From Some Professional Educators -- 12 Sisters

Twelve Sisters

Dear Fellow Americans with Concerns about Education,

No, I did not mistype my name. Plus, my name is really sensible; you’ll agree when you see my sisters’ names. Our parents acquired a more creative ability to cultivate names as each of us was born. We do not usually go by our full given names, when you see them all, I believe that you will understand why. But there are times that we use them. We are proud of our names; it is just hard for people to pronounce most of them. Both of our parents’ first names start with “N” and middle names with “L”, so they took Bible names and uniquely adapt them into girls’ names. You see, there are twelve of us so they had to be creative and have a sense of humor. Our father’s name is Nathanial Leonardo and also goes by Nathan, Lee, Leo, and Leon. Our mother’s name is Nanctoinetta Leigh and she is also known as Nanny, Nan, Nancy, Toni, Etta, Leigh, and Nattie. I am not listing my sisters’ names here, but we have each decided to write you a letter – each of us on a different topic. I, being the oldest, get to tell you a little about us, so that you may understand where we are coming from.

We are about two years apart, from the eldest to the youngest; that made me twenty two when my youngest sister was born. My mother was fourteen when I was born and my father was sixteen. At one time we lived on a plantation in the south. Mother’s parents, Grandma Hall lives in Chicago and Grandpa Hall still lives down south. His family owned the plantation; they were rich Black (light skinned) folks. Grandma Hall lived in Muskegon Heights, Michigan when it was prosperous. We still have grandparents in New York on Father’s side. Our parents were farmers and live north of Detroit, Michigan. Father’s father was born in Poland and came to America by Elis Island and then to New York. His mother was black, born in Africa and brought over here as a slave. His family bought her to keep her from being a slave and sat her free; they are from New York. They were involved in running part of the Under Ground Railroad.

Every one of us girls went to college and received a doctorate. We each went to a different well known college in the United States. We are light skinned and in order to get into the colleges, we had to pretend that we were not Black. We let them know after we graduated though. We also have Native American blood which did not help matters any. Our mother’s mother was a Native American who was kidnapped by a rich black slave owner to work on his southern plantation.

Each of us girls now is in the field of Education; we each teach at an university and are in Special Education Administration in an inner-city school district. Also, we have an educational consultant business between the twelve of us and our families. We each live in a different state. We get together at least twice a year at our parents and once a year at one of the grandparents; plus, we all visit our parents and grandparents in between the whole clan visits. We have all been in Michigan quite a bit lately and decided to write these letters. All of our husbands which we each met at college also have ties to Michigan. The Muskegon / Grand Rapid /Detroit Areas are popular places to us!! And look our last names are all very common! We could not tack a hard-to-pronounce last name onto our first and middle names!

I hale from New York City. I have a great husband, three terrific sons, three marvelous daughters, and twelve gorgeous grandchildren. Each of us sister will write telling you where we are from and a little bit more about each of us but mainly each of my sisters will speak to you on some aspect of education. There are several issues in education that need to be addressed.

Sincerely,

Noah’Le Lydia Parker

Fellow Americans that are concerned about Education,

I am the second sister, live in Philadelphia, came here to go to college, met and married my husband, received my doctorate, and now am a college professor. I also, like my sisters, work as a Special Education Administrator. We each decided years back that the only way to be an administrator in a school system was to have our office right in one of the schools. This has been very beneficial to all of us and to our programs. We each choose to work in what was considered the worst school district in the city and the worst school in the district. Our schools are all in very low income districts, in areas considered to be the ghettos. The crime rate is very high, the life expectancy very low. We each also decided that if we were going to be college professors, teaching college students to be Special Education teachers, then we needed to be involved in the school systems working at the school level where the students were; not way off at the universities in a plush office or even not at the school district’s administration building. We wanted and needed to be working along side of the teachers with their students.

We still need to go into the other schools in the district on a regular basis. We work at the school during the school hours and teach at the college after the school hours. The master level teachers are teaching in their own schools during the day and can only come to after-school classes. We have seminars right at our school building also for the undergrad level college students, bringing in our college students to the real thing, letting them see first hand what teaching is all about. Our student teachers get a lot of experience in the actual classroom.

When we hire teachers full time, we usually hire teachers with Cognitive Impaired, Emotionally Impaired, and Learning Disabled Endorsements (each having all three endorsements) for our Cognitive Impaired, Emotionally Impaired, and Learning Disabled Classrooms. We look for these three endorsements as so often there is a combination of these students in each of the classrooms. Some of our new teachers have the first two endorsements and work on an internship in our school for their Learning Disabilities Endorsement. Of course, we have other Special Education teachers with special endorsements for other types of Special Education Classrooms such as Primary and different physical needs as Hearing Impaired, etc. Teachers with CI, EI, and LD Endorsements have the best overall education for Special Education. Grand Valley State University in Michigan has some of the best trained teachers in the nation; they require a duel endorsement at the Bachelor Level and their LD is a Master’s Level Program. This makes for excellently trained teachers. Their Master’s Program is very intense. It is very strong in Language Arts and Reading. Each of us try to use their program as guides in our classes but we each are required to follow our own university and state standards. We have encouraged our own children who have gone into or are going into Special Education to go to Grand Valley State University.

