Why I Won't Discourage My Students from Becoming Teachers

By:  Dr. Mark Naison 

Every day, I get personal messages from teachers describing how their jobs have been turned nightmarish by tests, assessments, scripting and micromanagement and abusive treatment by administrators. When I posed the question here of whether things are better or worse for teachers than they were 10 years ago, well over 95% said they were much worse; many people said they were planning to leave the profession or were on the verge of being driven out.

So why, given all this, do I tell my students who want to be teachers that they should continue with their plans if they know what they are getting into and understand the powerful trends undermining the profession?

There are two main reasons I take this approach.

The first is that the scripting, micromanagement, surveillance, top down management and erosion of loyalty and job security that teachers are experiencing NOW are deeply established in most other occupations, especially in the private sector. As a teacher and scholar in labor history, I watched the nation's unionized industrial workforce lose their dignity, their power and standard of living in the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's while the rest of the nation stood silent, and saw Wal-Mart, with its abusive management practices and low wages, become the nation's largest employer, replacing General Motors, which once had that status. When that process was complete, I saw the Wal-Mart management style sweep through service industries, and in the last ten years have seen it invade public employment as city and state governments seek to privatize vital functions, break unions, and undermine worker pensions.

Here is the brutal truth: THERE IS NO OCCUPATION IN THIS COUNTRY WHERE YOU CAN AVOID THE BRUTAL MANAGEMENT PRACTICES CURRENTLY INVADING TEACHING!

There is no "dream job" I can tell my students about, here or in any other country, where you will find security, loyalty, autonomy, and caring respectful management. Work conditions in teaching, as bad as they are, may actually be better than they are in some other jobs.

But there is an additional reason:

I refuse to give up the profession to the privatizers, the abusers, the people who destroying childhood and undermining what should be one of the best jobs in the society.. If there are young people who love the prospect of changing lives, who have a passion to teach, who believe in the potential of all young people irrespective of their backgrounds, personalities and unique aptitudes, I think they should go in and fight the good fight for their students any way they can, and in the process try to organize their colleagues, empower their students, awaken the families they are in touch with, and revitalize their unions.

I don't think we give up on a whole generation of young people because times are hard and getting harder.

Sometime in the next twenty years, if we keep organizing and resisting, we may be able to turn this all around, but even if we can't, there are minds to be opened, lives to be changed, hope to be passed on to future generations.

I still, in spite of it all, think the best and most idealistic of our young people should become teachers.

But Teachers who Fight the Power. Badass Teachers.  LIKE US!

Who Am I? 

By:  Terri Michal Rector

Speech given at Moral Monday

on 9/22/14

Who am I? I am a white girl that was born at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in a little place in Indiana called Crawfordsville. I was raised by a single mom who never told me who I could and couldn’t play with…she never tried to tell me that other families were different.  I never went to segregated schools…we didn’t have segregated bathrooms or drinking fountains.  I was a kid who preferred Soul Train over American Bandstand and I preferred the Jackson 5 over the Osmonds.  I thank God I was allowed to make choices based on a vision that was free of the prejudices that only adults bring into this world. 

In 1987 I moved to Huntsville Alabama.  I brought my color blind views with me.  I didn’t think about race at all when choosing housing and schools….so you can understand my confusion and disgust when OTHERS kept bringing it up…..like real estate agents and principals.  I wondered what kind of place I had just moved too.  After a while I gave up and moved to Madison where race was never mentioned.

I provided the same kind of guidance to my kids that was given to me….never making race a factor when it came to friends, music, movies, food or anything else…..it worked well for us, or so I thought.  I wasn’t a racist..and I lived a color blind life.

And then in 2012 a student was assaulted in the bathroom at a predominately black school in Huntsville Alabama. She was assaulted, stripped from the waist up and had to run down the hall that way to look for help.  I knew this child’s mother and I also knew teachers in the system. As I got insider information from the mother and from the teachers about what happened  I saw the breakdown in the school’s communication before my very eyes and I became incensed.  I put all of the information I had together and could see they were trying to sweep the issue under the carpet…they were blaming the victim and refusing her a transfer away from her attackers…….but WHY?  Why would they NOT do everything they could to protect this child?

One question.  One question is all it took for me.  That one little question has led to another and another and another.  Two years later I am still asking questions and uncovering answers about No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, vouchers, charters, standardized testing, segregation, racism, and classism.  

