in a corner of the Driscoll School gym.

The girls stop suddenly and look, simultaneously, at their thick wristwatches. “184,” says one, and they begin to jog again.

You wouldn’t know it from watching, but every student in the gym, from the basketball players to the joggers, is measuring their heart rate. Each is wearing a watch that reads information from a remote sensor strapped to their chest.

But what the students don’t know yet is that the watches aren’t just reading their heart rate. They’re charting it.

“This records your heart rate,” physical education teacher Nicole Disher tells her students at the end of the class. “I can download it and get a recording what your heart rate is doing.”

The heart rate monitors are just one piece of gadgetry physical education teachers now use to assess student progress and excite students who would normal sit by the sidelines.

Once considered the antitheses of fitness education, gadgets have joined basketballs and aerobic mats in teachers’ arsenals. From heart monitors to hand-held computers and even video games, the digital age has descended on the school gym.

“It’s changed a lot,” said Teddi Jacobs, the districts physical education coordinator. “There was no technology in the old days — it was all playground balls.”

Jacobs said Disher is a technology pioneer among Brookline P.E. teachers. She straps heart monitors to her students, prints out computers assessments for parents and carriers a pocket PC that she can use to record grades, check attendance or even time races.

For P.E. teachers, who must teach and record for a whole school rather than a single class, the devices are a godsend.

“That’s what so nice,” said Disher. “I don’t have time between classes to record things.”

The district would like to equip more P.E teachers with the latest gadgetry. Jacobs recently asked the schools for $20,000 to buy new computers and 17 pocket PCs over the next three years.

Discher said the technology lets her better assess how her students are doing and where they can improve. The heart monitors, for example, will teach students where there heart rate should be during exercise and show them what kind of activities gets them there.
But first she has to teach them how to put it on.

“Guys, your heart is not here,” Disher told her eighth-grade class as she held the monitor to her stomach. “You laugh, but guess how many kids put this here? A lot.”

Disher sends the class into the bathroom to wet the bands and strapped them around their chests. Once she checks the monitors to make sure they’re working, the students are off dribbling, jogging or doing whatever they like.

Most student go on playing as if they weren’t wearing the devices, but some, like the four girls in the corner, start to play with the monitors, seeing how high they can get their heart rate.

Lilly Scheindlin and Leila Spi, both 13, are among them.
“It’s better than...,” said Leila.
“...basketball,” finishes Lilly.

Other said the monitors were just a nice change of pace.

“Usually it’s like fitness, so it’s the push-ups and the pull-ups or the running,” said Shoshanna Gordon, 14.

In a couple of weeks, the students will learn how to formulate their “zone,” or a heart rate they can sustain for 20 to 30 minutes of exercise.

The heart monitors represent a huge departure from the old days, when students would struggle to find their pulse by placing a finger on their neck.

By the time everybody founded it, their heart rates down,” said Jacobs. “Now you glance at your watch, see if you’re in your zone; if you’re not, you increase your activity.”

Jacobs has her own favorite gym technology: video games.

In her high school classes, the teacher has begun using Dance Dance Revolution, a video game that has players dance along to on screen-prompts. She said she sees the game as “just as a another way to get kids who might be sedentary excited about moving.”

“Kids were running in — and this doesn’t happen at the fitness center — to be first,” she said.

P.E. teachers have also begun performing a student assessment called the FitnessGram. Implement district wide last year, the assessment shows students where they’re doing well and where they can improve.

“It’s nice to show them some hard data, just looking at their score and looking at what they can do to improve their own fitness levels,” said Jacobs.

Disher said she is grateful for the district’s enthusiasm for new approaches to physical education.

“I’m very, very luck to be where I am and have access to the technology I have,” she said.

What do you think? You can add your comments to this story at nsimpson@cnc.com.

Neal Simpson can be reached at nsimpson@cnc.com.

Jane Leo conducts morning meeting in her first grade class at Heath School.

BROOKLINE - Jane Leo, a first-grade teacher at the Heath School, loves to teach 6- and 7-year-olds because of their fearlessness and confidence. “The sky’s the limit in terms of what they believe they can do,” she said.

