Love, Innovation Keys To Top Teachers Success

By Editor Ken Harvey

Migrant students who enter Tamara Steen's remedial English class up to five years behind grade level are passing the state's WASL test in less than one year, and many are moving up to the Advanced Placement class.

"Mabton School District is incredibly fortunate to have a teacher like Tamara Steen who believes teaching children of poverty is her life's work. An avocation and not a vocation. A passion, not a job," said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson in announcing Ms. Steen's selection as Washington's 2005 Teacher of the Year.

Dr. Bergeson notes Ms. Steen's 22 years of devotion to helping students overcome such academic barriers as poverty and limited English fluency.

"In a small community where 90 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, more than a third live in monolingual Spanish-speaking homes, and many parents have never gone past the ninth-grade, one can only imagine the work it would take to help these students to meet state achievement standards," Dr. Bergeson says.

But that's what Ms. Steen's students are doing.

Last year, "roughly two-thirds of those who began the year as remedial students ended up at grade level" and passing the WASL, she says.

To meet the needs of struggling students more efficiently, three years ago Ms. Steen and another teacher developed a two-period English program for all ninth- and 10^th-graders, separating the students into one of three levels of English, based on an individual student's reading and writing levels.

Since the program went into effect, the sophomore class has met the annual yearly progress goal (AYP) every year, and more students - including many who might not otherwise have felt capable -- are now enrolling in Advanced Placement English courses.

"The English blocks have had a profound impact on the reading and writing abilities of our students. Our goal is to move students towards achievement," says Ms. Steen. "During the first year, 83% of my remedial students -- who entered reading two to five years below grade level -- passed our state's WASL in reading, and 68% passed the writing."

But just passing the difficult WASL test was not enough for Ms. Steen. "During the second year of the blocks, five of my remedial students outgrew Level Two English and were moved into the Honors English 9 & 10 class." Now six of the students are in Ms. Steen's Advanced Placement Literature class, working toward college credit.

"Latino students -- yes, migrants, too -- are very capable of achievement, in spite of language barriers. We just have to utilize the best instructional strategies," says Ms. Steen.

Teachers need to change with the challenges of the times, she says.

"The world is no longer the same place as it was when I was growing up, and a new era requires new strategies," Ms. Steen says. "Students today need collaboration with peers and rigorous, meaningful work that stimulates their intellect and challenges their imaginations. Our lessons must be intentional and purposeful, moving students forward towards independent learning."

Her peers consider her to be a tough teacher, and one who is always pushing the standard a level higher, notes Dr. Bergeson. But former Mabton Supt. Kevin Chase in his letter nominating her said, "Tamara Steen is an outstanding example of a teacher who is willing to learn, practice and work hard for her students. She is truly an outstanding educator."

OBSTACLES TO OVERCOME

In helping her students achieve success, Ms. Steen has faced a number of obstacles. In her Honors English and Advanced Placement courses, 50% of the students are migrant. She is frequently the only white person in her classroom. Even her Advanced Placement class has only one white student; the rest are Latino.

Achieving involvement by non-English-speaking parents has been one of her challenges.

"I firmly believe in the value of partnering with parents," she explains, "but my Spanish is too limited for a good conversation with about a third of them. Three years ago I took Spanish lessons a couple of days after school, but as only two teachers signed up, the district discontinued the class."

Ms. Steen is campaigning for the district to fund Spanish lessons for interested teachers -- no matter how few have the time to do it.

"I really want to communicate directly to the parents of my students and NOT through an interpreter," she says. "We really need the participation of our parents, many of whom have never graduated from high school themselves."

She says cultural expectations are an obstacle, not only for students but also for teachers, in trying to provide students with a rigorous curriculum that will prepare them for college.

"Some Hispanic fathers, not understanding the importance of an education in this country, actively discourage their daughters from doing homework, believing it is a waste of time because girls are meant to get married and stay at home, raising children and taking care of a husband," says Ms. Steen.

