Susan Breen, English coordinator for the Glen Cove School District, was the guest speaker at the Coalition for Glen Cove November 2005 meeting. Mrs. Breen, who is retiring at the end of December after thirty years of teaching and administration (including three years in Glen Cove), spoke about Glen Cove’s progress in English teaching in the past three years, about excellent students and teachers, and about what still needs to be done.
Through the Nassau County Board of Cooperative Educational Services data warehouse, teachers can now see state test results by subject, class, and student. Lists of wrong answers and the probable reasons for them are also on line.
Teachers have prepared course outlines for middle- and high-school English classes based on New York State standards and on standardized tests. There is increased teaching of reading comprehension and vocabulary, and, in seventh to twelfth grades, increased teaching of how to write as well as practice in writing. Although it takes a surprisingly long time to change attitudes and procedures in a school system, when school leaders respect teachers, teachers accept suggestions and accept change.
Through interdisciplinary efforts between social studies and English classes, students, now are seeing the interconnectedness of these discipline areas. More of such interdisciplinary work is planned for other departments as well. Students are coming to realize that it is not enough to know the material but that it is also necessary to understand and use it outside the classroom.
Glen Cove has been helped by teaching consultants in the middle school provided by the Nassau Board of Cooperative Educational Services. An excellent consultant in the high school raised the test scores of many students from failing to passing in just a few weeks. Unfortunately, the voters’ rejection of the Glen Cove school budget has forced the district to reduce the number of days that consultant worked in Glen Cove from sixty days a year to fifteen.
When Mrs. Breen arrived in Glen Cove several years ago the combined budget for textbooks and workbooks for both the middle and high school was $20 thousand and there was a severe shortage of books. That budget has now been increased to $82 thousand and includes test preparation books for the mandatory state assessments as well as a wide variety of trade books, vocabulary books, and classroom readers for grades five to twelve.
Unfortunately, although the libraries are becoming more student and teacher friendly, the school and classroom libraries still do not have some of the materials that students need and teachers would like to assign. The school libraries would benefit from modernization to include new teacher and student workstations and video screens for use by the librarians in teaching library and research lessons.
English as a Second Language courses are taught at three levels and most students go from the third level directly into regular English courses. There are many brilliant students who start in English as a Second Language courses, continue to do well in the rest of their school career, and go on to college and to leadership positions.
Susan Breen, English coordinator for the Glen Cove School District, was the guest speaker at the Coalition for Glen Cove November 2005 meeting. Mrs. Breen, who is retiring at the end of December after thirty years of teaching and administration (including three years in Glen Cove), spoke about Glen Cove’s progress in English teaching in the past three years, about excellent students and teachers, and about what still needs to be done.
Through the Nassau County Board of Cooperative Educational Services data warehouse, teachers can now see state test results by subject, class, and student. Lists of wrong answers and the probable reasons for them are also on line.
Teachers have prepared course outlines for middle- and high-school English classes based on New York State standards and on standardized tests. There is increased teaching of reading comprehension and vocabulary, and, in seventh to twelfth grades, increased teaching of how to write as well as practice in writing. Although it takes a surprisingly long time to change attitudes and procedures in a school system, when school leaders respect teachers, teachers accept suggestions and accept change.
Through interdisciplinary efforts between social studies and English classes, students, now are seeing the interconnectedness of these discipline areas. More of such interdisciplinary work is planned for other departments as well. Students are coming to realize that it is not enough to know the material but that it is also necessary to understand and use it outside the classroom.
Glen Cove has been helped by teaching consultants in the middle school provided by the Nassau Board of Cooperative Educational Services. An excellent consultant in the high school raised the test scores of many students from failing to passing in just a few weeks. Unfortunately, the voters’ rejection of the Glen Cove school budget has forced the district to reduce the number of days that consultant worked in Glen Cove from sixty days a year to fifteen.
When Mrs. Breen arrived in Glen Cove several years ago the combined budget for textbooks and workbooks for both the middle and high school was $20 thousand and there was a severe shortage of books. That budget has now been increased to $82 thousand and includes test preparation books for the mandatory state assessments as well as a wide variety of trade books, vocabulary books, and classroom readers for grades five to twelve.
Unfortunately, although the libraries are becoming more student and teacher friendly, the school and classroom libraries still do not have some of the materials that students need and teachers would like to assign. The school libraries would benefit from modernization to include new teacher and student workstations and video screens for use by the librarians in teaching library and research lessons.
English as a Second Language courses are taught at three levels and most students go from the third level directly into regular English courses. There are many brilliant students who start in English as a Second Language courses, continue to do well in the rest of their school career, and go on to college and to leadership positions.