Boy, it’s been busy around here. My Diabetes @ School update is running behind schedule. For this second posting, I’d like to consider the objectives for the update.
The original version of Diabetes @ School tried to address well over 50 objectives! Way too much! For the 2008 update I’d like to limit this to just what a teacher needs to know and do to help a student with type 1 diabetes have a safe and healthy school year.
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The objectives for Diabetes @ School 2008 are:
Terminal Objectives
School personnel (teachers, administrators, coaches…) will properly and confidently help the student who has Type 1 Diabetes manage his blood sugar while at school. (Problem Solving)
School personnel will properly and confidently recognize and treat medical problems associated with Type 1 Diabetes. (Problem Solving)
Information Processing Analysis
1 Properly follow School Health Plan to minimize risk of emergencies.
2 Recognize symptoms of low blood sugar or high blood sugar that must be treated.
3 Properly follow Quick Reference Emergency Plan to correct or accommodate low or high blood sugar values as necessary.
Subordinate Objectives
Student will:
1 state that type 1 diabetes is very different than type 2 – and familiarity with type 2 may interfere with properly handling type 1 problems. (VI)
2 list symptoms of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and hyperglycemia (high blood sugar). (VI)
3 state that hypoglycemia is the most common school emergency for students with type 1. (VI)
4 choose to monitor students with type 1 diabetes for symptoms of low / high blood sugar. (Affective)
5 list sources of information for treating a student with type 1 diabetes for low / high blood sugar. (VI)
6 choose to use these information sources to treat low / high blood sugar. (Affective)
7 list scheduling changes that can affect diabetes treatment. (VI)
8 choose to inform parents of schedule changes that affect diabetes treatment. (Affective)
9 list symptoms of new-onset type 1 diabetes. (VI)
10 choose to bring a student exhibiting signs of new onset type 1 to the student’s parent’s attention. (Affective)
These objectives largely focus on the teacher familiarity with 2 1 page documents - the School Health Plan (the plan Zach will follow for managing his type 1 at school) and the Quick Reference Emergency Plan (the plan school personnel should follow in case of a dangerous low or high blood sugar episode).
I think I can advertise the new program as a 15 minute investment in helping Zach stay healthy and happy during this school year. I hope this takes care of problem #1 from my original post… see here.
As usual, any comments or advice would be much appreciated.
This week I was asked to serve as a “harsh reader” for a grant application for a local school. Although I don’t know anything about grant applications (and I explained this to the requester), I did think it would be interesting to read one… so I read through and provided input where I thought it might help (I only hope I wasn’t too harsh ;-).
This was Wednesday. By Thursday I was thinking about the grant application and its assumptions. I certainly can’t describe the whole grant, but I’ll give an overview. A couple of junior high schools in this district have significantly higher rates of suspension and performance gaps than the state average. The grant proposal is to hire a graduation coach for each of these 2 schools. The purpose of the coach will be to identify students who (according to certain criteria) are likely to be drop outs before graduation, design and implement intervention and incentive programs to keep them in school. These at-risk students were described as disengaged in school and having behavioral problems and numbered somewhere between 13% - 25% of the schools’ populations.
It all seemed so reasonable… until I started thinking about the underlying assumptions. These students don’t see any value in school, they haven’t been successful there, school has no relevance to them, they are going to be stuck in school for several more years with no way out, and they cause problems. So let’s hire a couple of guys to fix the kids!
Why not fix the schools to make them relevant and engaging?!? No, that doesn’t seem to be in the plan. Instead, we’ll identify and target these at-risk kids with a series of behavioral modification techniques (as I would perceive intervention and incentive programs) to try to get them to fit in with the way school is done.
To think about…
- Are the other 80% of the students in school engaged, enthusiastic learners? Or are a great majority simply “doing their time” with the hopes of being released when their sentences are up (i.e. finish 12th grade)?
- Are students that are strongly engaged (at least trying to get good grades and not causing trouble) well served by the schools as they are?
- How many of the classes that your child(ren) are in (or have been in) have caught their imagination, engaged them to learn (not just get a good grade), and have motivated them to work their hearts out for the love of the subject? In my case, there have only been a very few - but it it’s great to see my children motivated in this way. What would school be like if only 2 - 3 classes each semester reached this level of engagement? I’m afraid the school atmosphere would be so disrupted that somebody would put a stop to it!
Alfie Kohn has a couple of good articles on this subject, “Constant Frustration and Occasional Violence: The Legacy of American High Schools” and “Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Students Decide”. I recommend them both if you want to think further about these issues. Gary Stager’s article about working with kids in the Main Youth Center (juvenile detention center), “Constructive Technology as the Key to Entering the Community of Learners”, is also great (and fits in with my prison metaphor).