Mueller Charter School Blog

“I’m sure you were terrified of jumping from a charter middle school to high school weren’t you?” a dance teacher from the Middle school asked me after the district dance workshop. No I wasn’t. She kept going, “unprepared?” No. Unless of course becoming co-captain of the dance team, MECHA president, and top 15% of the graduating class of 2012 is considered unprepared.

The American school system seems to believe that a “one size fits all” school is perfect for everybody and the Sweetwater School District agrees. Cutting out charter schools from programs such as Compact for Success, sports, and other activities is their way of letting us know that our schools and its students are not good enough.

Many claim students like myself that decide to stay at their original middle school do it out of fear; we do not want to face the experiences we have seen in some middle school students, such as growing up to fast or bullying. Fear? If we were truly afraid as you claim I am sure we’d be terrified to jump into a completely new experience, one very few people can relate to. In my case, no one could relate to since I was part of the first seventh and eighth grade class at Mueller Charter Leadership Academy. Too many people blame us of looking down at regular middle schools. Let’s clarify that we do not see these institutions as anything less than a charter school, some of us are just different kinds of students that want to embark on new missions that want to challenge the system.

And that is exactly why we are constantly under attack, we challenge the system. The most valuable lesson I learned during my middle school years was to embrace who I was, were I came from, question what I am being taught, take risks, and challenge authority if I did not agree with something. This lesson has taken me to places I never thought I would go. I became president of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, representing Chicanos in my high school and challenging authority in order to gain equality for my people. I was the first to jump from the beginner dance level to the dance team and become co-captain, Also, to audition for a professional training facility and become the youngest to receive a scholarship.

To say charter school students are not prepared is an absurd statement. To take away privileges such as Compact for Success is ridiculous; most charter school students are top of the class anyway and will get into amazing schools. The valedictorian of the junior class at my high school is a MCLA student, and so is the salutatorian, do you need a better example?

Most of your intentions in attacking charter school schools is not to benefit its students, it’s all about the money, politics, and fear. Yes, you are all afraid deep down that students like me will grow and challenge the “knowledge” you try to put in our heads. Your district is losing money, and you don’t care if it costs students education as long as your paycheck grows. Students meant to follow a dark road even if they are at the best institution in the world, but I guarantee you charter schools genuinely care for anyone that walks their hallway, and that is priceless.

–Mustang, Maria Plascencia, MCLA Class of 2008

Mind if I share some thoughts with you guys?

When listening to Obama’s State of the Union address last night I couldn’t help but hear the similarities between what he sees as necessary change in our country and what we see as necessary change in El Milagro. If we read a transcript of what he has to say we might find terms like deficit, education, and the last decade being congruent with what we have seen with our progress as a Charter.

Obama discussed to putting our money in things we must have and cutting back on things we would like to have.  I see the same in our budget talks.

He talks about making sure we have the foundations to ensure success and to come together and put aside bickering and finger pointing and that our successes do not come from others failures.

He talked about openness and honesty and communication amongst the old and the new. To focus on the good and what we are doing right and have the guts to speak up about what needs to change. He said that the problems he chose to tackle like health care reform was because it is necessary and not because it makes for good politics. The same can be true about tackling the issue of What Works!

What I am hearing from our government leader are changes that we can parallel in our most prized piece of land, our little county, our independent charter school who desperately wants to maintain it’s independence from further bureaucracy. Whose citizens want to maintain their structure and health care and autonomy from outside rule and decision making. We can move forward and achieve 840 but change must happen today and tomorrow. We need to separate routine from a rut;we need to look at better ways of doing things.

I do not have the answer and I do not propose that I can come up with one alone;just as Obama said in reference to leading the country through the next 4 years. But I do see a strength and a drive of the staff, students and parents here.

I have seen that in teachers who willingly schedule conferences well after school is out or just after the sun has come up in the early morning.  I have seen that in parents who come to conferences asking what they can do to help their child at home. I have seen that in teachers and support staff who attend the conferences and begin with verbal praise of academic progress and conclude by verbal encouragement to build on that success.  I have seen it in teachers who prefer to accept the blame for their struggling students and search for answers.

With that deeply held belief that we are here to help others, I believe we can harness that energy and climb up the CST score mountain as a team.

