BENTON -- Arkansas lawmakers are taking their questions about education to the source -- teachers.
During September -- the first Take Your Legislator to School Month -- dozens of legislators toured local schools and questioned teachers about state education initiatives.
Rep. Charlotte Douglas, R-Alma, a retired teacher, came up with September's designation.
"As a retired classroom teacher, I know that the best way to understand the vital role our public schools play is to interact directly with administrators, teachers, and students," she said in a letter to the Arkansas Department of Education.
"I hope that by participating in these activities, legislators will become more aware not only of the challenges in public schools, but also the solutions and innovations making Arkansas competitive nationwide."
Douglas could not be reached for comment.
In response to her idea, Reps. Lanny Fite, R-Benton, and Kim Hammer, R-Benton, surveyed Salem Elementary School last Monday.
The pair asked teachers about testing, broadband, state regulations, cursive writing, computers and more.
They started their tour in Statia Smith's third-grade classroom. Fite asked Smith what her biggest challenge is.
"Maybe time," Smith said. "There's just so much to cover, but really having the time to ensure they get the mastery to move on."
A shift in standards because of Common Core complicated things. Standards for fourth-graders were moved to third-grade classrooms.
As she spoke, third-grade students quietly studied in her book-filled classroom.
Hammer asked how much of Smith's time is devoted to requirements imposed by lawmakers and the state Board of Education.
Perhaps 30 percent, Smith said, though that's not what keeps her at work often past 6 p.m.
"Part of it is just I know what I need to do to make sure that I'm giving them the best and part of that is staying late and studying before I present to them," she said.
"There's so much out there that you have to look at what it is first before you decide if you want to give it to the kids."
Fite asked about PARCC standardized testing (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) and a switch to the ACT Aspire test.
Smith said she liked that both tests are computer-based, but noted problems with PARCC's interface. Students had to constantly scroll back and forth to type a paragraph, she said.
Leslie Penfield, assistant principal at Salem Elementary, said they were still waiting for results.
"The PARCC testing seemed to go on weeks and weeks," she said. "We were testing the whole month in April and into May."
Fite moved on to Joan Walker's fifth-grade gifted and talented classroom. Hammer, a hospice chaplain, was called in to work.
Walker was teaching her students about simple machines. She spoke through a wireless microphone system found in most of the classrooms at the school.
She used a Promethean Board -- a blackboard-size touchscreen computer monitor -- to display a YouTube video about Rube Goldberg machines.
A Rube Goldberg machine performs a simple task in a complicated manner. Goldberg was a cartoonist and inventor.
Students presented their own car movers, dice rollers, catapults and balloon poppers.
Fite asked Walker about technology.
"We've got to keep this in the hands of our youth because that's going to be the future," she said. "We do get out our encyclopedias every once in a while because I want them to know there's still such a thing, but you know, it's a growing need and I'm sure it's going to be a growing problem in the future."
The school has sufficient bandwidth, though there are hiccups every once in a while, she said.
Every student in Walker's classroom had a Chromebook. Class sets of the Google laptops and iPad tablets float around the school, Penfield said.
The district is moving toward one mobile device for every student, she said.
Fite next traveled to Amie Horn's second-grade classroom. Students there were learning about unlikely friendships -- such as that between Jane Goodall, the British primatologist, and chimpanzees.
"That's what makes friendship so special, isn't it?" Horn told her class. "Because you can teach your friend something and your friend can teach you something."
She asked her students to write about a time they taught a friend something and vice versa.
While they worked, Fite asked what Horn's biggest challenge is.
"The fact that they all come from different backgrounds -- the different experiences that they've each had," she said. "The bottom line is they all want to learn."
Penfield said the school's parent-teacher organization raises the money to buy every child's school supplies.
"No child has to be without," she said. "And it can be expensive."
After the tour, Fite said his biggest takeaway was how important technology is to schools.
"It seems like everybody is trying to move to a device for each child," he said. "It appeared that they're going to need more bandwidth."
Lawmakers around the state praised the month's designation.
Rep. Jana Della Rosa, R-Rogers, said she visited eight schools to better understand needs in her district.
The highlight of her visit came as she was sitting in a fifth-grade math class.
"I mentioned that I had graduated in industrial engineering. The class was talking about efficiency and organization. My point was that's what I do," she said. "But when I started talking about engineering, this fifth-grade girl started looking at me and you would have thought I just said I was an astronaut."
"The fact that this girl knew what engineering was and had an interest in it was a huge step forward. That did not happen back when I was in school."
And Rep. Camille Bennett, D-Lonoke, said she visited the five schools in her town.
"I'd been to all the schools before, but it was really fascinating. I learned things I didn't know," she said.
For example, the school system started a program to reach out to home-schooled students and offer online courses.
"You would still be a home-schooler, but you would be able to tap into the school's resources for certain courses," she said. "They've had a real warm reception, because home-schoolers say no one reaches out to them."
Bennett said the schools are also better using data to track the success of each student.
Della Rosa said it's important to take questions about education to the source.
"You've got to remember, most legislators don't have children in school. I do, but most are retired and haven't had kids in school for 10 years," she said. "It's kind of a way to reconnect and get a good feel for what's going on these days, because it's not the same as it was when we were in school."
Metro on 09/28/2015