What it Takes: One Family’s Perspective
by YourSFPublicSchools Team ~ November 30th, 2009
Author: Justin Van Zandt, PTA Member, father of 5 children, including students at Alamo Elementary and Presidio Middle School.
There has been a lot of focus on the achievement gap recently. Why are we making so little progress on this? What can we do as a community to really fix the problem?
We need to take advantage of being one of the richest, densest and most diverse cities in the nation. Parents of all races must talk and learn from one another. Kids should learn from each other too, and parents must teach kids to admire those with good grades, not laugh at or ignore them. Parents need to take the time to read books on child development and ask parents whose kids are excelling how they do it.
The answer on how to do better is right in front of us. We go to diverse schools, yet are socially segregated and often ignore excellent examples in overcoming hardship and achieving great results. Asian Americans overcome poverty and language issues & have shown studying long hours and minimizing TV time lead to great results. More are now admitted to UC Berkeley and UCLA than whites, with only a quarter as many students in California, an impressive achievement. Parents must learn what works and sacrifice weekends and free time to help their kids achieve, and volunteers can help tutor kids from families where English isn’t a first language or which are not intact. To break a cycle, families need to make wholesale, major changes, not piecemeal ones. Any child who studies 20 hours a week and watches TV for 7 will do better than one who watches 20 and studies 7, and if we change this we can eliminate the achievement gap.
In our family, we keep TV to less than 7 hours a week. We teach our children from a young age, alphabet, flash cards, phonics. We spend Saturdays, summers and evenings reading books on science, history, geography, and other subjects together, doing math and other workbooks, learning foreign languages and teaching them it’s a competitive world and it is crucial to put serious time, focus and effort into your studies. My wife is Nicaraguan, I’m white and our kids are biracial, with one African American daughter who is adopted. All have known the alphabet by 2, over 100 words by flashcard by 3, and read a 100-page book by 4. There is no achievement gap in our family.
How can you share your knowledge with other families to help support our city’s children?
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:55 am
Your family is incredible. Not only are they intelligent children, but they are loving, friendly, well-adjusted, beautiful, and kind to others. I am proud of your accomplishments, and Deyanira and you are exemplary parents. Congratulations on doing the blog, and keep it up. Zoe and Dean
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:55 pm
You seem to have the right idea in terms of putting time in and emphasizing education and I commend you on being so dedicated to your children and family. More parents should be like you.
However, many parents have to work 2-3 jobs to pay the rent, or are single moms. I agree many families whose kids do not do so well are just wasting time in front of a TV or have a father who abandoned them, and that can change if we become more dedicated to family life and to education and to reading as entertainment in addition to school. Getting kids to read for pleasure instead of watch TV or play video games really improves their intelligence.
But what about the kids with a single mom or 2 super-busy parents or parents who don’t speak English well? I think SFUSD should enlist volunteers to help tutor children. Just 2-3 hours a week per child could make a tremendous difference. The middle class hires tutors for their kids from Craig’s List or even reccomended by Middle School counsellors. There are many dedicated liberals in our City and college students, young professionals, and retired people with some free time could really help. Kids need some one-on-one time and aren’t getting it. We could drastically imrpove our scores if we implemented a plan for any kid to be able to sign up for tutors at their school. We could hire some and pay for it with a 1% sales tax, but the majority could be volunteers. 826 Valencia provides writing education to hundreds of City Children and it is all volunteers, no one is paid, and they have more volunteers than they can use.
Teachers also need to teach kids how competitive the world is and encourage them to study. I’ve got a daughter at Hoover Middle School and have noticed some of the teachers are anti-competitive in nature, and teaching is kind of a middle of the road job. It pays the bills, but doesn’t pay well, and draws people who would rather have Summers off, have a job with no risk of being fired, and take it easy. They’re not as dedicated as most jobs, I mean they work 180 days and still take an average of 15 additional days off due to illness, additional vacation, etc. I haven’t missed a day of work in 5 years. That is fine as a choice, many people are more laid back, and I am glad many smart people make this choice, and most teachers are great. However, they need to realize most of the kids they teach will have to be much more intense, competitive and focused to get into a good high school and college, grad school, etc. I hear a lot of teachers say an A and a B are both OK. Some say Lowell is OK, Lincoln is OK, but the truth is Lowell is far better and on the Newsweek list. Teachers need to be more honest with kids in encouraging them to work harder, that it will take more time studying to have the kind of life which will enable them to stay in San Francisco and live a good life and have a family of their own. Many of the friends I grew up with who didn’t do well in school had to move and can’t afford it, and many live far away, Reno, Stockton. It’s a competitive city and kids need to know that. Teachers shouldn’t push an anti-competitive Kumbaya philosophy on kids which will drive them out of SF and potentially out of the middle class.
We need tutors, time studying, and help from the whole community. We are all in this together. Someone should organize a tutoring organization for all students who need it or can improve by it. Many people without kids in SF would love to volunteer. Many already do, but we need more of this.
December 2nd, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Mr. Van Zant,
Kids need role models from their own communities. We all have a lot to learn from each other, but the sad truth is that during childhood it is hard to see outside your own small frame of reference – it is hard to imagine a world bigger than the one you live in. That bigger unimagined world is the world where success resides, except for the lucky few that make it as a rapper or basketball player.
Black and Latino and Samoan students need more teachers from their own communities. They need people who they can relate to – people who have a common life experience and understand their trials. Only from that base can they learn other academic skills. You can’t expect some kid who grew up in an all latino neighborhood, for instance, to take his cues from some new Asian immigrants or their children. And some of these kids have a thing or two to teach others themselves, even if some have failed in school. Life has many lessons to learn and everybody has something to valid sto impart about their own experiences. It can’t be a one-way street. That is too paternal and underachieving minorities will not go for it. More minorities need to go into the teaching profession. Few do.
January 10th, 2010 at 5:48 am
I like your blog thanks