That one question has also led me on a personal path of self-discovery.  I have had to face some ugly things about my so called ‘color blind’ life.  I realized that through my blindness I failed to see the diversity…I failed to see the uniqueness of the struggles….and because of that I was unable to even walk a step in someone else’s shoes….and yet I felt I was able to do just that because I wasn’t a racist after all.  I was so wrong.  This journey has led me to begin SOS Support Our Students and to become an administrator with the national organization Badass Teacher Association, 52,000 teachers and advocates strong.  I’ve stood against Michelle Rhee demanding answers about Vouchers and charters and I’ve stood before our legislators demanding that they do right by our teachers…for our teachers working environment is truly the children’s learning environment. I have  even protested with hundreds of others in Washington DC demanding that a moratorium be put on charters before they do any more damage to our high poverty communities.

Today I am challenging you to ask your question…..to persist beyond the easy ‘comfortable’ answers and to make waves. Make someone uncomfortable.  Talk about race.  Talk about poverty.  Don’t stop because someone asks ‘who are you?’ Don’t stop because you are afraid.  So often today I hear teachers say they are afraid they will lose their jobs if they speak out about their working conditions or parents will say they are afraid about retaliation to their children if they opt them out of testing.  To that I will reply…..don’t talk to me about fear until you have boarded a bus in Nashville, Tennessee headed for Birmingham, Alabama not even sure if you will make it back alive. Stop hiding behind your fear, allowing it to immobilize you, and to silence you, instead use it to propel you to create change.

Everyone here knows that our high poverty students and our students of color are getting cheated out of a quality public education and it is our duty, whether black or white, brown or yellow, to speak for those that cannot…..that is the human condition….to protect our young. 

So, please join me in demanding that our legislators stop using legislation like the Accountability Act to line their pockets and those of their friends with the monies that should be going towards education and instead find REAL solutions to equally funding our schools so that every child can receive a quality public education in in their zip code in Alabama.  Parents and taxpaying citizens of Alabama….we HAVE the power to create change through our voice and our vote…..WHO’S SCHOOLS?  OUR SCHOOLS!

Educational Malpractice and the Tragedy of America's Teachers
By:  Dr. Mark Naison

Someday, though I don't exactly know when or how, there will be a full account of the tragedy of America's teachers being forced to commit educational malpractice and deciding between keeping the jobs they need to feed their families and jeopardizing the educational well being and emotional health of the children they teach.

Based on the messages and emails I have received daily since the founding of BATS,as well as book's like Laurel Sturt's "Davonte's Inferno" this group may well encompasses millions of teachers. This malpractice consists, among other things, of administering multiple tests to children as low as Pre-K, pushing play out of the classroom, cancelling recess for test prep, putting up Data Walls which humiliate students and foster unhealthy competition; failings student for writing essays which do not conform to a script; administering developmentally inappropriate tests to ELL and Special Needs students; doing "close reading" of texts which should be enjoyed or viewed in historical context; denying students access to art, music and sports because they didn't do well on tests; imposing Common Core aligned curricula without dissent even when they are less effective the curricula they replaced.
The sum total of these measures are test mad, creativity deprived, play impaired, and joyless classrooms which break students spirits at an early age.

Teachers are told their jobs depend on imposing these measures. Some resist and are fired, many retire, many feign compliance and try to subvert, but many end of implementing these policies with damaged consciences and broken hearts. More than a few end up going on medication,

What is taking place in our schools is the anti-thesis of Freedom. It has the stench of the authoritarianism that marks the worst dictatorships.

We have to stop it, reverse it, shut it down.

Free the Teachers.
Free the Students.

Fourteen Words that Are Cursing America's Children

By:  Jo Lieb

Words do matter. They do have life. They do have power. They can hurt our souls and bring us down or they can heal our hearts and raise us up. They can cause us to love and they can cause us to hate. We can take words and use them to spur us to actions or we can take words and use them to spur others to act in ways we desire. Words are power and words give and take life.

With that said, I want us to examine these 14 words that are shaping the future of American education. These words were spoken by Common Core wizard David Coleman at a NY State Department of Education presentation, in April of 2011:

“…people really don't give a s*** about what you feel or what you think.”

If you replace the “you” with “students” and the “people” with “teachers” we now have a pedagogical statement that truly shatters my heart. Now it reads:

…teachers really don’t give a s*** about what students feel or what students think.

Let’s paraphrase this educational dogma less explicitly and reveal a sense of Coleman’s message to America’s educators:

Teachers should not care about what students feel or think.

Is it just me, or is this the antithesis to what a good teacher should be doing? A mere decade ago, the mantra “It’s All About the Kids” pervaded everything that was being done in my CT district.Almost before my eyes, we are now teaching in a time where the mantra has changed to “It’s All About the Data.”