Our eldest sister wrote mainly a background of “Us Twelve Sisters”. I am trying to give you a little over-view of what we believe. We hope this gives you a little idea of who we are and where we are coming from in the things that we want to share with you. Now the other ten of “Us Twelve Sisters” will share our/their ideas on what we think is important in our American Education. I hope our thoughts and ideas will be a help to you.

Naamahia Lasuhumah Brown

Fellow Americans with Concerns about Education,

I am the third sister, who also is a college professor, work in Special Educations Administration, and am a partner with my sisters in our consulting business. I live in Chicago, which makes it possible for me to get up to Michigan more often than the others to visit our parents and grandparents. The family often refers to the twelve of us (sisters) as Leo and Leigh’s Happy Dozen.

I was up to the Detroit area a lot this last year and was able to visit a Detroit School District several times with my cousins when they took their young children (preschools & kindergartens) to school, picked them up, etc. I also got into the Middle School. I had several opportunities to talk to the staff and observe the teaching, etc. at the schools. No one knew that I was in the educational field. It was a very interesting experience. Back home when I go into the schools everyone knows who I am, so they tell me what they think I should hear and show me only what they think I should see. I do not get to see the true picture back home, but when I am up in the Michigan area, I was able to see what typically goes on in the inner city schools. Even by my sisters and me going into each others schools it does not help as we work together so much, everyone in our schools know all of us. Plus, we tape ourselves and share them for trainings in each others schools, etc. But what I seen in this Detroit School District was unbelievable; I know the schools that we work in are better supervised.

From research that I have done on inner city schools’ problems and what I seen on my visits into their schools while visiting this district plus our Happy Twelve’s adventures the following seem to be the typical problems:

• Aides are not well qualified, they spend a lot of time visiting in the halls, eating, sleeping at their desks, talking on the phone with personal business, and on long extended plus frequent breaks.
• Aides do not like to clean, etc. and usually refuse to saying that it is not their job.
• There are not enough aides or paraprofessionals to do an adequate job of helping to educating the students.
• Aides and paraprofessionals think they know more than the younger teachers because they have been there longer but do not want to take any responsibility for meager job duties; they think these duties are beneath them.
• Aides and paraprofessionals have problems sitting and working over and over daily on the same type of educational activities with the students, although this is exactly what has to be done for the students that are struggling in order for them to improve.
• Principals are the ones that write aides evaluation but they do not have any idea as to what the aides are doing or in the case of my observations, they do not really care. Teachers have too much to do to have to be checking up on the aides all the time and they can not leave the students to go look for them.
• Students could be taught so much and do so much better if aides and paraprofessionals would understand and take their work seriously.
• Some teachers think they are there to entertain the students or something. They spend a lot of wasted hours with students playing outside or watching movies. Students do need some extra time and free time but upper elementary (third grade up) should be twenty minutes in forenoon and again in afternoon each day on recess. The hour lunch time should be 45 minutes with bathroom breaks before and after (not included in the 45 minutes). Movies can be very beneficial if they are tied into the lesson. (When I say movies, I am not talking about the very beneficial educational videos, which are very much needed; nor am I referring to videos that are needed in Special Education rooms that have the needed movement activities [Brain Gym, etc.], music to educational topics, reinforcement type videos that teach phonics and other easier materials that students have not mastered yet, etc.)
• Classroom instruction is interrupted way too much with loud speaker announcements, someone at the door, the phone ringing, and teachers being called out the room for meetings, etc.
• So much time is wasted in a typical school day with unnecessary things. Teachers need to be in their room teaching all during instructional time without interruptions. Aides or paraprofessionals need to be working under the teachers instruction all the time except for a forenoon and afternoon fifteen minutes breaks and a half hour lunch break. Eating, using the bathroom, personal phone calls, personal visits should take place during these break times. They should not being doing duties for the office secretary, watching the office, doing art work for the principal, on committees during school time, etc. They are to help the teacher so that he or she can be better prepared to teach the students.
• Directors, principals and vice-principals should not be gone to meetings during the school day; these activities need to take place after school, on off school days, during the summer, etc.

I do not mean to be completely negative, but the aides, paraprofessionals, etc. are so important to a successful school and if they are not utilize properly, they can be the worse waste of money for the school system. This is the principal’s responsibility.

