Thought this was interesting enough to include in full from the San Mateo Times as sometimes the links disappear!

Teacher stresses skills for learning

Jim Burke, a teacher at Burlingame High School, is the author of two books, "ACCESSing School" and "School Smarts." He runs the ACCESS program at Burlingame High School, which focuses on students who are reading below grade level and helps them develop skills in and out of the classroom.

Q: What got you interested in teaching?
A: The main thing that got me interested in teaching is having not been a very good student; I barely graduated from high school. In fact, one of the great ironies is that I got a D-minus in English my senior year (of high school) and now I'vewritten a book that's used in a lot of universities, including NYU (New York University) to teach people how to be English teachers. I think when I went to UC Santa Barbara, what I became interested in was psychology and learning, I got very interested in learning about the things I hadn't been able to do or hadn't done well, so I ended up getting a degree in how we learn and how we think.

Q: What do you think was the most important part of your education?
A: I can answer that in retrospect and say they were the things that weren't part of school. While I was not doing well in school, I was one of the better tennis players in the state. I learned a lot about how to learn and how to get good at something, so I would spend five or six hours a day, sometimes, working on my tennis game, but it would never occur to me that I could do the same thing and learn how to actually do enough to pass my math class. I didn't realize I was learning how to learn. When it came time and I realized that things weren't working out and I needed to go to college and get a little education, I suddenly realized I did know how to learn, I just wasn't applying those lessons to how to learn; how to do school.

Q: Do you think your difficulties in school led to your desire to strive to help those students who are underachievers or under-performers?
A: Definitely. I think I see myself in those kids. I understand what they're capable of becoming and I think one of the things that's unfortunate in our society is we tend to discount effort versus ability. We think you can or you can't. You either have the ability to do math or you can't. Whereas when they compare math studies in places like Asia, what they find is some kids have to work harder and longer to get it than others, but they never say "Well you just can't learn it because you don't have the ability." Some people may take a little longer to write than others, but to assume they don't have anything worth writing or that they can't learn how to write is really counterproductive. So I work very carefully with the kids to help them create experiences that help them realize they can do things. So, for instance, I will send slower readers around the corner to Washington Elementary School and have them work with kindergarteners, which places them in the position of authority and responsibility with books they can read very fluently, and then they develop self-esteem because they realize there are things they can do.

Q: How do you think your way of teaching is different from a more traditional method?
A: I think it's a mix. A part of my teaching is very traditional teaching, which is effectively conveying something. But I think what I do differently is creating that external context. I'm teaching the kids how to write and how to write well, and things like that, but they don't always know why they need to be able to write or why they need to be able to read. So in my ACCESS program, which is for the struggling readers, I bring in people who struggled. When you look at people like Officer (Ed) Nakiso, a great guy, who's the sergeant of the Burlingame Police he was a struggling reader when he was growing up. When he decided he wanted to become a police officer and he realized the first thing he had to do was memorize the California penal code and take tests, suddenly he realizes, "Wow, I guess you really need to know how to read." And guys like Chief (Bill) Reilly of the Burlingame Fire Department. So (he comes) into my class and talks about the fact that when he went into the fire department a million years ago, you just needed to be strong enough to hold the hose. Now you need to be just short of a doctor with all your paramedic skills and you've got to have all this fire, chemical, toxic hazard knowledge, and you've got to be just short of a scientist. So the (students) that sit in the class that think "This stuff's crap and I don't need to know how to read and write, I'm just going to be a firefighter" what they don't realize is the demands on your intelligence to be "just a firefighter" are profound. So what I try to do is blend those things and try to integrate the hands-on world into the classroom and sometimes get the kids out of the classroom. So we send the kids on job shadows, so when they come back from the visitation to the car plant, they've seen the guy who was working there who has to write the reports or read the new manuals to fix things the more traditional lesson plan on reading makes more sense then, because they realize they do need those things.

Q: Can you explain your ACCESS program in more detail?
A: ACCESS stands for Academic Success, and so the kids come in reading a couple of grade levels below. So a freshman might be reading at a seventh-, sixth- or fifth-grade level. What the ACCESS program tries to do is not just teach them how to be better readers, but it tries to teach them all the different skills you need to have to be able to be a successful student. What I'm trying to do is teach them not just the reading skills, but I'm trying to teach them the organizational skills, the study skills, the thinking skills, the writing skills that they need. The kids that come into a class like ACCESS have generally experienced school as a place that's designed for people who already know how to do it. School has become unapologetically academic the day of taking all shop or vocational (classes) is really, especially in the Bay Area, gone. If you look at the kinds of skills kids need to have, they're ultimately academic skills. In the class, I'm trying to develop those skills that they're going to need. As Tom Vander Ark, who's the head of the Gates education foundation says, "You want kids to be able to be good citizens, good students and great employees."

– Written by Fiona