Leo is a lifelong learner and pretty fearless herself. Her most recent exploration was inspired by a course on Chinese literature given at Primary Source, an education foundation dedicated to teaching through original texts. After the course, Leo applied to visit China as part of a Primary Source study tour. A grant from the Brookline Education Foundation supported this trip in July 2007. Leo talks about her travels:

How did you become interested in studying about China?
Leo: In my freshman year of college, I was a waitress at a Chinese restaurant. I had to translate my orders into Chinese because the cooks’ English was as limited as my Chinese. If business was slow, I could ask one of the other waitresses to translate the order for me. But when they were busy, I was forced to use a much less efficient system I called the “clothespin system.” Clothespins were labeled with both the English and Chinese name for a particular dish. With clothespins lining both edges of the paper, my orders resembled large centipedes. As I handed this absurdity over to the cooks, I vowed to learn Chinese. It was an exhilarating challenge. Never before had a foreign language seemed so useful. My co-workers were more than willing to help. I realized it wasn’t the novelty of learning the language that excited me, but being able to connect with people who might otherwise be inaccessible to me. My curiosity and willingness to learn proved to be enough to open the lines of communication.

Can you describe the course at Primary Source that was the precursor to this trip?
Leo: The course, “From Monkey King to Misty Poets: Bringing Chinese Literature to K-12 Classrooms,” was a 10-day institute offered during the summer of 2006. We studied literature starting with ancient Chinese poetry from the Tang Dynasty, and working all the way up to memoirs of the Mao era.

One of the genres you studied was Shi poetry. How do you use this material with young children?
Leo: What struck me about Shi poetry is how accessible and meaningful it is today, even though it’s 1,500 years old. Adults can glean deeper meaning from the poems, but at face value, they capture slices of life that children can relate to. In the classroom, we read Shi poems and look for common threads in the structure and meaning of the poems. The kids identify that many Shi poems have four lines; the first two lines describe something — a place, a thing, a person. The third line offers a question about our chosen topic; and the fourth line sums up our feelings about the topic. We write Shi poems about animals, objects and places using this format.

One goal of your trip was to learn about how people live in both urban and rural areas of China. What did you observe?
Leo: We visited some of the wealthier cities in China: Shanghai, Beijing and Huangzhou. By contrast, the rural villages we visited were like walking back in time at least 30 years. The tour highlighted these disparities. From talking with the local villagers in Huangcun, we learned that many family members were working in the cities as migrant workers to support their families, or had studied hard and gone to college to start a new career.

How will this trip enrich your teaching about China?
Leo: A recurring theme in my travels was the importance of education in China. Education is seen as a way to a better life. I plan to develop lessons on what school is like for children in China. I would also like to teach the numbers in Chinese with sign language, hand signs for numbers 1-10 that are often used in the marketplace for bargaining. I would like to highlight the differences between the English language and Chinese — it matters how you say it!
In Brookline, the first-grade unit on China focuses on things that a tourist would experience in China, such as calligraphy and food. I’m looking to give my students a deeper understanding of Chinese culture by exposing them to Chinese literature, art and my own personal experience. That I’ve visited China adds a lot of credibility to my lessons.

Carolyn Castellano conducts student musicians in her Jazz Band class.

Carolyn Castellano, Brookline High School’s Concert and Jazz Band director, wished she had more time to collaborate with her students — and that they had more time to collaborate with each other — on original music. The time spent in the classroom just wasn’t enough. One day, she had an inspiration: What if class could “continue outside the walls of the classroom?”
She approached artist and Web designer Philippe Lejeune, and creativehighschoolmusic.net was born. With a grant from the Brookline Education Foundation, Castellano and Lejeune transformed an ordinary Web site into an interactive online classroom where students can talk with each other, watch instrumental music lessons and view actual classroom footage of musical arrangements in the process of being created. Castellano talks more about creativehighschoolmusic.net.

What do visitors see when they enter creativehighschoolmusic.net?
Castellano: On the site, you can listen to our songs, many of which are original compositions. Our jazz band concerts are archived on the site. There are podcasts showing discussions about different subjects, such as the future of CDs.

Aside from the need for more instructional time, what motivated you to create a Web site for student musicians?
Castellano: Kids grow up in a multimedia world. It’s a cross-media approach, so to be able to present the class in that way, you can watch it, listen to it, etc. I believe that students get an epiphany by watching themselves rather than having someone else tell them. I say, “Why don’t you go back and watch what you were doing?” They come to realizations on their own.

How do students use the blog on your site?
Castellano: Blogging allows students to go back after the class is over, formulate their thoughts and communicate with each other. They are required to blog two times a week so I know that they’re thinking about what’s going on in the classroom. I moderate the blog; only students can comment.