• The lunchroom staff, the custodians, and school aides just sat and visited instead of sitting at the tables with the students and supervising them.
• Special Education Aides need to always be at the table, in the halls, on the playgrounds, etc. with the students under their supervision. Not coming in late, in the office visiting, taking food to the lounge, etc. They are being paid to be with the students! And the students should not be their maids caring food from the lunch room for them, etc. If aides are not capable of carrying their own food, then they are not capable for the job. Students should not be carrying their clipboards, etc. for them. The aides used the students as their own personal slaves!
• What is with the going home for lunch, being gone for over an hour, then bringing their lunch back to school, going into the lounge to eat for another half hour, going into the office complaining about something, then going to the bathroom, stopping to visit in a couple of rooms on their way to the classroom, sticking their heads into their assigned room to say ”I have to run my own child someplace but will be right back”, coming back, going into another room and talking while the aide and teacher in that room lets the students run in and out, and finally going to the office to punch out to go home? The morning was just as bad. My cousins say that is what goes on all the time. Where is the principal when all of this is going on? He did not even know that I was in his school observing for the full day. What I saw in my many visits was the principle was no where to be seen or walking down the hall completely ambiguous to what is going on in his or her school. You pay him or her how much for this?

I was very discouraged after each of my visits to this school district. But I did see some very hard working teachers doing their best with all the disruptions and distractions.

One question that I have after hearing about it over and over is, why good qualified white teachers are let go year after year and several uncertified black teachers are called back year after year? This is not teaching our young black student to work hard so that they can get ahead. Another question, how can four young black male teachers get on their bikes in the middle of the day and ride off leaving their students unattended for over an hour at a time? These same four black male teachers are head of the main committees that run the school, the main part of the school improvement and are very seldom in the classsrooms. Plus, how can an aide be the School Improvement Chairperson? This aide is a relative of my husbands; she is required by an administrator to be out of her assigned classroom for meetings, etc. often. There is something terribly wrong with the picture that I saw on my visits. I received a lot of this information from the aides themselves; they bragged about not having to work and still receive a paycheck. There were a few aides that seemed to always be working and doing a very good job, but a few spoil it for the ones that are doing an excellent job. Of course, I am for black teachers, but they must be held accountable.

Nehushta Laphiah Smith

Greetings Fellow Americans with Educational Concerns,

I am the fourth daughter of the Happy Dozen and live in Los Angeles. Our parents sent each of us girls to a different college/university and we each got jobs, married our spouses that we met in college, and settled in the area. As children, we lived on a farm and at an early age, each of us selected a different type of animal to raise in order to help pay our way through college, we received scholarships, and we worked as we went to college.  We each continued our education and received doctorates. Later we started a nation-wide educational consultant business; we were able to bring to the business strengths from each of the different colleges that we had attended. When deciding to write this series of letters (one from each of us) one goal was to reach a wide audience and we decided to write for the general public through the newspapers and to elected government officials. Another goal was to address some concerns of ours and needs that we see in our nation’s education system.

I was elected to write about the duties of school aides that go by different titles at different schools. After a series of surveys, we found that this is a nation wide problem. School aides, especially in the urban schools are not being well utilized. A lot of money is lost in many school districts because of this enormous problem. Part of the problem is that it is almost impossible to find aides with good work habits in the urban areas. Teachers have so many responsibilities, they have to constantly assess and re-evaluate each student, make adjustments in their daily/weekly lessons, continue finding just what each individual student needs, dealing with all the behavior needs, making lessons interesting while making sure that they match state standards and benchmarks, keep up with mounds of paper work, and so very much more. Teachers need aides that help them in the classroom not aides that they have to look after like another student. Aides need to do whatever the teacher needs them to do so that the teacher can help each and every student reach their potential. Teachers may need the aides to set up and clean up; they may need copies run or papers corrected; they may need the aide to work one-on-one with a student or work with a small group; they definitely need the aide to be there and be willing and able to help in anyway needed; they need aides that are willing to clean up; they need aides that straighten and clean up the room without being asked; they need aides that show up on time and stay with the students; they need aides that do whatever is needed so that they the teachers can use their time to help the students learn to their highest potential; and aides are to aide or assist in the educating of our youth.

Aides need to escort students to the bathroom and other places as needed; they need to take students to the lunchroom, stay with them, and bring them back to the classroom; they need to meet students at the bus in the morning and escort them to the bus at the end of the day; aides need to of all things be there, willing, and able to help; they need to be in good health and able to keep up with the students; and classroom aides need to be available to help the teacher(s) that they are assigned to during all their scheduled work time.

With good dependable, willing to do their job aides, our schools and students will learn; all students in our nation can reach their true potentials with competent education. More than any other time in history, we need high-quality aides in our schools. Aides that perform inadequately or that are not used proficiently hurt our education system big time. No Child Left Behind has sat up guides for hiring qualified aides. No child will be left behind if everyone does their job and remembers that schools are learning institutions. First-class aides are an enormous help in our education system. They are desperately needed. If they do their job, it is worth every cent to hire them. Not enough aides are in any of our schools anymore; all schools need more aides to insure that no child is left behind. But when aides perform feebly; it costs our whole nation. We cannot throw money away on aides that do not perform proficiently; but also with capable aides our educational system will flourish!