Now I do not have anything against data teams and data sheets and data collection. But data is just that – DATA, NUMBERS,lifeless characters on a page. Good data can inform our instruction. It can reveal deficiencies and strengths in our teaching. It can help kids improve.But it’s just an inanimate tool. Each one of my students is much more than a place holder on a spreadsheet.

If we accept Coleman’s directive and not care about what our students are actually thinking and feeling, then, I guess, it is easier for some teachers and administrators to view their students as justdata. It’s like being a piece of merchandise in a retail store. The student is just inventory and the worth of the student is determined by the value in the spreadsheet. If the student isn’t making a profit, then the student should be reduced in value and eventually written off the books. This is a chilling way of looking at our young people.

My hope on this Sunday morning is that each and every educator, administrator, and parent would come to their senses and see just what is happening to our children in our schools. With one voice, we must all speak out and say that our kids have hearts, minds, bodies, emotions,talents, questions, and needs that must be valued. Our kids deserve to be seen and they need to be heard. With one voice, let us all proclaim these fourteen words and turn a curse into a blessing over America’s children:  Teachers, parents and administrators must deeply care about what our students feel and think.
Those are Coleman's words rephrased from his "curse" to our "calling."

A Call to Action from a Badass Teacher

At some point something has to give, something has to break inside every one of us. At what point are you ready to say that it's time to either sit behind your computer screen and whine about a problem that you claim to be horrified by (or worse, ignore it all together hoping it will go away) or finally get up out of your seat, feel the surge of justified ire and a need to go take solid and well-planned action against serious wrongs fill your veins? At what point do you decide to stop being a meek, uneasy sheep who is afraid of what might happen as a result of your disagreement with what is and rise to the occasion as a duty to your high standards? At what juncture do you decide to make your mind, abilities and life count for something more than the status quo or simply "good enough" for your kids, familial and classroom? What is your threshold of tolerance for blatant wrongdoing? Sometimes, some days, you MUST ask yourself those questions...

As an educator, a parent and a human being, I find myself asking those questions more and more, each day that crawls by. YES, I fear losing my job because I am becoming more and more outspoken about the horrendous and vile things that are being done to my profession by those who seek to profit from it. YES, I am enraged by what I hear and see here in print and via shared articles each day. And at times, I too can be that meek sheep. It's easy to do. It's easy to sit back and hope that someone else will handle the situation for you. We've all been there; it's a very human thing to do. But as educated people who all obviously and wholeheartedly share the fears and the outrages of the current direction we find ourselves being tugged in, we have an ultimate responsibility to RISE ABOVE the fear and DO SOMETHING. Perhaps not all of us are speakers, or organizers or as daring as the next in taking risks to get a point across or information shared, but we can all do SOMETHING to fight back. We can leave behind opt-out info and information about data mining at public libraries and supermarkets for parents to find. We can leave a BATs business card on a community bulletin board. We can DO a daily action. We CAN. ALL OF US. There are 52,000 of us here and the number grows daily. That, folks, is a small army. But only if the entire army is willing to do its part to fight to the best of its ability and not leave the generals floundering without troops. If we don't all do our parts, and if we ALL don't start to feel and act upon the rage towards what's going on, and we ALL decide that it's just too hard to sign petitions or send tweets or take care of a simple activist action day to day, then soon enough we won't HAVE the ability or the RIGHT to speak up or fight. It's not a mirage or a dream. It's a very REAL possibility. We stand at a cusp here, and we can make the difference between a beautiful, thoughtful future or a bleak dystopian data-driven nightmare straight out of "1984."

It's all very well and good to gripe and vent and put up articles that we find. I find them as informative as the next person, and I certainly do my fair share of griping and venting; but go beyond that and ponder on what YOU need to do to rip yourself out of that blase meek sheep's skin and come out ripping and roaring your true inner lion through ACTION. These data jackals and stuffed-shirt capitalist demon-dogs are playing for keeps. If we don't resist as lions, we'll simply wind up as lamb-chops for the vultures to pick apart. Let's make this happen, brothers and sisters in the cause. Let's stop bleating and start roaring! What say ye?

(I'll remind you that this post was NOT meant to offend. We have many steadfast and dynamic risk-takers and leaders here, each in their own way and on their own levels of ability and comfort. I reach out to those thousands who silently belong to the group and yet who may sit at the sidelines wondering if they SHOULD get involved. My answer is an emphatic YES. Leap out of that shadowy den and get your long razor-sharp claws out. Make a difference and make your abilities and knowledge count for something as important as saving education from the braying hyenas who are circling it with teeth bared. Some meat to chew on this weekend. Solidarity and a good evening to you all!)