What is the Ellington Project, and what can visitors learn from this area of the site?
Castellano: The Ellington Project shows how we work on music in the classroom, which is useful for other educators. If you look at the video, we sit in a circle and it’s mostly the students talking. They can go back at night and critique it and come back the next day and give feedback.

There is also video of students presenting instrumental music lessons. How do you help high school students to present an effective lesson, and why do you have them teach?
Castellano: I ask them what types of things they wish they knew when they were in seventh or eighth grade that they’d like to do a five-minute lesson on. I have them teach because having to express to others something that you know intrinsically is a valuable experience. They also do their own arrangements, and they teach their arrangements to their peers. The lessons also are a way of helping up-and-coming musicians from the elementary school [who log on to the site] to work on some of the basics of their instruments.

How is music education for this generation different than it was for other generations?
Castellano: The Web-based stuff is very aural. A formally trained musician learns notes, but the informal musicians are listening to music and then trying to figure out how to play it. A lot of my students are like that.
Music is not just theory, it’s aural: It’s texture, and hearing, and organizing sounds. When you use music software, you’re problem-solving as you’re organizing sounds. We learn theory by writing songs.

What challenges does the new technology present for music educators?
Castellano: Once you get on the Web, how do you use it in your pedagogy? What’s the value of it for instruction? There can’t be a handbook for it because the technology keeps changing. We have to constantly be evaluating. We have to change the way we are thinking about music education because this is how musicians are promoting themselves: It’s Web-based, with a Web page and a presence on MySpace and YouTube.

What are your future plans for the site?
Castellano: We’re still working on making the site more interactive. Right now, you can record a song directly onto the Web page, up to two minutes, and everyone can listen to it. We’d like to use the Web page to collaborate on music compositions online. This is largely untapped.

Brookline teachers in classrooms from preschool through grade 12 had much more than the beach on their minds for the summer of 2007. Thanks to Brookline Education Foundation grants, eighty-four educators were able to pursue intellectual adventure--and return to their schools this September more than ready to teach. In the words of one grant recipient, “My studies of Spanish language this summer have opened my eyes to the more subtle complexities of the language… this will boost my confidence in teaching.”

Among the exciting undertakings supported by the Brookline Education Foundation, was Heath teacher Jane Leo’s trip to China to study urban and rural life. She plans to enrich her first-grade teaching on China as a result. Driscoll School Librarian Amy Neale's grant took her to Ghana for a two-week study tour. She now is evaluating and revamping the Driscoll Library's Western Africa materials. And Robin Toback, Devotion/Heath School psychologist, attended a week-long seminar, joining colleagues from around the world to discuss the educational consequences of poverty and deprivation.

 At Brookline High, Spanish language students will benefit from a Brookline Education Foundation-funded collaboration between World Language teachers Kenny Kozol and Kristina Tobey. They worked over the summer to develop Spanish lessons that use music as a lens into the cultures of Spanish-speaking countries. And, after his intense study of strategies for teaching music theory at the high school level, Choral Director Michael Driscoll expects to bring forth new heights of musicianship from his students.

Not all grants work happens during the summer. Ninety-eight additional Brookline Education Foundation grant recipients from varying disciplines will study, attend conferences, and collaborate with colleagues during the 2007-08 school year. Among these are Lincoln school educator/coaches, Robert Hutchison and Brian Jones, who will attend a three-day Nike Basketball Coaches Clinic this fall to learn on- and off-court coaching strategy under some of America's best high school and college coaches. And, sixth- through eighth-grade science teachers from each of Brookline's elementary schools will attend the 2008 National Science Teachers Association conference in Boston to study new ideas in inquiry-based learning, lab activities, and much more.
  
If you have a child in the Brookline Public Schools, it is likely that his/her teacher, principal, librarian, or learning specialist has been the beneficiary of a Brookline Education Foundation grant. To learn more about the Foundation, and for a full listing of 2007-08 teacher grants, visit BrooklineEducation.org.

Mention the MCAS, and you are likely to hear a number of opinions on its value to schools, students, and teachers. In an effort to get the most out of this standardized test and other assessment tools, Lawrence School Principal Jim Swaim attended the “Data-Wise: Step-by-Step Blueprint for Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning” conference at the Harvard Principal’s Center. A grant from the Brookline Education Foundation funded Swaim’s attendance as well as that of second-grade teacher Jonathan Norwood and Vice Principal Allan Cameron. Swaim and Norwood talk about the experience of attending the Harvard conference.