Noadiah Lathan Johnson

Dear Fellow Americans who are concerned about education,

I am the fifth sister and live in Minneapolis. We are sort of a private and close family. Each of us girls left home after high school and went away to college. Our parents never had the opportunity to go to college but were very serious about all of us getting a good college education. For some reason, they decided that we each would go to a different college/university. This has been very advantageous for us as we do not live near each other but stay in contact and work together in an educational consultant business. We can share ideas from our varied educational backgrounds.

No Child Left Behind will help all teachers to teach more like Special Education teachers do. All students will be looked at as individuals and taught according to their individual needs. Anyway that is the plan. It is a good plan but teachers will need aides to help them work individually with students or in small groups. These aides will have to be very confident, efficient, and willing to work under the direction of a certified teacher. Some schools in some states are using some new (or called new – it is really what Special Education teachers with Masters Degrees in Learning Disabilities have always done, it just did not have these names) programs Including LETRS and DiBELS. These are very good programs and well organized. Will it cure the Special Education student with disabilities or that are impaired. No, these programs are good and have been helping Special Education students for years; these systems will continue to help our Special Education students, but they will not do away with the impairments in their brains. These systems will help all of our students to learn better. What is needed in Special Education is more and better aides to help the teachers (every room should have one staff for every five or portion of five students to be successful).

Cognitive Impaired have impairments in the brain. Their brains will never be able to learn as a normal brain does. They need a lot of one-on-one instruction,  a lot of small group instruction, a slower paced instruction, more time allowed to learn material, and the same material repeated in different ways many times (it will depend on how much brain impairment). Research and experts say the some Cognitive Impaired will never learn to read and a large percent will never learn over a minimal amount.

The Learning Disabled learn in different ways and have different disabilities. Again, their brains will never be cured, but there are lots of things that will help them do better and enhance their survival.

Nymphas Lathaneal Cooper

Dear Fellow Americans with concerns about our education system,

I live in the Dallas, Texas and am number six of our parents’ twelve daughters. It is odd that each of us went into Special Education, but my older sisters loved teaching or being in the education program so much, that I decided that I would go into teaching, but I was not going to go into Special Education. After starting to teach in a small rural town where I had a few of students that were struggling and nothing I did seemed to help, I decided to take a couple of Special Education classes. As the years went by, I continued to take classes and finely received my endorsements one by one until I had four Special Education Endorsements and then I went on to get my Doctorate as a Psychologist.

I went to the Michigan area to visit my grandparents last year. While I was in Detroit, I had several conversations with one of the paraprofessionals and conversations later with some teachers who had been let go. The paraprofessional was African American like me and the teachers were white. They all said the same thing. What they told me did not seem true, but they all said almost the same thing. They told me that several white certified teachers are let go each year so that they can keep non-certified African Americans in teaching positions. Most of the paraprofessionals are not qualified. Several African Americans that are and have been teaching there for years have two years or less of college; open teaching positions are never advertised in the paper. African Americans with no administration education are given administration positions while two white teachers who taught at the middle school and had finished their Administration Education Certification could not even get interviews for the positions. The Personnel Director instead brought her relatives from out of state that had no administration course work and gave them the jobs. Also, they said white teachers were required to keep their classes under control, have all paper work in on time, stay for after school meetings, come in early for meetings, be sure that all students made ample progress, had to be to work on time, had to work during their lunch period, and had their pay docked for hardly any reason. But African American teachers could let their students run in the halls, come in late, leave early, order an unlimited amount of supplies, take long lunch breaks, leave their classroom unattended, have subs several days at a time so that they could be on administrative committees, take several days leaves for personal reasons, take off during the day anytime that they wanted and have an aide pulled from a Special Education room to watch their class, have hours of recess, watch movies while teacher went somewhere day after day, let their students go to the computer lab unattended and play computers (not educational programs) all day, did not have to turn in required paper work, and just do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted to do it.

I have several family members that live in the area and I am concerned about these things. In all cases the best qualified persons should have the positions. Schools with lots of African America students need African American teachers, but only if they are certified. Our African American students are behind; they need the very best teachers, the best administrators, not ones with less education just because they are African American. Don’t get me wrong, it is very important to have our African American students see African American teachers in their classrooms; but let’s do it right. These students need to be in the classroom being taught by well qualified teachers not outside playing most of the day, not watching fun movies day after day, and not playing games on the computers hours at a time, etc. Students need recreational time but this should take place after school hours, on Saturdays, and/or during the summer. This is the time and place to hire and use these uncertified African American staff until they get their certifications. Hire a certified teacher to direct these programs. These students need the positive influence of these talented African American, but they should not be in teaching positions until they get their certifications. These staff persons will be much better teachers when they get their certification because of this type of experiences and just think how much these students will benefit from this type of program; they will have the best of both worlds!