If Obama can get the US out of a 1 trillion dollar deficit next year, our support staff can get El Milagro out of an API deficit this year.

Just a thought anyway…

Written by Melinda White.

Joanne Jacobs wrote in a recent blog post:

In a Washington Post op-ed, cognitive scientist Dan Willingham critiques the standards for assuming students can understand what they read without background knowledge. Teaching “strategies” doesn’t lead to comprehension.

Remarkably, if you take kids who score poorly on a reading test and ask them to read on a topic they know something about (baseball, say, or dinosaurs) all of a sudden their comprehension is terrific—better than kids who score well on reading tests but who don’t know a lot about baseball or dinosaurs.

In other words, kids who score well on reading tests are not really kids with good “reading skills.”

Once students have “cracked the code of letters and sounds” and read fluently, the good readers are the ones with the prior knowledge to enable them to understand what they read, Willingham argues.  Students who lack background knowledge can reason their way through a text, but it’s slow and difficult, “a recipe for creating a student who doesn’t like reading.”

THE RESEARCH

Joann Jacob’s blog isn’t the leading authority on the connection between “background reading” and reading comprehension though– that research has been out for decades:

“Prior knowledge has a large influence on student performance, explaining up to 81% of the variance in posttest scores (Dochy, Segers, & Buehl, 1999). And there is a well established correlation between prior knowledge and reading comprehension (Langer, 1984; Long, Winograd, & Bridget, 1989; Stevens, 1980). Irrespective of students’ reading ability, high prior knowledge of a subject area or key vocabulary for a text often means higher scores on reading comprehension measures (Langer, 1984; Long et al., 1989; Stevens, 1980). In addition, high correlations have been found between prior knowledge and speed and accuracy of study behavior (reviewed in (Dochy et al., 1999) as well as student interest in a topic (Tobias, 1994). Thus, prior knowledge is associated with beneficial academic behaviors and higher academic performance.”

More recently, Robert Marzano devoted an entire book on the subject: “Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement “

HOW WE BUILD ON STUDENT’S PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Here at MCS, our students come to us with lots of background knowledge–  only IF their parents are highly educated, if they travel extensively, if there are hundreds (thousands) of books and publications in the house, if the family talks about “stuff”  at the dinner table, if they are innately curious, if they are consistently exposed to lots of different and interesting adults who engage them in deep conversation.

Or they don’t.   And if they don’t, then we are the next best source for building “background knowledge”.

We know we are building  students’ background knowledge whenever we:

• Focus on essential vocabulary

• Consistently demand the use of Academic Language

• Maintain high expectations

• Encourage lively conversations (and Accountable Talk) for the “Brainstorming” phase of the writing process

• Emphasize “Text To Self… Text To Text…   Text To World”  Connections

• Give them cause to “wonder”

• Encourage, Incorporate, Emphasize NON-Fiction, Expository reading passages about lots of varied and interesting things

• Have classroom discussions and about world events, the arts, space travel, and other things that interest our students

• Utilize our technology as a portal to the world:   United Streaming, Teacher Tube, You Tube (I know it’s filtered!), PBS, DVD series from Discovery and Animal Planet and Ken Burns, etc.

CNN STUDENT NEWS

Lately many of our classrooms have been weaving “CNN Student News” into their daily routine.  This strategy has been very effective…  and very exciting for kids.    Today there was a story about the tsunami in Indonesia and Samoa (science, geography, world culture, economics)…  There was also a story about the President’s call for a longer academic year (up to 200 days!!!) and longer school days!  And there was a story about Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympic Games.

At Mueller Charter School, our classrooms really are a window to the world!

Room 806 would like to thank Dr. Riley for taking time out of his day to come and inspire us to start writing. Thank you for showing us a great tool to use as we become authors this year. We can’t wait to have you back in our class to check out how we are growing as writers. We learned today that not a lot of people get past the drafting step in the writing process. We were shocked to hear that students don’t finish their writing so we made a goal as a class to insure that we all get to the publishing step in the writing process. We will achieve our goal by staying focused, being prepared to write by using our writer’s workshop flip book, and by remembering the “APPPLE” strategy that Dr. Riley taught us. Again thank you Dr. Riley and Room 805 for giving us the opportunity to be inspired to be fabulous writers.

