The Baltimore Curriculum Project (BCP) has been committed for many years to providing excellent and timely professional development, especially to those new to teaching, to Baltimore City Public Schools and to BCP schools.

Every year, BCP gathers 30-40 new staff, usually early in August, to help them develop the skills and knowledge needed to be ready for their initial weeks of work. Training continues throughout the year in both individual and group settings.

From August 6-10, Frederick Elementary hosted our training in behavior management, school climate and culture, and in Direct Instruction.

Our coaches (Marvelyn Johnson, Stacey Hicks, Brenda Kahn, Charmaine Turner, Rosemary Byron, Melissa Hayden, and the Academic Director, Jon McGill) served as guides, coaches and teachers for the new cohort of teachers and classroom aides. Those same folks will be in schools all year long to follow up on what was provided during that initial week.

The new staff varied from those who were brand new to the profession, coming from various universities and accreditation programs, to those who had been teaching for some time but were first-timers with BCP.

BCP has provided this kind of training for many years and the evidence indicates that such PD has a major positive impact on ensuring that new staff understand the expectations of both BCP and the schools. This work also helps our staff acclimate, meet new colleagues and feel that by the end of this week they are no longer “new” but ready to join supportive staff and ready to make an impact on Baltimore's students and their educational lives.

This professional development initiative is vitally important. Our training programs, delivered in the main by our coaches and Academic Director, include a wide range of practical and supportive guidelines for teachers, including on such issues as vocabulary teaching, the impact of poverty on learning, Restorative Practices training and an array of other offerings that support and develop teachers.

To learn more about BCP’s professional development, contact Jon McGill at [email protected].

Hampstead Hill Academy (HHA) students outperformed their peers in Baltimore City Public Schools and the State as a whole on the PARCC assessment, Maryland's annual state test.

In reading, 52% of HHA students passed; 42% of students in Maryland passed; and 18% of students in City Schools passed.

In math, 42% of HHA students passed, 31% of students in Maryland passed, and 14% of students in City Schools passed.

HHA ranked:

Staff at HHA are forming a Data and Equity subcommittee of the School Family Council this fall to analyze the performance of all student groups, the composition of students identified as gifted or advanced, and make recommendations to better support the high academic performance of all HHA students.

Great Job to Hampstead Hill Academy and all of the hard working students at that school!

BALTIMORE CURRICULUM PROJECT: What inspired you to be a professional writer?

MADISON SMARTT BELL: My mother taught me to read when I was three, a couple of years before I started school. Reading from that point on was always a huge part of my life. Throughout elementary school I read a few years above my grade level. I was a bit sickly as a small child and logged a good deal of time on what Robert Louis Stevenson called “The Land of Counterpane.” Reading held me up through those episodes. From the time I was six or seven I wanted to be the person who had the power of telling the story, not just a consumer. And it went on from there.

Talk about a teacher who had an impact on you.

Well, there were plenty. My first grade teacher was a martinet who in advanced age had developed a good number of pathological qualities. For an example of her effect on the kids, the day I was supposed to start second grade I hid in the barn, successfully, all day; I actually missed the first day of school, that year. I don’t mean to say she was all bad. I had some respect for her at the time and in hindsight, more. She had aged out and really needed to retire some years before I hit her classroom, but nobody had the nerve to tell her so. Everybody connected to the school was afraid of her, parent, faculty, staff, administration—except for my mother, who wasn’t afraid of anything, as a result of which I got some relief late in the year. The teacher’s cruelty to children wasn’t intentional, but it was often quite severe. I was far from getting the worst of it but I got my share. I was naturally bored out of my mind in reading circle, as the other kids struggled through those tiny sentences about the adventures of Dick and Jane, and would be punished daily for skipping ahead.

When I was finally lassoed and dragged to the second grade I found a kindly grandmotherly woman who, once she understood my advanced reading ability, knew it was an asset and set me up to spend time helping out in the library and stuff like that. Thanks to her I realized school didn’t have to be, well… an unbounded experience of mental torture.

Little things do make a difference to little kids.

What would you recommend for children who have trouble putting their thoughts on paper?