Naphiah Laboth Jackson

Dear Fellow Americans concerned about the Nations Educational System,

Well, I am the seventh daughter. I believe my parents kept trying for a son, but I know they loved each of girls as much as they could have any son. I live in Indianapolis.  I, as my sisters, am involved in training future teachers and practicing teachers. I guess we all went into education careers because our parents never had a chance to go to high school or college and the teachers that they had were not well trained. They often told us that they were going to be sure that we got the chance to go to college and get a good education. We all wanted to pay our parents back by making them proud of us and decided to go for our doctorates. We want to make sure that other African American children have the chance for good educations and not be denied a good education as our parents were. We want to train the very best teachers that we can to work in big cities, where there is a large population of African American needy children. We grew up with the stories of our parents as children hungered for an education, which they were deprived of. 

We are always looking for good training materials to use with our teachers in our districts and for our college students (pre-teachers and practicing teachers). We gather materials and organize it through our educational consultant business. With the internet and email, we can easily keep in contact and share materials. Our business is not a big business, just something where we share information and materials amongst ourselves and with our teachers, students, and past students.

We noticed that we all have gathered materials that have been very helpful, which has several similar aspects. We believe that the same author has written these materials. The materials have come to us from our children and other family members who have attended Grand Valley State University in Michigan over the past several years. These resources were given to GVSU students as examples of papers, manuals, projects, etc. to guide them in their assignments or were used as part of their training. The author’s name has always been removed, as normally is done when using past students’ work as examples. We have gotten so much use out of these and know it had to have taken the author hours, weeks, months, and probably even years to prepare these materials. We have gotten several copies over the years which have been updated; so we can see that the author keeps them current. We want to find the author to see what other materials that he or she may have written. We believe from the pictures in the training Power Points, etc. that the author may be a mature teacher whom is a light African American, Native American, or Espanic female. It looks like this one lady is in several of the photos. She may be an administrator or college professor that works with student teachers, as it looks like she is in the background as others are teaching at times, but often she is doing the instructing. Pictures were taken in several different rooms. We have found some initials and other writings on the materials and wonder if her name may be Della Lacia. We may not even be close; they may have been written by a man. There is a young man teacher in several photos, also. Most of the photos look like they were taken in urban school districts(s) which have a large population of African Americans, some Native Americans, some Espanics, some Asian Americans, and a few different European Americans. We believe since the materials came from teachers at GVSU that the writer must teach in the area surrounding Grand Rapids, Michigan. There seems to be fieldtrips from areas around Muskegon, Grand Rapids, and Holland. The materials are very well written, possibility they were written by someone with a doctorate, as some of the materials looks like doctorate research. Until we find out who she or he is, we decided to call her Della Lacia and refer to her work as the Della Lacia Program.

Some of the topics that Della Lacia has wrote about includes: ITI, Workshop Schedule, Workshop Way, Learning Styles, Multiple Intelligences, Brain Compatible, Inquiry Based Instruction, Layer Instruction, Mastery Level, Power Writing, Teaching / Learning Strategies, DiBELS, 4 Block, MLPP, National & State Standards & Benchmarks, PBS, LETERS, Classroom Management, GLOBE, Behavior Programs, Positive Behavior, Learning Disabilities, Cognitive Impaired, Emotionally Impaired, Diagnostic Testing, Prescription Lesson Plans, Instructional Goal Setting, Simm’s Progams, Lips, Centers, and Graphic Organizers. These are all excellent programs which we have included now in our teacher’s training programs. There is also a lot of science activities included in much of the works and the over-all theme is environmental and tied to social studies framework. She normally states in her writings that the summaries are not to replace any trainings, but may be used as an introduction if a person has not took the training or as a review if person took it in a past. This is how we learn best, with an over-view of what we are to learn; then an in-depth study; and later followed by a review. Her materials have been very helpful to each of us.

A professor in Florida has copies of some of the older Della Lacia Program materials and had been passing them off as her own, but we do not believe they are hers. The materials are the same as students have received as samples from different professors. Plus, when we asked about them, she did not have any idea what was in them. If she wrote them, she should know what they are about! If anyone knows the author of these materials, please e-mail us. We have all been up in Michigan together and separately visiting our parents and grandparents. We hoped that we could find the true author when we were in Western Michigan, but have not had any luck yet.

Naphtali Ladab Wilson

Dear Fellow Americans with Educational Concerns,

I am the number eight sister and live in Jackson, Mississippi.  We are taking turns writing you with some our educational concerns that we feel may also be your concerns.