Mrs. Arias’ Wonderful 4th Grade Class

Our third article, “Pearls Before Breakfast”, was very different from the first two.  At first glance, it seems to have nothing to do with education.  But it has everything to do with “balance”, with paying attention to things that matter, with finding beauty in surprising places.

Instead of guiding questions today… here are some guiding answers: 

• It is a reminder that when we go to the Chula Vista Nature Center we should leave our IPods at home!

• If we see a street musician, especially a concert violinist playing Bach, we should stop and listen. (And leave a dollar in the violin case)

• When everybody else is rushing past the virtuoso, the children will pull us back– if we let them.  

Other answers?

The American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland serves a population that is similar to Mueller’s… but they get much different results.  They are widely praised for achieving an amazing API of 967, one of the highest scores in the entire state!

Last night we read an LA Times article about the school.  Here are some questions to reflect on:

• Would you send your child to the American Indian Charter School?

• The article quotes a donor from the Koret Foundation in the Bay Area as saying: 

“They really should be the model for public education in the state of California. What I will never understand is why the world is not beating a path to their door to benchmark them, learn from them and replicate what they are doing.”

Are they a model? Should we be “beating a path to their door” to replicate what they are doing?

• This may be an excellent article to help us align our core values with our actions and our efforts here at Mueller:  Who are we as an organization?  What do we stand for?  What are we willing to do to get results like the American Indian Charter School… and what are we NOT willing to do?

What guiding questions would you pose to your colleagues about this article?

“School Connectedness - Strategies for Increasing Protective Factors Among Youth,” emphasizes the tremendous capacity that that schools have in facilitating school connectedness.  This publication asserts there if students feel more connected and engaged in schools, then they are more likely to have positive educational and health outcomes.

Below are some prompts for us to consider:

• As you reflect on your own personal experiences in schools, what protective factors kept you connected to school?  Were there any specific factors that played more influential roles in your academic, emotional or social development than others?
• As we envision this new year together, how can the six evidence-based strategies outlined in this publication better inform our work in each classroom, within each grade level, and across our entire campus.
• What are we, as a charter, doing well as it relates to school connectedness?  Where can you continue grow as and educator?  Where can we all continue to grow as an organization?

Feel free to respond to any of these prompts OR create your own…

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Friday, May 1, the staff at MCS received their required training on the administration of the CST.  In the spirit of unity and mutual support, Coach Ron performed the following poem.  It was a great start to the weekend and to the beginning of our two weeks of testing.

 

 

Sooo…

this week I happened to see the sacred tests arrive… 

And no jive,

Ms. Maureen had two secret service agents walking steady by her side…  

 

No lie.

 

I’m pretty sure one of them had a new silver mustache

and he was guarding that test like it was Mueller cash….

And the other,

well the other walked with a purpose hard to describe but hey,   

I’ll try.

 

See, by chance I saw this in just a moment’s glance…

 

Both eyes

seemed focused on the prize

and though it’s hard to describe…

 

they revealed a mix of characteristics… 

(Now, everyone easy as I get in these licks…)

 

See it was clear he had the compassion of Old Papa Smurf

watching over his little turf…

And yet

there was the stern attitude of Notre Dame’s fighting Irish, “slash”,

a little Mr. Miagi, “slash”,

the Pedagogy of Paulo Friere,

and of course the never tiring force of his strength…

Not found in the sun, and surely not in the hair,

like that of Sampson… 

 

Umm, yes sir almost done.

 

But instead, in the strength that we send

and lend

with every moment and every message bent around young listening minds…  

 

Young Listening Minds… 

 

Let’s keep this in mind…

 

Yuh know I’ve heard the kids can sense our stress

and the mess

that often becomes the small details of this test.

 

Like making sure our pencils are sharp… but apparently not too sharp,

or making sure that when we read the directions

we follow the directions,

like flipping the script and reading word for word…

…like a mocking bird. 

Geeze…

last I heard those long directions

always reminded me of those last words before lethal injections!

And what about our attempt at nervous pregame connections:

“Keep your focus,

trust your mind,

make sure yuh read each and every line,

don’t forget to take your time,

and don’t yuh worry, your set and prime… 

Everything is guna be just fine!”

 

(I think I need a soda and lime!) 

