Photo by Erin FredrichsTribune

Tribune

Viola Powell (right) giggles as Iris Chavez tries to help her sign her name, the sign for V on the chest followed by the letter P. Several educational assistants at Hodgin Elementary School spent an in-service training day learning sign language.

More School City

• Suspect beef called back from schools
• Measure requiring high school proficiency test awaits New Mexico governor's signature
• Albuquerque's Lenore Wolf has dedicated her life to kids

MOST RECENT TRIB STORIES

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
  08:48 a.m., February 25, 2008
• Congressman is indicted
  08:37 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Series of attacks target Green Zone
  08:36 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Iran is defying U.N., agency says
  08:35 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Waterboarding approval probed
  08:34 a.m., February 23, 2008

TRIB IN THE BLOGOSPHERE*

• Ty Murray Invitational thrills fans in Albuquerque
• Is Rome Burning?
• Ominous Skies
• The Road to Invalidation
• Albuquerque company participates in “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”

*Note: The Tribune does not create and is not responsible for the blogosphere's headlines and stories. These links to blogs talking about ABQTrib.com are automatically generated. Use them at your own risk.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

SHARE THIS STORY [?]

The name of the course was: "Math is still a four-letter word."

Hodgin Elementary School educational assistant Jody Miller attended because she had to.

All Hodgin EAs were required to report at 8 a.m. sharp to the Del Norte High School library for math training mandated this month by Albuquerque Public Schools.

This kind of in-service training has been a lightning rod among parents and teachers, who often question whether the training days are valuable enough to warrant giving students a day off. Now, for the first time, the district is also evaluating the process for relevancy and usefulness.

Miller went away from her three-hour math session with another name for it: repetitive, repetitive, repetitive. She'd heard it all before.

"We really didn't get much out of it," she said of her colleagues who agreed the training provided by the school district was lacking.

Back at Hodgin for the afternoon session, Miller became a much more enthusiastic participant in the Nov. 8 in-service day.

Several Hodgin EAs, who are deaf, volunteered to teach sign-language to the rest of the Hodgin EA staff.

"We were hungry for more," Miller said after the lively session unique to Hodgin, a signing school. Of the 565 Hodgin students, 25 are deaf or hard of hearing.

"It's critical for us to know sign language," Miller said. "Everybody loved the session. They learned."

In-service training always draws mixed reviews.

Mention in-service days — the four days a year teachers are in school without students — and parents will groan about their day care headaches.

Teachers also groan that the training isn't always helpful or worthwhile. Sometimes, teachers even call in sick expecting the training to be a waste of time.

In-service days are scheduled each year with the idea that educators will learn something new or hone their skills to improve classroom instruction. The cost to keep the educators on the job for a day without students is $1.7 million, said Rigo Chavez, district spokesman. This is the regular daily salary for all educators in the district.

An evaluation summary released this month for the September in-service day showed an 86.4 percent endorsement of the "usefulness" of the course material.

However, nearly 14 percent said the session they attended did not support their work.

Nearly 12,000 educators responded to the district's survey, most of them teachers.

The teachers union president said the in-service feedback she's heard indicates there was a wide range of opinions among teachers.

"Some people are wildly enthusiastic, and others are wildly negative, and there's everything in between," said Albuquerque Teachers Federation President Ellen Bernstein.

This year, on a trial basis, the in-service content is controlled by the district instead of the schools, under an agreement with the union.

"We're looking at the quality (of the training) and whether it applied to their jobs," Bernstein said.

The district has focused on math instruction with training in research-based math programs adopted by the schools.

Evaluation forms are handed out to teachers for each session and the district's Research, Development and Accountability Department is compiling the results.

Toby Herrera, the district's administrator for the service center which handles complaints, said parents aren't as vocal this year about problems with in-service days.

In the past, parents have objected because in-service days cause day care issues, Herrera said.

"Usually, it's a day care complaint. What am I going to do with my kids? It's especially a problem for parents with kids in different schools," he said.

The next most common complaint is: Why are kids losing a day of instruction? "They aren't," is Herrera's answer.

No instructional time is sacrificed for training teachers.

Schools set their schedules to meet the state's minimum number of minutes for instruction and also allow the four days for teacher training.

To be more parent-friendly, the district has scheduled in-service days by cluster, which helps families who have children in different schools, he said.

"We've received fewer and fewer complaints," Herrera said.

The next in-service day is Jan. 7, the last day of the winter break for students. By scheduling teacher training at this time, it's less disruptive during the year, Herrera said.

"The district is also trying to get in-service days scheduled before school starts. This should really help," he said.