We have started an alternative school schedule in pilot schools in each of our districts. We adopted a plan from the Della Lacia Program. We are in the third year and are very excited about the results we are seeing. School starts after Labor Day in September and goes to May just before Memorial Day. Mondays are fieldtrip, assembly, and educational movie day. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are full instructional days, which are very intense. Fridays are teacher in-service and classroom preparation day. If teachers have personal business (doctor appointments, etc.), they are encouraged to take them on these days instead of on the four instructional days. On Friday and Saturday special activities take place at the school for the students; this is ran by others than the regular certified teachers. There are three summer programs, each last for one month (June, July, and August). Special classes are at the end of the school day during the nine month school session, giving the regular teachers time to prepare for the next day. The specialist teachers prepare earlier in the day while students are in their regular classes. Teachers need ample time to prepare in order to present adequate instruction.

Each morning after breakfast students take part in a light exercise program with music, while teachers setup their rooms for the day. Then the aides take the students to their classrooms. There are two aides for every classroom. This insures that two adults are available at all times. There is also a light exercise to music program after lunch. The aides take the students to their end of the day special classes and stay there working with them along side of the general education special teacher. There is a lunch at the end of the day for students staying for the after school program. Various activities take place on the different days of the week.

This is a quick summary of the program to show an over view of the whole program. This program has worked wonders for our students and our teachers. Our teachers have much more energy and enthusiasm. Our students’ scores rose sharply on state tests.

We use the theme schedule from the Della Lacia Program where the whole school is on the same schedule. With the whole school on the same theme schedule, students are constantly being reinforced; they all know what they are studying so they reinforce each other. In order for the program to work, it is more complicated then what is written here but this gives a synopsis of what it entails.

Nicholette Laham Chapman

Dear Educational Concern Citizen of the USA,

I am the number nine daughter. As you can observe by our names, our parents were very creative in naming us. We all have been visiting our grandparents in the Muskegon Area quite a bit lately. That is when we decided to write this series of letters. We are bringing up some issues that are important to us in the area of education; we hope our mussing may be a benefit to you. We are just touching lightly here on a few subjects. I hope you enjoy reading our letters. I am from Montgomery, Alabama and my topic is ITI.

ITI stands for Integrated Theme Instruction. We all started encouraging the use of this after reading some articles and training materials from our “Mystery Author” whom we decided to call “Della Lacia”. There are not enough hours, days, weeks, months, or years to cover all the materials that we need to teach student and to bring them to an understanding level of these materials. The ITI Method is one step that can help us to have enough time. With this method all subject areas are tied together and important information is continually being reinforced which is so needed for all students but especially for our struggling students.

As suggested by our Mystery Writer, whole schools went on the same theme. We are using the curriculum mapping that she/he (which ever our mystery writer is) wrote in all of our schools. This schedule works real well and if a student moves from one of our schools to another, they do not miss anything. It is built around national and state standards and benchmarks. She/he has included schedules for after school and summer programs that tie in with and reinforce the regular school year curriculum.

The whole ITI theme that our Mystery Writers wrote is tied around his/her title which involves traveling around the whole world. It uniquely includes all the national and state standards and benchmarks for each grade level. If one does not closely examine the program they may state, “Why is this or that not included?” But anyone that takes the time will see that everything that we need to teach our students is there. Important material is uniquely repeated so that the students receive the repeated information frequently, but it is repeated in a way that students are not aware that it is being repeated. Everything that we learn is built upon prior knowledge and that is what his/her program is all about. Everyone needs to hear, see, etc. information several times in order to learn it at a mastery level and this is what this program is all about. The whole program is built around reading and writing and also includes math, so that students are getting their basics along with enrichment curriculum.

This letter is just to introduce the idea. Different authors have written materials on ITI but we like this one as it brings in everything that we currently have to teach with all the new methods plus proven older methods. Our mystery author has written whole manuals and complete training programs on this. We received volumes of the material from a professor in Florida, but we still are not sure who the true author is. We also have bits and pieces from samples given by other professors to our family members while they attended college.

Nathanaela Laharai Williams

Dear Educational Concern Citizens,

I am the number ten daughter and live in the Richmond, Virginia area. I think by the time I was born, our parents were beginning to except the idea that they may never have a son. We all grew up on a farm in an Amish atmosphere. Our life was very simple; we were schooled in a one-room school house. Our parents sacrificed everything so that we might each get a good college education. It was a very happy childhood.  We learned good work ethics at an early age, and I believe that helped us all become what we are today. Children are not taught good work ethics and respectfulness today and this is really hurting our nation. Each of us girls have raised our children like our parents raised us, as much as possible. We were not able to raise them on a large farm, but they all spent/spend time there in the summer. Our home lives are still fairly simple and we raise some of our own food. Our parents raise enough beef, pork, etc. for the whole family and we all go to the farm and help out whenever we can.

My topic is the Workshop Schedule. Without using this method along with the ITI method, it would be impossible to cover everything that we need to cover in today’s times in our schools. This method is built upon the Workshop Way Program. Our Mystery Author suggests that all teachers are trained in all the complete programs which she/he basis his/her philosophy of teaching on. His/her writings are on how to tie all of these great programs together. With the way he/she does it, meshes together very nicely. Our letters just introduce different topics or issues concerning education that we have a strong interest in.

