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Andrea Vineyard is passionate about teaching. It has been her love for 20 years, and the Tavares High School teacher of special needs students has been lauded as one of the best in the state: “A teacher who goes beyond the basic job description to continue positive growth in her students.”

Lake County’s 2015-16 Teacher of the Year also won the Magic of Teaching Award from Macy’s, a statewide honor.

“I was really humbled,” she says. “I am just doing my job and I love what I do…It has been the most wonderful experience in my life actually, because I have experienced more than just being recognized, but learning that I am more than just a teacher. I am a mother to these students and also a friend to them.”

For many of her 13 students, she is their teacher from the time they are in the ninth grade, at ages 14 or 15, until they “age out” at 22.

Special needs students thrive in a consistent and structured environment, she says. Most are frightened and meek as freshmen.

Her goal is to help them gain selfconfidence and life skills they can use after high school. They learn to work jobs around campus, ride the city bus, cook, and create a monthly budget.

“Watching my students become adults is one of the most rewarding aspects of my job,” Andrea says. “The strongest evidence of success is when I see that same distraught ninth-grade student walking across the stage at graduation with his peers, sporting a huge confident smile while yelling, ‘I did it!’ That’s the exact moment when I know I succeeded as a teacher.”

Her love for teaching was instilled at a young age. Andrea’s 94-year-old grandmother taught second grade. “I always tell her, ‘I am who I am today because of you,’” she says. Andrea also had a set of grandparents who were professors at the University of Wisconsin.

While in high school in Ripon, Wisconsin, she was in the gifted program, where she was able to choose different fields to study and work in the afternoons.

“I chose to work in a facility with mentally challenged adults,” she recalls. “I did that every day and absolutely loved it. I went camping with them, and I just fell in love with it…Now I realize [special education] is where I am supposed to be.”

After receiving her bachelor’s degree from the University of North Alabama, getting married and having two daughters, she endured challenging times when her youngest was diagnosed with leukemia.

“We lived at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for more than two years,” Andrea says, recalling the family was provided a trip to Disney World through Make-A-Wish Foundation. The experience inspired

Andrea’s family to move to the Sunshine State in 2004. She taught at Treadway Elementary before moving to Tavares High School.

Her grown daughters appear to be following Andrea’s footsteps. The oldest, 24, works at a group home for adults with disabilities, and the youngest, 21, is in school in Georgia to become a special education teacher.

Andrea now devotes many weekends as the Lake County Schools District coordinator for Special Olympics. She works with the state Special Olympics office in coordinating events, and was thrilled when Tavares was honored to host the State Special Olympics last year and again this year. Basketball championships took place last month at the Big House, across the street from Tavares Middle School.

“I had over 70 kids from Tavares High come volunteer last year,” Andrea says.

“They absolutely loved it.”

She credits Special Olympics for fostering friendships, positive experiences, and self-esteem in her students as well as the volunteers, many of whom are part of Best Buddies at Tavares High School.

Best Buddies is a club of mainstream students, each paired with a special needs student as a mentor.

Andrea was touched when one of the Best Buddies wrote her a letter of appreciation, which read in part: “Your job is the hardest but the most needed. Thank you so much for being just who you are.”

The teacher hopes lifelong friendships are being forged through Best Buddies. “I want them to come back 10 years from now after they graduate high school and say, I’m still talking to so and so,” she says.

Andrea credits her students for also inspiring her to pursue more in the educational field.

“I have learned that I am more capable of accomplishing things that I didn’t think that I could ever do,” says Andrea, who has gone back to school to obtain a specialist degree in leadership. “I want to continue on to the next chapter; my ultimate goal is that I would love to be a principal and have my own school.”

She was chosen by the Florida Department of Education to take part in workshops filled with evidence-based strategies, tools, and resources to bring back to share with fellow Lake County teachers.

“They raised the bar now for teachers in the state of Florida and they made it really hard because they want the best and brightest, however, sometimes not always the best and brightest are the best teachers,” Andrea says. “You have to have the heart and love for the students.”

Her advice to prospective teachers is to go into the profession for the right reasons.

“It’s not for the money, and it’s not for the three months off because we really don’t have that all the time,” she says. “I teach during the summer too, but my main thing is you have got to love what you do.”

She knows some teachers experience burnout early in their careers.