This problem is not unknown at college level, actually… I’m not a specialist at either that level or yours, but I have been thinking that simple storytelling might be a gateway to writing for both age groups. It’s very easy to record speech these days. Ask kids to tell a story in whatever situation they may find relaxing… and then: Well you said this! It’s pretty cool. Let’s show you how to write it down. For kids who are too nonverbal to tell stories with facility, maybe they can draw and then describe what they have drawn, in speech and then in writing. Older students, I think, almost always have some kind of voice that they use for social situations. The idea of just transcribing that could be an opening to functional written expression. And if the task is to render one’s own voice it might seem a little less like… homework one doesn’t want to do.

How important is it to teach correct mechanics of writing? How important to provide opportunity for free expression without pulling out “the red marking pen”?

The importance of clear expository writing hasn’t gone away. That ability gives people an edge in life, and acquiring it does involve the use of grammar. On the other hand, my experience teaching creative writing (a lot) and courses requiring expository writing (much less) has taught me that these two abilities coincide a lot less than you might assume. It’s sort of like math and chess-playing ability--there’s some relationship but it’s not huge.

When I mark student manuscripts I automatically copy edit (and in some cases wish desperately that students would internalize those suggestions) but I don’t stress that aspect in talking about the stories—what’s far more important is the authenticity and conviction of voice, character development, strength of the plot line, sense of structure.

Teachers in K-12 are up against a different problem—we hope you’ll get a lot of practical expository writing taught so that we won’t have to do it all when your students arrive at college—but my intuition tells me that, at any level, if you give kids an opportunity to tell stories they want or need to tell in some way that’s comfortable for them, they’ll connect positively to the process, and can be coaxed toward grammar from there.

What is one book all elementary school children should read?

Huckleberry Finn, and I say that knowing that in the current social climate it’s an explosive choice. So I will explain it in detail. For a start, this novel portrays quintessential American experience very broadly, at least in principle (okay, it doesn’t cover the full spectrum of today’s population, but I think that a Hmong immigrant kid in Minneapolis could look at how Huck is first made to be a social outcast and later, for sound moral and ethical reasons, chooses to be that, and say, yeah, I get that.) The message of the book is profoundly anti-racist. It does of course make use of a word which nowadays we dare not say (although I will say that making any single word taboo—which words are taboo is something that changes with the times, of course-- only invests it with more harmful power when it is taken out of its lead casket, which as we know to our sorrow it often, in certain unenlightened contexts, still is).

To be anti-racist in Mark Twain’s time was to be anti-slavery, and Huckleberry Finn is also obviously that. Its vocabulary is essential to a realistic portrayal of the situation of that time, and well, sorry, there’s just no honest way to walk that back! When you are called to face a situation, you can’t always be polite about it. Twain’s novel has warts on it, in faithful reflection of the deeply flawed society of mid-nineteenth-century America. The author surely knows those warts are there, is showing them to us so we can see them plainly. Let us have it, warts and all.

There are many small lessons learned along the path of this novel but the most important one is Huck’s decision to choose his friends for (to quote another great American) the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin. And he makes this choice with zero support from the surrounding society. The moral courage that decision requires is still exemplary. The book properly ends with Huck’s declaration: “All right then, I’ll go to hell”—rather than sign himself into the deeply corrupt values that are supposed to pave the path to heaven.

The denouement, dominated by Tom Sawyer, is an absurdity having nothing to do with the real point of the book. I’m not advocating a bowdlerized edition—there’d be babies thrown out with that bathwater. Today, Huckleberry Finn needs to be taught very sensitively to handle that point, the point about the language and a few other issues, but teachers should also remember that our students often have more powers of discernment than we give them credit for. My students, last time I taught the book, reached most of the conclusions I outline above without much prompting. I recently heard from another teacher about a group of African American students who were outraged by the idea of producing an edition which would substitute for ______ the word “slave” – they thought that would be a kind of cover up, and they were right.

If I were to teach Huckleberry Finn again, I think I would close the discussion by playing Janelle Monae’s “Americans” – to my mind a contender for a new and improved national anthem. Play Loud.

Is there a “big idea” or theme that flows through your books?

Oh… that human beings try to make the best they can of themselves in the circumstances they’re given, that they try to win love, and deserve it, and be true to it, and to please God if they think there is one.

What do you believe to be the purpose of public education?