She says three of the school's valedictorians in the past decade had fathers who were like this.

In addition, "some of our students must work in the fields with their parents in the morning," Ms. Steen notes. "This means they arrive already exhausted and find it difficult to stay awake during class or to complete homework in the evening."

She doesn't blame the parents for this, but their poverty is still an obstacle to excellence.

"Parents do not demand their children's fieldwork to be mean. They need it for economic reasons -- it is an issue of survival as a family," Ms. Steen says. "Most of my students have never experienced the cultural things like museums or stage plays. When they travel, it is not to visit historical sites or recreational theme parks. It is usually to visit relatives in Mexico or to find work during the winter months."

Despite these obstacles, Ms Steen says the district's staff "is doing a fantastic job of promoting a college education as a step towards a professional career."

KEYS TO SUCCESS

Reading and writing are intellectual and solitary activities that most students - regardless of background -- have little patience these days to endure, being used to the fast pace of television and movie dramas, Ms. Steen says.

"Therefore, I lecture as sparingly as if that strategy was a habanera pepper," Ms. Steen says. "As soon as a teacher says more than a few sentences, students stop listening."

So, she uses a wide range of activities to get keep students' attention.

"I have dressed up in a Fred Flintstone costume to talk about the origin of language and in a Grim Reaper costume to introduce Dante's 'Inferno,'" says Ms. Steen. "When teaching poetry, I hold poetry coffeehouses, during which students take turns reading and analyzing poetry by candlelight while eating snacks a team of them has provided."

Once she has their attention, Ms. Steen utilizes "Socratic Seminars" to get her students engaged in rigorous debate about the issues of a difficult text or has her students turn and talk in partners about key questions of a text they are studying.

Occasionally they do a "Practical Reading Lesson" at the conclusion of a unit, such as reading a recipe for Australian scones at the end of a study of the poem, "The Man from Snowy River." Then they actually mix and bake the biscuits.

And Ms. Steen's work does not end with the school day.

"I tutor struggling students after school as often as it takes to help them to understand how to write a decent essay, and no essay is over until the quarter is over," she says. Students can continue to work on improving an essay until the last day.

"Above all, I believe in students' potential and refuse to dumb down my curriculum just because so many of them speak English as a second language," Ms. Steen says.

Ms. Steen enjoys teaching good Latino literature, but she explains: "I do not teach Latino literature because it is politically correct or because so many of my students are Latino. I teach such authors as Isabelle Allende and Sandra Cisneros because they not only write beautifully about the Latino experience, but also speak compellingly about the human experience."

Perhaps most important in achieving success, Ms. Steen says, is how teachers feel about their work.

"I love the classics passionately, I love teaching passionately, and I love my students unconditionally," she says. "Some of our students are so wounded by life that they often will not even try to learn until they know the teacher cares about them personally.

"I smile continuously because I am simply very happy being with my students, who are definitely the most wonderful in the world -- every year. And no, I do not have discipline problems. Students respond to my smiles with their own," she says.

It helps that Mabton is a small community. There are only 398 students in grades 7-12, so teachers can get to know their students. "We love our students as members of an extended family," she says.

Ms. Steen and other Mabton educators are having a long-term effect on the community as a whole.

"Fathers are becoming increasingly more involved," she says. "We even have two Latino fathers serving on our local school board, as well as a Latino mother."

More parents are grasping the benefits of a good education.

"My Advanced Placement class is filled with Latino students, some of them from migrant homes, whose parents want them to get out of the fields and into some profession -- and these parents are willing to sacrifice to see that this happens," Ms. Steen says.

More of the district's Latino students now take college-preparatory courses in high school. More are graduating from college after four years -- and with good grades. More are now earning master's degrees. And increasing numbers are in professions such as law, education, graphic arts and psychology.

"Of all the professions chosen," Ms. Steen notes, "more of our students become teachers than anything else. They usually say: 'I want to give to other children what my teachers gave to me.' I love that."