Posted anonymously Sept 19, 2014 

Arne meets Meghan!
 BY:  Meghan Vaziri.

Here is my report from my meeting with Arne Duncan. I held up two signs at the rally (picture included). A neighborhood man asked me about the signs and said he had heard of this TCAP - I told him he could refuse it for his kids or grand kids, and he was surprised - then he asked if he could hold a sign! After the very short rally, complete with high school marching band, it was announced that "guests" of the town hall meeting should enter the building. I stuffed my signs behind a bush and entered as if I were a guest. 
I sat near the middle of the library (which was very sparse in terms of books) and took out my sketch pad. They had a performance of high school kids who were dancing to Elvis songs, and moving their lips to them - not singing themselves. I wrote on a sheet of paper: Arts Education NOT Test Prep and held it up. Some very well dressed men behind me told me they agreed with my sign - but they clearly didn't want everyone to know they agreed with me. I saw some people I know - "education reformers" - Marc Sturgis, formerly of Stand for Children, now with Strive, Jacklyn Zubrzyski, reporter for Chalkbeat (she took the photo below), the Assistant Superintendent of the I-Zone schools, and others. The ones I knew seemed to find it odd that I was in that meeting - but they didn't tell on me! No one even asked me to put my signs down, which I was surprised about - I suppose they didn't want to cause a scene. 
I held up signs the whole time Arne Duncan was talking - Lower Class Sizes when he said the answer to 30-student Kindergarten classes was
for "faith-based" organizations to offer free tutoring to these large classes, Refuse the TCAP, Trust Teachers and Listen to Parents, and others (I would change them when I got bored of holding them - I think everyone was reading my signs, they were the least boring thing in the whole meeting). Arne Duncan was looking very uncomfortably at me the whole time - afraid I would start arguing in the middle of the town hall, I guess. Maybe I should have. The President of the MSCEA Keith Williams sat down behind me. At one point, he asked a very good question: Will there always be takeover of the bottom 5%, even if the bottom 5% improve and are doing very well? Barbic claimed there will not always be takeover of the bottom 5%. When I raised my hand to ask a question, they would not give me the mic. At one point, a man who had been raising his hand just started talking- they listened. I guess I could have done that. Someone asked Barbic, Superintendent of the ASD, why those test scores weren't so good, and he said it was the quality of the teachers in the ASD that was the problem. I knew he was this type of person, so I wasn't surprised he threw his teachers under the bus, but I know he convinced a lot of people he supported them - in order to convince them to work for his district. A few years later, they're the problem. At the end of the meeting, I left early to go stand by Arne Duncan's bus and hold a sign. They had thrown away the signs I put behind the bush. Luckily, I had more signs in my bike bag! I stood next to the bus and a security guard grabbed my sign, "I'm gonna have to take this sign." Me: "Where do you want me to stand?" "It doesn't matter where you stand, I need to get this sign." I didn't let go of the sign. He was pulling pretty hard. "This is MY sign. I'll stand where ever you tell me to stand, but you're not taking my sign." "Okay, go stand on the other side of the street." "Okay, I'll go stand on the other side of the street." And I did. When people walked by to leave the meeting, I would yell "Teachers not Test-givers!" or "Refuse the Test!" A lot - maybe even 50% of them -- responded positively with a thumbs up or "you're right." These were the same people who were so silent and docile in the meeting with Arne, which I had also sat through holding signs. So, clearly, they'll act like they agree with the corporate testing agenda to save their jobs, but many of them don't really agree with it. I had a long and very entertaining conversation with the bus driver, Glenn. During that conversation, a high-powered-looking business man came over to me and tried to argue with me, "So why do you think we shouldn't have tests?" "We should have tests - teacher-made tests, but standardized tests are turning learning into nothing but test prep. In kindergarten, children test prep all day - they aren't allowed to learn by playing." "Okay," he said, making fun of me (trying to get the bus driver on his side), "Have you ever run a business?" "Have YOU ever looked at the educational system in Finland? They don't test kids until they're 16 years old and they have the best scores in the world." "Yeah, but they also have really great teachers." "Because they TRUST their teachers." Him: "Okay, I guess this is a chicken and egg thing." And I said "Yes guess so." and turned to talk to some more people walking by. The high-powered business man walked off. Jeff Peck, former editor of the Commercial Appeal, gave me his card when he was leaving. He now works for a philanthropy group and doesn't know much about why I'm protesting, but would like to know more so they can donate their money more effectively. I'm supposed to meet him for coffee sometime. At one point a whole car full of people gave me the thumbs up when they drove off-- they had been in the meeting, too. As I stood on the sidewalk, a kid bicycled past, and I said, "You don't have to take the TCAP!" He said "Really?" He was very surprised. I said yes, tell your parents. An old woman went by in an electric wheelchair and I told her you could refuse the TCAP for your kids. She stopped to ask more questions. Well, that's about all, until Arne Duncan finally came out in an SUV with his Secret Service. As they pulled out of the drive, he got out of his vehicle and came over to me, saying, "I know we disagree on a lot of things, but I want to thank you because you care." I should have said "ALL teachers care, you scheduled this during school hours or you would have had a lot more teachers here." But I didn't think of that. I do think he was implying that I was the only teacher who cared or disagreed with him. I told him about test prep in kindergarten and so on. He asked me, if I wasn't teaching right now, what was I doing? "I'm doing art." "Art?!" he said, as if he must have misheard me. Why was he so surprised? "Yeah, you can look at my website, meghanvaziri.com " He said he would do that (although he didn't ask how to spell it or anything) and then he asked if he could shake my hand. I held my signs in one hand and shook his with the other. His camera guy got a photo. And then he left, and Glenn said, "See, I told you he was a nice guy." I said, "I'm not saying he's not a nice guy, I'm just saying he doesn't know anything about education." And then I said goodbye to Glenn and left. (By the way, later that night I went to the Member meeting of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center - Memphis BATS needs to get in contact with that group - they can help us organize and they are friendly to our cause.)