“I have never had that feeling at all,” Andrea says. “Hopefully, I will become principal one day, but until then, I won’t go anywhere else. I love these kids, and I am blessed because I have known the parents of my students for so long. We have developed friendships.”

She considers herself an advocate for special needs children. “I will stand up for my kids,” she says. “I will go against anybody that has anything [negative] to do with my kids because the students come first.”

Recess was once an important part of the school day. Now it has become an issue that has pitted parents against schools. As always, though, there are two sides to every argument.

WRITER: LEIGH NEELY

In the early part of this new century, there was a trend to move away from recess in schools. Research indicates this began with the implementation of “No Child Left Behind” in 2002. Children are covering difficult subjects earlier, and there’s a need for the teacher to have more classroom time. There are those who argue that the physical education class now available in most schools fulfills the need for movement and creativity outside the classroom. However, many believe this organized, restrictive exercise does not meet all the needs.

There was a time when climbing on the jungle gym, swinging, and kids chasing one another was a regular part of the school day. Psychologists say there’s a definite link between carefree playing and improved skills in the classroom, and there’s been research done recently that says playing with blocks aids language development.

Though legislation to ensure students get to play at some point during the school day failed in 2016, it has once again been introduced by state Sen. Anitere Flores (R-Miami). This 20 minutes of playtime will be in addition to the required 150 minutes of physical education (PE) class each week for students from kindergarten through fifth grade. If it is approved, it will take effect in August with the opening of the new school year.

Cindy Christidis is principal at Treadway Elementary School in provide a minimum of 60 minutes a week for recess and sometimes more. It is not a scheduled time to allow the teacher to find what works best for the class. There are also daily PE classes.

“Our faculty, staff, and parents support the implementation of recess at Treadway,” Cindy says. “The Treadway community has been very supportive in this process, and I am not aware of any issues at this time with recess. We have a very involved and engaged [School Advisory Council] that is mindful of our students’ academic and social growth.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) agreed that PE a healthy lifestyle, but recess gives children the opportunity to play creatively. For this reason, the AAP believes it should be part of the daily school routine.

This is supported by a study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which says recess offers one of the “most powerful opportunities to strengthen schools, foster healthy child development, and boost learning.” According to the foundation, more than $800 billion is spent on education, and yet one of the best tools is being dismissed.

Most of the arguments against recess dealt with these issues:

• Teachers need more classroom time

• Outdoor play can lead to injuries and lawsuits

• Possible access to strangers on a playground

• More incidents of bullying

Missing recess also has been a typical form of punishment, giving teachers some leverage with children with behavioral problems. However, there has been nothing definitive in any of the research that says it is better to have children spend the day at school without recess time.

In a press release from the National Association of Elementary School Principals, Joan Almon says, “The Common Core Standards were created to help graduates enter the workplace and college. A recent IBM Institute study asked 1,500 CEOs around the world what they sought most in employees. The answer was simple: creativity. There is no better way to foster creativity than to keep it alive in early childhood when it is naturally strong and expresses itself through play.”

WRITER:

Lory Baxley never met a math problem she couldn’t solve. Math was her favorite subject in school, and she even served as a tutor while attending LakeSumter State College in the 1990s.

Several years ago, while helping her fourth-grade son with his homework, math finally left her feeling bewildered. Not because she couldn’t come up with the right answer. Instead, she was angry that Cole, 10, had to solve a two-step algebra problem involving variables.

“He is a bright kid, but children his age are concrete thinkers rather than abstract thinkers,” says Baxley, a resident of Eustis who works in the business development department of Advanced Nursing Concepts. “Asking someone his age to solve that problem is like asking a fish to climb a tree. He became emotional and frustrated because he could not understand what finding a variable meant. He even asked me if he was going to fail fourth grade.”

Baxley conducted research and felt the new methodologies and curriculums being taught in public schools are, pardon the pun, rotten to the core. Like so many parents across the country, she became a grassroots activist dedicated to fighting Common Core.

Common Core represents the biggest widespread change in America’s public schools since former President George W. Bush signed “No Child Left Behind” into law in 2002. Initiated by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, Common Core creates tough new nationwide standards for what students in grades K-12 should know and be able to achieve at each grade level—and difficult tests to go along with them.

The first stage involved implementing rigorous new standards in English and math by emphasizing critical thinking, reading complex materials, and learning core math concepts through context and application rather than rote memorization. Forty-five states in the United States have adopted Common Core.