This program helps students to know what to do next; it helps them to work independently on seat work, centers, etc.; it gives teachers a way to teach small groups while the other students are engaged in meaningful educational activities; it gives direction in how to setup the classroom, so that students have the help that they need available with continued reinforcement in what they are being taught; and it helps to organize the total classroom. It also insures that the student that needs extra help gets it. The first few weeks of school, procedures will be taught; the teacher needs to do whole class instruction with aides circulating the room encouraging students helping students so they are able to pay attention. The teacher will also have movement activities built into the day. The whole class instruction will gradually be less and less with more small group instruction being built into the daily routine gradually; but first it is very important for the whole class instruction. As the year progresses, you will see the teacher at the reading table providing small group and individualized instruction while there are several areas around the room where students will be working in small or peer tutoring groups. The aides will be circulating the room.

The Workshop Way program is built on a positive discipline method. It also, has components that included brain based instruction. The Workshop Schedule ties in all the things we are required to teach today and makes the reinforcement adaptations needed for Special Needs Students. It is a very neat system for organizing the classroom and the instruction in the classroom. It helps to identify which students have extra needs and in which areas these needs are. It includes several teacher/student conferences daily in these needed areas. It is built around much one-on-one and small group instruction. Students thrive in this type of an educational environment. Persons not trained in the system may at first not understand it.

Before we began these programs, our students were doing very poorly. As we continued to incorporate each section of the over-all program that our Mystery Author endorses, we seen great gains in our students’ academic and maturity growth. Administration and teachers using this total program use much less energy than they did teaching the old way. They have energy left for a personal life, which is becoming almost impossible for today’s teachers if they are doing a good job and they are making even the minimal gains in their students’ academic growth. Some less educated (in these areas) administration, say that teachers using these methods have unorganized, undisciplined, and / or not well managed classrooms, where in fact these are the most effective organized, disciplined, and managed classrooms for optional learning. If these teachers were not well versed in these areas, they would not be able to carry-off this type of ultimate learning experiences for their students.

Some of us wrote first on some of the problems that have to be addressed first in today’s schools. These problems include the constant interruptions of teaching instruction; the need for certified teachers; the need for more aides in the school systems; and the need for good aides that are actually doing the work that they are being paid to do and not just socializing or punching in on the time clock then leaving the school and coming back at the end of the day and punching out – getting paid for time that they are not at school. We all had these problems in our school districts when we first started. We had to take care of these problems before we could work on delivering high-quality instruction to our students, so my sisters addressed these topics first.

Nathania Lythan Stevens

Dear Citizen with Educational Concerns,

I am the eleventh daughter and live in the Atlanta, Georgia area. My parents had one more sister after me, and then I think they gave up on ever having a son. Our parents’ families called us “The Happy Dozen” as we were growing up. After all of us girls left home for college and/or had families of our own, our three brothers were born. They each have some type of disability but are doing real well. They were interested in going into other fields beside education. One became a family doctor, one went into veterinary science, and the other went into in environmental science.

My topic is students need consistency and need the same teacher for three year (research shows that three is that magical number in education). School grades should be broken up into threes: 1) Primary- preschool, pre-kindergarten, & kindergarten; 2) Lower Elementary- first, second & third grades; 3) Upper Elementary- fourth, fifth, & sixth; 4) Junior High- seventh, eighth, & ninth; and 5) Senior High- tenth, eleventh, & twelfth. By using total school themes with ITI and the use of the Workshop Schedule, this will contribute to the consistency need in education and it will enhance educational instruction. The three years with the same teacher for the upper grades would mean three years with the same teachers not teacher.

Another part of my topic is the use of aides in the schools. My sisters have emphasized the need for aides of superb quality; my input is on the need for more aides. Aide positions are being cut all over on account of trying to cut cost; this is the last place schools should cut cost. You need superb teachers and aides; and yes, you need district hired custodians, kitchen help, transpiration personnel, etc.—don’t cut cost with these positions either, just be sure that persons in these position are of top-notch quality and can confidently perform aide functions if necessary. Caution – do not continently pull them to do aide work when they need to perform at their other duties but they should be capable to fill-in in emergencies or better yet, have duel positions where they work half time at each. All I am saying is that you need lots of staff interacting with the students. Do not cut the positions at the level were staff are in daily contact with the students. Bring your administration at district level to building level. Give your administrators duel positions, district administrator and building administrator. Get staff down to the building level where the students are. Do the cutting at administration level and at administration building level. By this I mean, have each principal also do a district level job, this cuts down on the number of administrator needed and also on the number of offices needed. Instead of two administrators, give one administer two positions with two secretaries.  The Special Education Director should also be the Director of State and Federal Programs and Director of Curriculum with three well qualified Office Managers.