Universal suffrage and public education are the two fundamental guarantees of American society-- the two factors that are supposed to make us what we want to think we are. The road to universal suffrage was extremely rocky and right now it is (again!) under extremely vicious attack. Public education is meant to be the instrument of equal opportunity and to underwrite, not a classless society because that doesn’t exist anywhere, but a society with more class mobility than most.

I say that and believe it, but will also admit that I went to private schools, and so did my daughter, so did my parents for that matter (at high school level in their case). I’m ashamed of that only technically—I understand that parents will always try to make the best educational choice for their children. Public education ought to be that best choice. That it is very often not—because it has been systematically starved of resources by our government—may be our greatest national disgrace (among many that may now seem more obvious!), but is in no way to the discredit of the people who have the extraordinary courage and determination to keep working in the public education system.

ABOUT MADISON SMARTT BELL

Madison Smartt Bell is the author of thirteen novels. Bell's eighth novel, All Soul's Rising, was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award and the 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award and winner of the 1996 Anisfield-Wolf award for the best book of the year dealing with matters of race. Bell's latest novel, The Color of Night, appeared from Vintage Contemporaries in April 2011. Born and raised in Tennessee, he has lived in New York and in London and now lives in Baltimore, Maryland. A graduate of Princeton University (A.B 1979) and Hollins College (M.A. 1981), he has taught in various creative writing programs, including the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. Since 1984 he has taught in the Goucher College Creative Program, where he is currently Professor of English, along with his wife, the poet Elizabeth Spires. Bell served as Director of the Kratz Center for Creative Writing at Goucher College from 1999 to 2008. In 2008 he received the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

To learn more about Madison Smartt Bell visit:

http://faculty.goucher.edu/mbell/

Wolfe Street Academy (WSA) is a Title I Schoolwide Program where, at any given moment, 40 adults serve 251 PreK-5 students.

Currently the school district estimates that 88% of students live in poverty. Over 63% of the students receive English as a Second Language services, and over 9% receive Special Education services.

WSA is committed to providing quality education for all students and this commitment has launched their students into academic success.

From 2005 to 2014, WSA moved from the 77th highest to the 2nd highest performing elementary school in Baltimore, as measured on the Maryland School Assessment. 

These exceptional academic outcomes are due to a collaborative effort between students, parents, neighbors, and school staff.

As a Community School, WSA focuses on engaging parents and empowering them as their children’s primary educators.

In the classrooms, WSA ensures that all teachers provide rigorous, quality instruction designed to meet the academic and socio-emotional needs of all students.

WSA teachers and staff work diligently day in and day out to serve WSA students and their families to the best of their ability. On many days, this is a thankless, yet crucial task.

Due to limited school funding, WSA has had to make difficult choices that often limits the amount of support and teambuilding opportunities the school can offer to teachers and staff. 

Over the summer WSA launched a crowdfunding campaign to provide more opportunities for teachers to bond, collaborate, and support one another. Mutual support and positive morale has been shown to boost school climate and culture, making the school environment one that is pleasant for staff to work in and welcoming to students, parents, and community members. 

So far WSA has raised $975. The funds have been used to upgrade the teacher's lounge with new furniture, a Keurig, and new lighting.

"We are so happy with the result," said Leah Beachley, SWCOS Community Schools Coordinator at WSA.

"It’s come a long way from being just a conference room table with a microwave. The teachers are all very excited about this new, calming space for them to eat lunch and do work during their planning periods."

It's not too late to give at https://www.crowdrise.com/o/en/campaign/wsateachers

With your help we can provide additional supports for WSA teachers such as personalized school uniforms, Teacher Appreciation Week care packages, and other incentives throughout the school year.

Thank you

WSA and BCP would like to thank everyone who has supported WSA's outstanding teachers so far:

Special thanks to WSA Special Education Teacher Katrina Kickbush for coming up with the idea to start the crowdfunding campaign and for helping set up the teacher's lounge.

The Baltimore Curriculum Project would like to thank all of the partners and individuals who donated school supplies and backpacks to our schools for this school year:

City Springs Elementary/Middle School

Frederick Elementary

Govans Elementary

Hampstead Hill Academy (HHA)

Wolfe Street Academy