What interested you in this conference?

Swaim: One of the missions in Brookline is to use assessments within the classroom and to use the MCAS in a logical way. Our intent was to learn how to get a handle on doing this successfully.

Besides the Lawrence team, who attended the Harvard conference?

Swaim: There were participants from all over the nation and from multiple districts. The Detroit Public Schools sent about 30 principals. There were also administrators from Boston, Atlanta, and California. The diversity was so powerful and so interesting.

This was primarily a conference on how to use MCAS data, as well as other forms of assessment, to improve teaching and learning. What were some of the ways of looking at data that you learned about, and how is this different from how you were looking at data before?

Swaim: We learned to use multiple sources of data to create a really vivid image of the teaching, and what students are learning within the framework of that teaching.

Norwood: There is value to be derived from standardized tests when comparing across a large population, as long as results are taken as part of a whole rather than the whole itself.

You were introduced to a program called Data-Wise. How is this program different from Test Whiz, the product currently used to look at MCAS data?

Norwood: Test Whiz is a method for creating data that people can understand. Data-Wise is a tool for analysis, and provides a way to interpret, analyze, and implement change based on your analysis.

Swaim: It gives us a process and the end result of the process is to create within the school a culture of improvement by building the habit among teachers of using data to improve teaching and practice. We learned to look at assessment and not use it to make judgments about kids, but to make judgments about the kind of teaching and learning that is going on.

At the conference, you were taught protocols for looking at data. Have you been able to use these at Lawrence this year?

Swaim: One of the protocols we used the most was this issue of “What is the test asking the students to do? And what can we do in our practice to support that?” We chose to look at the open-response element of the MCAS because it requires children to write in a coherent way and explain their thinking.

What was the next step in this process?

Swaim: The teaching staff dedicated itself to look at what we do already and what we could do to support it even more. We came up with a school-wide scope and sequence. It unified people and gave them a better sense of what was being asked on the MCAS.

Why did you decide to start in kindergarten?

Norwood: If you wait until September of third grade to prepare the kids to write an open response, it’s too late. Of course, the instruction looks a lot different in kindergarten than it does in third grade, but by the time kids get to second grade we’re pretty close to a final product.

There has been a great deal of criticism of the MCAS, and of the notion that schools “teach to the test.” Based on what you learned at the conference, how would you respond to this criticism?

Norwood: The strongest advocates of these tests and those who create them do not want us to teach to the test or practice the test because it invalidates the results. Good, generalized instruction will help kids do well on the test anyway.

Swaim: Profoundly good teaching is what this is about — not about changing our teaching or teaching to the test, but improving practice. Kids who are well taught will do well on this test. We have control over this, and to think that we don’t is destructive.

School nurses, from left to right, Mary Kilkelly, Dierdre London, Barbara Donnelly, Peggy Campion (top row), Barbara Donnelly, Karin Miller, and Bev Gallagher (bottom row). Tricia Laham also attended the conference.

Most of us remember our school nurse as the person who checked our eyesight, took our temperature when we were feeling ill, and put a bandage on a scraped knee or a pack of ice on a bumped head. While direct care is a large part of the role that school nurses play, the job extends far beyond the treatment of bumps and bruises.

With a grant from the Brookline Education Foundation, a group of Brookline Public School nurses attended the School Health Summer Institute this past June. School Health Services Coordinator Kate Donnelly, RN, discusses the challenges faced by school nurses and the experience of attending the Summer Institute.

What is the role of school nurses in the Brookline School System?

The role of the school nurse is to foster the growth, development and educational achievement of students by promoting health and wellness.

That sounds like quite a challenge. What are some ways in which you do this?

Nurses monitor students’ health status; advocate for students to get quality care; and consult with staff and families to develop a plan so that every child will have equal access to a developmentally appropriate education. We also administer direct care, disease surveillance and immunization review, and coordinate mandated screening programs, referral and follow-up.

What else are nurses responsible for that the public may not be aware of?

The nurses play an integral part in emergency preparedness by training school-based medical response teams, contributing to emergency plans and serving on the Crisis Management Teams. Even prior to 9/11, nurses have taken a leadership role in planning for a crisis, and establishing safe procedures for evacuation.

It’s amazing that all of this is handled by only one nurse in each school building. How are each of you able to manage so many responsibilities?

One of our greatest resources is a highly educated, experienced, and dedicated team of school nurses who bring many years of expertise to the clinics. We utilize this asset by collaborating and supporting one another.