 Aides are very important in any school. They need to be in the lunchroom, on the playground, in the halls, in special rooms (as the computer lab, library, gym, art room, music room, science lab, office, etc.) and in the individual classrooms. They need to be scheduled before school, during school, and after school hours. Each classroom teacher needs at least two at all times; I say at least two as some students with disabilities require their own aide.

Nehemiahia Lycolas Nichols 

Dear Fellow Americans with Educational Concerns,

I am the twelfth sister and work out of Washington, D.C. I also am an university professor, work in the ghetto areas in Special Education Administration, and am part owner of the educational consultant firm with my sisters.

The Educational Topic that I want to address is Reading First’s Coaches brought about by No Child Left Behind. This program is great and it will work wonders in our nations education field if it is ran right. It is what our Special Education teachers have been doing all along. Special Education teachers get the same training as general education teachers plus they get a lot of extra training which they have spent additional years and money to get. The Reading First Training is part of the same training that these Special Educational teachers have received – the type of dialogistic testing that they are required to do, the interrupting of the results to write goals, the writing of prescription lesson plans, the retesting to see if they are on the right track, going back and making the necessary changes, etc.

The right people have to be put into these positions of Reading First Coaches. These coaches must have several years teaching experience in elementary grades, both lower elementary and upper elementary. They must have had the experience of having students in their upper elementary class that were still operating at lower elementary levels, where they needed to use lower elementary strategies with upper elementary students.

They must have the authority to do their jobs. Most principals and assistant principals have not had the experience nor have the knowledge of the strategies needed to guide our students that are falling through the cracks. The principals and assistant principals need to be willing to listen to the coaches, willing to back them up, willing to let them go get all the training that they need. The coaches and facilitators, who have had the training, will be the ones that are to go into the classrooms to see if the teachers are doing things right and they are the ones that are to train the teachers. Couches should have previous experience in supervision and training others in the educational field.

The coaches need to have had plenty of experiences of working with aides, etc. where they (the teacher) have had to write lesson plans and train aides in how to follow through on them. This experience of supervising other adults in the teaching of reading is very important. Coaches need to have at least a Masters.

 The Special Education teachers are also to get the support and help that they need. Coaches need to have a strong understanding of Special Education. Learning Disabled students will be helped with these methods of learning and they will advance; this is the way they learn, but that does not mean that they will be completely cured. Each case, each student is different. In a general education classroom, the Learning Disabled may not make any gains but will even regress; in a Special Education Room for the Leaning Disabled, experts still say that the students will only make a half year gain. This means that they still will continue to get further behind, just not as far. The way teachers are being taught to teach under the Reading First Program, is the same methods that the Learning Disabled teachers are taught to teach the Learning Disabled. (Grand Valley has been teaching this for the last twenty years). Schools should not expect it to be a complete cure-all for all the Special Education students. Schools should be prepared so that they do not get discourage if they do not make the gains that they expect. This is the right program. Many of the Cognitive Impaired Programs have the Trainable Cognitive Impaired Students in with the Educable Impaired Students now; they are not separated as they were before. Experts say that the Trainable will never be able to learn to read and only the higher function of the Educable will learn and then only (with the right methods) with gains of about a third of a year during each full year. But again, they will gain, where in the general education rooms they will not gain at all, but fall behind. This does not mean that schools should not go with this program. It is an excellent program and it will help the students that are falling through the cracks. It will catch some of the students who otherwise will fall so far behind that they never will be able to catch up or will end up in Special Education – by catching them in K-3, they may not have to have Special Education intervention. It is important that the principals insure that the K-3 classes rooms are following the program and that they, the principals back the coaches thoroughly.

The Reading First Program is a great program.  If it is done right, it will catch many students who should never end up in Special Education. But it will not cure an impaired brain; although it will help the student with the impaired brain reach his or her full potential.

I have six daughters, all Special Education teachers; they all took Grand Valley’s Cognitive Impaired and Emotionally Impaired Bachelor’s Program, followed by their Master’s Learning Disabled Program. Our eldest, who has a Special Education Supervisor Endorsement and a Language Arts / Reading Specialist Endorsement, accepted a Reading First Facilitator position on the eastern side of the state last year. She encouraged her sisters all to apply for Reading First Coach Programs. All of us twelve sisters are into Special Education big time; but I believe in this Reading First Program so much, I am encouraging my daughters to take those positions instead of Special Education Administrator positions. In a way these programs are really Special Education Programs. We need well qualified African Americans in these positions in school with a large percentage of African American students.

We sent our daughters back to Michigan to Grand Valley because we believe that they have the best Special Education Programs. Many students drop out of Grand Valley’s programs because they are so strenuous and demanding. The teachers that make it through their programs are doing what even the experts say is impossible with Special Education students. All universities should have duel endorsement programs in their Special Education departments; it makes Special Education teachers so much better prepared for the real classroom.

Nahshonia Lyhshon Sanders