Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for September 12, 2007 THE TOUGHEST ASSIGNMENT

The making of a good teacher

Good teaching matters. If you had any doubt, read "The Toughest Assignment," Stephanie Banchero's series about an 8th-grade class on Chicago's South Side. It ran last week and is online at chicagotribune.com/sherman.

Teacher Montie Apostolos understood that it's not enough to punch in, instruct students for 5 hours and 45 minutes, then punch out. It's particularly not enough in a classroom of 34 adolescents struggling with poverty and a host of extreme social problems. To catch up after losing ground in the classroom, her 8th graders needed teaching, parenting and counseling. They needed someone to set higher expectations. They needed a friend.

They got all of that in Apostolos.

The results were striking.

At the beginning of the school year, Apostolos' students could barely answer simple questions about plot, character and narrative in a novel. The class was chaotic. Some students made obscene gestures when Apostolos' back was turned, according to Banchero.

By year's end, those 8th graders were fully engaged in learning and they understood why paying attention now would change their futures. Nearly all the students gushed to Banchero about how Apostolos changed their lives, and how important it was to find someone who genuinely cared for them.

Apostolos told them that it wasn't good enough to aim for a high school diploma, that they must pursue college. By year's end, students engaged in regular, lively, in-depth discussions of topics such as the Civil War that showed newfound critical-thinking skills and a passion for learning. By year's end, Sherman School of Excellence posted higher gains than most other city schools on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test.

Apostolos' success was paved by a strong principal who did the critical work of changing the school culture and demanding more of students and parents. Apostolos was aided by teacher camaraderie, a helpful mentor teacher who dispensed valuable advice and an assistant principal who helped teachers analyze student data so they could improve instruction.

But the students' success came at a price for Apostolos. "I've become a substitute parent," she says in a video on the Tribune's Web site. "I'm on 24-hour call. Kids call me all night. I want to be accessible to them. [They] call asking about social issues. That's the draining piece."

Photos of Apostolos at the beginning of the school year, compared with photos at the end, tell readers all they need to know about the psychic toll her style of teaching exacted. Thirty-four children may be a viable class size in suburban schools filled with high-functioning children. But not in a place where adolescents bring a tangle of social problems and have already fallen well behind national standards.

This page supports an education system that gives a teacher like Montie Apostolos a fighting chance, that has the flexibility to richly reward her for an outstanding performance, that trains teachers so the success in her classroom can be replicated in others. An education system that tells her, in many ways, job well done.