Tennyson Street School: better
Better: (adj) more excellent, more effective, preferable
(adj) recovering from illness, injury, or mental stress; healthier
(adv) to a higher standard, in a finer way
(n) that which is better, as “a change for the better”
Miranda stopped the kids at the doorway. We could all hear them in the hall. “We have new rules in Literacy Lab,” she announced, sounding sorry and aggrieved. A chorus of negative responses harmonized into a familiar childhood song.
“No, no, now listen. Listen!” She cleared her throat and brought her volume down. “So now when we go to Lab, there’s no talking.”
“But MISS!”
“SSSHHHH! No buts! There’s no talking for five minutes.” She sounded as if she was standing up taller, or maybe just making her decision about where she stood overall. “That’s – reading – time.”
The kids slunk in, casting suspicious eyes my way as they passed my cubicle. “Is that your boss?” one of them asked Miranda.
“SSSHHHH! No. READ.”
We’d had a conversation, we three Fellows. I’d done a fair share of the talking, and Chloe much less. But in order for me to start having students soon, things would have to change. We couldn’t have three groups of loud, boisterous kids all wandering and running in one classroom at the same time.
Chloe’s kids were golden. Her prior experience in tutoring programs shone, immediately evident in the silent parade of attentive students in and out of the Lab. We all knew that. We all knew why we were talking.
But I’d tried to be realistic, too. “I feel optimistic about showing these guys how we come in and out,” I said, referring to the program model of focused attention, silent entry, silent exit, so we showed the kids we were all taking their learning time seriously. “How we’ll be as I’m instructing – no idea. But I still think it’s important that we approach this as a team, and try to set the same standard.”
Miranda had sighed. “Sorry, guys,” she’d apologized sincerely. “I’m trying….”
Chloe had patted her arm and told her not to worry. I’d added, “I just think it’s a shame you didn’t get the same training and support – and that’s not your fault. I know it’s so much more work to go back and reteach them the Lab norms now….” I did not, however, say not to bother. We all knew that. We all knew what I was saying, and not saying.
Chloe and I had talked wistfully of our love of evidence-based models. It’s as if social science could be Pinocchio, a real science after all, able to faithfully replicate outcomes if only we, the woodcarvers and accordion-players, would just follow the blueprints, stick to the plan.
“Evidence what?” Miranda had asked without interest before grabbing her lunch and headphones.
I had seen them work. I remembered a 2006 New Yorker article titled, “Million Dollar Murray.” The key quote from the article was spoken by police officer Patrick O’Bryan, who had been arresting and interacting with homeless Murray Barr on the streets of Reno, Nevada for years. “It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murray.” Million Dollar Murray became a rallying cry for systemic change among agencies working with the homeless. Out of this understanding grew the phenomenal Housing First model, where homeless individuals and families are first provided long-term shelter, the thing they need immediately, and subsequently offered support services to help them keep that housing.
We learned from that article that it would have been much cheaper to just rent Murray an apartment than to aid and abet his cycling in and out of hospitals, rehabs, and jail. Housing First has been so successful, in Denver and across the nation, that it has become not only an evidence-based model of its own, but included in more complex evidence-based models for serving the homeless.
Give them what they need. Our students immediately needed to be able to focus, in order to be able to learn. In the Lab, we could give them an environment that helped them focus.
“SSSHHHH! I MEAN it! Knock– be…quiet…,” Miranda corrected herself, adjusting her voice down a notch, as well. They read. They got squirrelly. She SSSHHHH!’d them loudly.
And then – they read out loud, one at a time, for her. Before they started pestering each other and grabbing pencils.
As she walked them to the door, Miranda looked in at me, eyebrows raised in a question.
“Better?” she mouthed.
I gave her two thumbs up from behind my laptop training screens. She smiled bashfully, but looked pleased.