Are you able to collaborate with each another as often as you would like?

Most educational specialists are able to meet during the school day or come together for department release days. Nurses are on call for emergencies and have daily scheduled medications and procedures which eliminate the possibility to come together for any more than our monthly staff meeting after school. The opportunity to engage in professional development as a team is rare, so being able to attend the Summer Institute together was very valuable to the nurses.

What are some of the other challenges faced by Brookline school nurses?

The lack of mental health support for students and families in crisis is alarming. Both acute-care and day placements are often not available. It is challenging to plan for students who may not be available for learning because of other issues that they are struggling to manage.

How did the BEF grant help address this challenge?

The mental health courses at the Summer Institute addressed these issues and better informed us about ways to support and plan for students’ reentry to school. Better understanding of medication usages and treatment options will help us to support this most vulnerable and often underserved population.

What was the greatest benefit of attending the Summer Institute?

The conference was excellent and very informative, but the community building, storytelling, and the frequency and intensity of the evening laughter made the experience memorable.

How did your staff react to the experience?

The nurses were very grateful to the foundation for supporting and funding us. The nurses feel validated and appreciated by the Brookline Education Foundation and the community and that has made a very real difference.

Geoff Tegnell and Roger Grande, two members of the Historical Writing Guidelines team

There are no middle schools in Brookline, so educators at Brookline High School have the challenge of working with freshmen who come to them from eight different elementary schools.

While most students are well prepared for the challenges of a high school curriculum, the type of instruction they have experienced can vary from one elementary school to another. Geoff Tegnell, K-8 Social Studies coordinator for Brookline, saw a way to help fix this issue for students. With a grant from the Brookline Education Foundation, Tegnell assembled a team of educators from the elementary schools and the high school to develop clearer guidelines and more common language for use in seventh- and eighth-grade historical writing. Tegnell and High School social studies educator Roger Grande talk here about their work.

Your Brookline Education Foundation grant funds you for two years of research in your field. What has the team set out to do first?

Geoff: We’re exploring best practices and what research says about [teaching and learning history]. We’re discovering the different ways of employing physical or conceptual evidence to present an argument. We’re looking outside our field to see how scholars help students present their ideas in a substantive way.

Roger: Historical writing is a complex skill, so this is a chance to explore that more, to be more discerning, to identify the components in teaching for successful writing, and to develop a more common language so that once the kids get to the high school, they’ll know what to expect and be ready to move on up to the next level.

You are working with a group of teachers from multiple grades and disciplines. How does that work?

Geoff: We are working collaboratively, exploring new directions and new literatures. We are reading, discussing, and briefing each other on what we find.

Roger: It’s a way to get people at the elementary schools and high school talking with each other about writing and disseminating ideas about what is required for good historical writing.

What are the other benefits of working with educators from across grade levels?

Geoff: People have different strategies and different “languages” for teaching. Roger is familiar with what teachers are encountering at the high school, while the sixth-grade teachers give us insight into how they’re preparing students for seventh and eighth grade. We’re exploring the common ground in seventh- and eighth-grade instruction.

As a high school teacher, Roger, what is your level of concern about the writing abilities of incoming freshmen?

Roger: You hear publicly that the state of writing in this country is not very good. I’m not sure I agree with that. I’m pretty pleased with the attention we have paid to writing. It’s just that the range of writing skills is too broad.

Is there anything unexpected that has happened with the team’s work so far?

Roger: It has been an evolutionary process, in which we are raising questions as we go along. For example, a mini-project that we decided to do that wasn’t part of our original plan was to assess what skills are being taught in earlier grades that will establish a foundation [for writing assignments in future grades].

What do you expect to accomplish by the end of the grant period?

Geoff: Our target is a seventh- and eighth-grade manual for writing argumentative essays. It would address concerns that high school teachers might have for incoming students.

Roger: We will have a scope and sequence of how we teach data collection, weighing of evidence, formatting of a five-to-six-page paragraph research essay, and how that develops from the early grades.

Anything else we need to know?

Roger: There are so many other things for teachers to do that to get a group of them to say, “Let’s meet as much as possible” would have been very difficult without our Brookline Education Foundation grant.

Geoff: Our work is already changing the way I teach. We’re looking at how people conceive of history — why we study it, why it’s important. We want to help the kids connect to history in a personal way, to give them opportunities to construct ideas about history. The guide we develop will be much richer, much deeper, with the support of the grant.