Editor’s note: Nate Reaven is one of four rookie teachers contributing to the “North to South Education” blog. Reaven is a graduate of CU-Boulder, and a former Education News Colorado intern.

Leading up to our first day of school, we were instructed to call the parents of our students. We will be calling these parents every week, but these were the first phone calls of the summer.

These were reminder phone calls to both the inexperienced parents with students coming for the first time to the program, and the grizzled veterans – the parents of students with multiple years under their belt.

Because I’m teaching the rising ninth-graders, the oldest students, nearly all of the parents I talked to were occupants of the second category – grizzled veteran.

We were instructed to remind these academically-minded parents about what time to arrive, where to pick up their bus, what they needed to bring – logistics. These phone calls were going fine – until I met Julie, the grandmother of one of my students, Elizabeth.

Julie was fantastic. She was clearly aware and interested in her granddaughter’s experience over the summer. But more than that, Julie was interested in her future. Her daughter is smart, she is just not very good at English – she’s a slow reader, she told me.

Elizabeth was just accepted into the International Baccalaureate program, she tells me, and is quite excited about the math program there. She wants to know what strategies I have to help her learn how to read faster and with more understanding, and I tell her that I’ll try to do my best.

After reading Garrett’s post about calling to sell students on learning – on enriching their lives, I realized how much of a pleasure it was to find a grandmother in, let’s be clear, a difficult situation. The students in this program are only allowed in if they meet certain criteria. Specifically, low socio-economic status, usually a person of color, and someone who has been underserved by their public school options. The students, however, are usually motivated, excited, and ready to learn.

Garrett is forced to convince his students to learn. I am forced to teach Romeo and Juliet to kids who want to learn about Shakespeare, but to the same demographic of students. Garrett walked into an empty classroom, while my fellow teachers and I ran up to every student as they arrived and cheered as they exited the bus. We were creating a culture of excitement around learning.

I do not know what to do about this. I suppose keep doing what I am doing, right? Teaching. Learning. Teaching.

I do know one thing though. I am glad for that conversation I had with Julie, the spectacular grandmother. She gave me hope.

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A large and boisterous group of Denver high school students and other demonstrators marched to the State Capitol Friday to protest Arizona’s harsh new immigration law. The protest, organized by Padres y Jovenes Unidos, came a day after DPS announced a ban on all district-sponsored travel to Arizona.

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OK, so you may be pro-charter or anti-charter, pro-Obama or anti-Obama. But you’ve got to admit it would be pretty cool for the Denver School of Science and Technology to win the commencement competition and have the President show up to address graduating seniors and their families. Here’s a message from DSST CEO Bill Kurtz about how you can help:

Dear Friends—

WE NEED YOUR HELP to bring President Obama to Colorado to speak at Denver School of Science and Technology’s graduation! Please help DSST win the White House Commencement Challenge by voting here:   http://www.whitehouse.gov/commencement <http://www.whitehouse.gov/commencement> .

Your participation matters! At the website, you’ll be asked to rate each school on a scale of 1-5 (5 is the best). Schools will be presented in random order. We hope you give DSST a 5! The three schools with the highest average ratings relative to the other schools move to the next level. The President will make the final selection from these 3 schools and will visit that high school later this spring.

Voting began this morning at 8AM EDT (6AM MDT) and lasts until Thursday, April 29 at 11:59PM EDT. Please vote now! The White House will announce the winner on May 4.

Please vote and pass along this e-mail to your whole network of friends on e-mail, Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin and other social networking sites. Help us go viral by encouraging everyone you know to vote and pass it along to their networks! Here’s our Facebook address: http://www.facebook.com/pages/DSST-Public-Schools/110651475641159.

This is a great opportunity to highlight for the entire country the innovative and passionate work being done in Colorado to improve education and help our kids be successful in college thus becoming the future leaders of our state and nation.

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New York City is discontinuing a $40 million, privately-funded program it launched as a pilot three years ago to pay low-income families for good behavior. One feature of the program was paying kids for good school  attendance and passing  high school Regents exams.

This has always struck me as bizarre, backwards and bordering on bribery. It didn’t seem likely to change school behavior in important or permanent ways. So it’s good to hear the program is ending without any expenditure of public funds.

I wrote about similar experiments a few years ago. Others took issue with my position.

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I am re-reading Richard Kahlenberg’s 2007 book about Albert Shanker, Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battle Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy. It’s a fascinating read about one of the most influential educators and union leaders of our time.

Shanker

Shanker recognized that teachers needed to move beyond action on collective bargaining because it made teachers look as though “we are acting only in our own self-interest, wanting better salaries and smaller class sizes so our lives can be made easier. That image is standing in the way of our achieving professional status, for not only must we act on behalf of our clients, we must be perceived as acting that way.”

In other words, “take a step beyond collective bargaining to improve education.”

Shanker defined a professional teacher as: “someone who receives a liberal arts education, then specialized training, and then must pass a rigorous exam before beginning to practice. She participates in an internship, is guided by mentors, and participates in reviewing the performance of colleagues. [A] reciprocal set of rights—greater autonomy and higher compensation—comes once these professional responsibilities are met.”

Based on this notion of a “new professionalism,” Shanker pushed for Peer Assistance and Review or PAR. It was started in Toledo over 25 years ago. In PAR, the local teacher’s union and administrators jointly manage a program to improve teacher quality by having expert teachers mentor and evaluate (my emphasis added) their peers.

PAR has been shown to help beginning teachers succeed and increase retention; it helps ineffective teachers improve or to dismiss them without undue delay and cost. PAR can build a stronger teaching force and help to promote a culture focusing on sound teaching practices.

I am currently working with our association and talking to our district administrators to look at implementing PAR. The hang-up, and the reason I added emphasis to evaluate, is that current law does not allow a teacher to evaluate a colleague — this can only be done by an administrator.

This is an example of dated legislation that needs to be re-evaluated if we are to make some headway towards education reform. Hopefully, we have some legislators willing to take this on.

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The talk-show host’s take on the firing of teachers at a low-performing Rhode Island school has gone viral:

It’s also drawn a response from singer John Legend, who defended President Obama’s education policies in a piece he penned for The Daily Beast headlined Bill Maher, You’re Wrong on Education.

A hat tip to Alexander Russo at This Week in Education for drawing our attention to this exchange.

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I’ve been trying to catch up on all the good movies being considered or that should be considered for Sunday’s Oscars.  I finally saw “Where the Wild Things Are” last night. I was blown away.

I’m a bit dumbfounded that a film with such beautiful imagery, wonderful acting and such a rich interpretation of a great kid’s book would be snubbed by the Academy.  It’s one of those very rare films that get inside a young boy’s head.  Spike Jonze takes you on an engaging journey that explores the beauty, joys and struggles of growing up.  It’s a quest that reminds us of our humanity and the complexity of a child’s emotional life.

My favorite kids/education movie from last year was “Entre Les Murs” (“The Class”).  It was nominated by the Academy but did not win.  If you haven’t seen it, the film is one of the best descriptions of teaching in urban secondary school.  I’d recommend it for any would-be or current teacher.

So what great movies about kids or education come to mind for the rest of you? I’m always looking for a new one to add to my Netflix’s queue.

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The education reform community finally has an award winning documentary with a powerful message.  “Waiting for Superman” won the Audience Choice Award last week at the Sundance Film Festival.  It will be fascinating to see how it plays with the same audience that loved Davis Guggenheim’s last doc, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

I wonder if liberals will heap praise for it given the content and whether conservatives will embrace it given its bona fide liberal director.

I can’t wait to see it.

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