 

And for all my peers who whisper in my ears

this one is for your sighs, whys,

held back cries

as you all pry

 

every piece of paper from your classroom walls

until our rooms resemble old and cold bathroom stalls! 

 

But wait!

I think even bathroom stalls have … words on the walls… 

 

And of course a small verse for the terrible things our support staff will be facing; 

Apparently, you will be erasing

the scribble marks, happy faces, doodles, disgruntled statements, and drool

found around the 4 corners of the white borders…

I don’t know why!?  Please don’t shoot the messenger.

 

Wow is it a mess in here?  Nah, I just liked the way in which it added to the rhyme…

So, lets get out the grumbles and moans,

cause our kids are coming to bubble and own… every answer,

daylight dancers,

moving in forward motions,

they’ll be the one’s settling commotion

with fluid motions of their writing sticks, candle wicks in dark places,

leaving traces of “El Milagro” in the streets,

and the drum beats

of our hearts… 

 

Yes, this is the part where we all prepare and stare into the heart of things… 

And before we go any further I just wanna ask you all

to take away any worry that may have found its way to your face

and try to keep pace

with what I’m really saying.

You see we are the ones who have been quietly laying between doubt and fear,

steering young minds with dedicated time

and passion. 

We ration hope and cope with each question,

life lessons extending beyond what they score, whether strong or poor…

Each child is at the core of me at the core of we… 

 

See up until now we’ve done all we can.  Taken our stand,

trying to find the balance between a united common purpose,

a united common goal,

and evening strolls with our own families… 

 

Damn we!  Sacrifice

deal with head lice,

give advice,

and at times we ask it. 

 

The task is demanding…  

And despite this all, we are all still here standing

with a similar vision of resiliency and hope for our young people…

 

So, as I wrap up this simple rhyme

I hope you all take time

to celebrate

NOT, the manner in which you have dealt with your worry and stress

but instead yours and their…

un-measurable success….

 

Bless…

 

Written and performed by Ron Dyste.

 

As some of you may or may not know, our first graders have been working on understanding the many different types of habitats that people and/or animals live in. We have been working on knowing our 7 continents and viewing many videos and pictures of them in class. We have also been hearing stories about each continent and the habitats that exist there. Along with our studies we have been working on making a visual representation of the different habitats and writing short stories to go along with our artwork. As many of you may not know, last Tuesday we took our students out to experience the continent of Africa at The Wild Animal Park. Like our fellow 6th graders, we quickly discovered that nature was our classroom; whether it’s on a hike learning about the animals around the park and their habitats, standing by the water ways watching a great variety of birds, walking along wooden bridges afraid that we just may not make it across, sitting in a giant egg, or just enjoying a lunch with friends and our classroom parents as we look out onto the beautiful grassland areas below us, our students were learning, writing, and loving this amazing experience as being one with the animals surrounding us. This is a trip we are sure we will not soon forget!

Your friends,

Dawn Wold, Gina Drew, Gretchen Donais, Bertha Ortega, and Heather Naddour

Dear Mueller Familia,

We are reaching the end of Day 2 during this year’s Los Angeles College Week (LACW) and we are “pleasantly exhausted” (Mr. Knox’s words). Thus far our students have been nothing short of amazing and have done an incredible job of representing themselves, their families, friends, and our school.  If you were here with us, you too would be proud of our 8th graders!!!

Mueller Staff just finished debriefing the day and they are on their way to Group Meetings with their respective students.  The purpose of our Group Meetings is to create a space for our students to reflect on their experiences after each day.  Perhaps these groups will discuss the impact that the Museum of Tolerance had on their understanding of prejudice or social justice, perhaps these groups will share how powerful it was to have a guided tour by a USC student who grew up in Chula Vista - just like them, perhaps they will talk about how incredible it was for them to stand a few inches away from Vincent Van Gogh’s famous painting “Water Lilies” at the Getty Museum or maybe they’ll just talk about how cool it was to stay in a hotel room with their BFF’s.  It’s difficult to say which experience will hold the most value for our students, but we feel confident in saying that they’ve had an incredible time here in Los Angeles.  Needless to say, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed ourselves too.  

Here’s to making college dreams happen!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your 2009 Los Angeles College Week Chaperones