But many parents, like Baxley adamantly oppose the program. Its biggest liability, she says, is that students must meet a set of untested, unproved academic standards.

“The Federal Drug Administration would never approve the use of a drug without a clinical trial. So why was Common Core approved with no concern for possible harm or adverse consequences? There’s no evidence that it enriches education or improves student achievement. It is an unbelievable governmental monster forced on our children.” Baxley says.

She has worked diligently to slay the monster by speaking against it to legislators in Tallahassee, officials from the Department of Education, and the Lake County legislative delegation. She has even appeared on radio shows and is active in an increasingly popular Facebook group called Lake County Against Common Core.

“Our Facebook page typically grows at the beginning of each school year,” she says. “That’s when parents who have children in elementary school see the kind of math problems their children are being asked to solve. They become shocked and frustrated.”

Baxley also has discovered that Common Core politics make for strange bedfellows. Everyone from tea party conservatives to teachers unions has rallied against it.

“It’s a nonpartisan issue. Liberals and conservatives alike hate it,” she says.

Of course, not everyone is ready to kick Common Core to the curb. Proponents often cite statistics from Kentucky, which, in February 2010, became the first state to adopt Common Core standards. The state’s college and career readiness rate improved from 34 percent in 2010 to 62 percent in 2014.

Kentucky’s success does not surprise Stacy JohnsonProctor, a seventh-grade language arts teacher at Tavares Middle School. A supporter of Common Core, she says that teaching students challenging curriculum such as writing argumentative essays, research papers, and thesis statements better prepares them to succeed in high school and college.

“The language arts standards are very good because students today are learning about things that I didn’t learn until I was in high school,” says Johnson-Proctor, a resident of Fruitland Park. “For the ones who go on to college, I think they’ll be more prepared than the generations before them. I also like how Common Core encourages students to read more in subjects such as science and social studies. Being a good and enthusiastic reader is vitally important and helps them better comprehend what they are supposed to be learning.”

Other proponents argue that the new standards will make U.S. students more competitive with their international peers. So far, that hasn’t been the case. In 2012, U.S. students ranked 36th out of 65 countries after taking the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, which is administered once every three years to 15-year-old students throughout the world. When U.S. students took the test again in 2015, average math scores declined, and students showed no signs of improvement in reading.

Those declining math scores, critics say, reflect how Common Core uses complex methods to solve simple math problems. For instance, students are no longer taught mathematical shortcuts like cross-multiplying when dividing fractions.

With Common Core, arriving at the right answer to a math problem is only half the battle. It is equally important for students to understand the mathematical concepts used to solve a problem. But do second- and third-grade students have the cognitive skills required to demonstrate a deeper understanding of math concepts?

Absolutely not, says Jaennae Riley, a frustrated parent who says Common Core is the reason she transferred her daughter from a public school to First Academy-Leesburg.

As a third grader, Kierstyn Riley, 9, struggled to understand and complete her math homework, leaving her feeling demoralized. Evenings in the Riley household were often filled with tears and frustration.

“Kierstyn would bring home D’s and F’s on her math tests,” says Jaennae, a resident of Fruitland Park. “She would have to figure out difficult math problems where there were several right answers. Even if she figured out one right answer it would still be wrong if she didn’t choose the other right answers. And points were taken off if she came up with the right answer but didn’t solve the problem according to Common Core standards. She would literally sit there and cry at nights because she became so frustrated.”

To compound problems, Jaennae had an equally difficult time grasping Common Core math, rendering her helpless in assisting her daughter with homework.

“I tried Googling and texting other parents—all to no avail. We had no idea how to help our children. It was the worst nightmare ever,” she says. “She despised every ounce of math and began telling me that she was not smart.”

Her fortunes have changed considerably as a fourthgrade student at First Academy-Leesburg, where traditional methods are used to teach math. She has made A’s and B’s on all her math homework and tests.

“For me, it’s a big sigh of relief to see her going from crying two hours every night to understanding and enjoying math,” Jaennae says. “Now, if she’s struggling with something, I can help her.”

The struggles with advanced coursework and having to take numerous state-mandated standardized Common Core tests are taking the joy out of learning, according to opponents like Baxley.

“I’m all for challenging our kids, but I want our children to be taught what is appropriate for their age level so they can continue to love learning.”