Here is a further report of Arne's visit to TN in TN Ed Report

http://tnedreport.com/?p=938

Here is Luci BAT

https://www.youtube.com/watchv=SRIVbzXG7Yg

BATS at the Forefront of Exposing the Dangerous Lie

BY:  Ernest Anemone,  Attorney and Education Activist

We often talk about the attack on public education as a money-making scheme (which it is, of course) but we must remember it is primarily a psychological problem being exploited for profit. If I am a person with great wealth and status, what happens if I discover that my privilege is not the result of my own hard work? Well, I'm likely to have an existential crisis, which I'd rather avoid. I might ask silly questions like: do I truly deserve what I have? Do other people deserve to not have the things that I have? This is why, as a rich man, I must continually prove to myself (and the world) that the poor are poor because they refuse to ma

ke an enterprise of themselves -- like I did. As we know, there are all sorts of interesting ways I can demonstrate the failures of the poor through the 'neutrality' of data. The good news is that we are slowly beginning to wake up to what's happening. As a nation, we are slowly beginning to see the cracks in this highly polished veneer. Do CEO's work hundreds (sometimes thousands) of times harder than their lowest paid workers? They certainly do not work any harder than Maria Fernandes (a woman who worked 4 jobs and died while napping in her car  http://rt.com/usa/183720-four-jobs-car-nap/  ) who like generations of people before her worked themselves to death. Nonetheless, all of us -- rich and poor -- are still bewitched into measuring our own worth by money and then pretending that it is hard work, not money, that determines our worth after all. This is what keeps leading us to the inevitable and erroneous conclusion that people who do not have money must be lazy. This is why as a nation we can so easily ignore every chart that tracks standardized test scores along socioeconomic lines -- or explain it away with logical fallacies. The truth is that the lie is comforting not just for rich, but also the poor, which is why BATS meet resistance on all sides. Wouldn't you rather be a "temporarily embarrassed millionaire," as Steinbeck quipped, than "poor," which is such an ugly and disempowering word. Enter the 'empowerment' of school 'choice.' If I live in poverty, I want to believe that I can be 'better' if I make 'better' choices in the future. And, if I'm rich, I need to believe that I am already 'better' because I made 'better' choices in the past. Well, this is the illusion that feeds corporate reform and it is the illusion that will destroy us all if it is not stopped. This is what makes us want to out-compete one another instead of working together to build a better future. BATS, you are on the forefront of exposing this dangerous lie, and when you do it will not be to upset the rich or redeem the poor, but rather to restore the humanity of both. Unfortunately, this also means you will be attacked from both sides, as we have seen time after time. But, take comfort in this: unlike all other labor groups, you were made for this mission. You are the group the entire labor movement has been waiting for -- because it's in your blood. You are teachers. You do not tell students what to think but you show them how to think. You do not teach to the rich student or the poor student, but to all students. And, right now, if you let all of America be your classroom, there is no way you can lose.