Know Your Badasses: Part 4

Whose Children Are They?

Author: Shella Zelenz

I’ve been bridging the parent/teacher border for 20 years now and as long as I adhered to the virtues handed down from above regarding the way I was to view my own child and my students, then all was well and good. I was to take my admonishments and adhere to their guidance even if it didn’t feel right. They knew better than I did. Who was I to argue? I was a young mother and teacher in my 20′s. I trusted those before me who had experience and I trusted the training programs I paid thousands of dollars to help me become the professional I aimed to be. I remember distinctly being *briefly* introduced to ideas that suddenly lit my eyes. As soon as it appeared, it was taken away and I was redirected to the “way things are.”

In my parenting practice and teaching practice, I tried various tricks of the trade, I did as I was told, and I experimented with things I found on my own. The things I found on my own were often much more aligned with what felt right to me than what I was told to do. Upon entrance to my doctoral program, my dissertation chair approached me at the new student orientation and said point blank, “So what’s your dissertation about?” I stared at him like a deer in the headlights. I had just met the professors for the first time. I had just been introduced to the graduate school I signed up for. I was eager to learn. I had no idea what I wanted my ultimate focal point to be. He whittled it out of me. What came was that “I feel the spirit of the child is completely ignored in education.” Oh wow did his eyes light up! I had hit the jackpot! I had no idea what rabbit hole I had just opened.

The results of that one statement have led me down a path of great depth of learning and SERIOUS challenging of all previously held beliefs I had as a woman, as a teacher, as a caucasian, and as a parent. My entire reality has been ripped to shreds and I have been exposed to ideas and concepts that I felt had been hidden in the bottom of the rainbow that people never seem to be able to truly identify. I guess I found the pot o’gold. Wow, funny how discovering such a thing can create all kinds of drama from the rest of the world that REALLY wanted you to just do as you’re told and stay in that box feeling like you really don’t have all of the answers, just parroting what you were told to say/do. The more I knew, the less I was trusted. The more I spoke, the more I was chastised. The most important discovery for me was how the type of education I truly wanted for my own children and for my students, was something that is desperately out of reach for the majority of American children.

Why is that? Well, what I have discovered is that the type of education that offers students the highest form of self-reflection, self-direction, and in-depth, meaningful learning experience with serious comprehension of what respect means and what it feels like, is locked away in these obscure schools that often resemble homes, have loving staff who are not often very adequately compensated due to the limitations on funding, and the only students who are able to attend have to come from homes that can afford the tuition. There are students who receive substantial scholarships, but the schools cannot truly afford to be able to take on very many of these students or they would have to close their doors for good due to lack of functioning financial support. They are often in cities where the cost of living is higher because in these places, it is more likely to find sufficient families who are able to afford to pay for the tuition. So, what this really meant to me as a single mother looking for a solution for my own children, was that I either had to move to an expensive city and pray I found a job that would adequately support my family and the tuition for my children to attend, or I had to make my own school. I opted for the latter first, which gave me even more insight into the beliefs of our society.

This brings me full circle to my return in the public schools after this whirlwind education. After the research, interviews, observations and attempt at starting my own school, I walked back into the walls of public schools and attempted to share my thoughts with my fellow teachers. THAT proved to be quite interesting. The responses were typically curious to begin with, but upon delving into the concepts of trusting children and giving them a voice, teachers were often quick to defend their entrenched beliefs and look for ways to attack my experience. I hit a nerve – a really raw nerve. The nerve that proves how teachers feel that their entire career revolves around the control of the educational experience and of the children. Why do they feel that way? Did the parents expect this from them? Perhaps, but from my own experience as a teacher, I know my pressure came primarily from the administrator that had my job in their hands. All of the little voices in my classroom and the parents who brought those little voices were not the voices I was allowed to follow. My voice had to mirror the voice of the one voice over my head ,whose voice had to mirror the one(s) over his/her head and physically absent from the school we all resided in.

I now ask, as a parent, whose children are they, really? I would like to believe that those who brought these beautiful souls into the world should have a higher voice than one lone administrator who will only see them for a few years or the little bobble head voices who only make appearances for award ceremonies, never to be seen on campus again. I also think that the children should have a say over their own experience. I know I certainly want a say in my own experience. Who knew that letting children speak would be so radical. I know, your next retort is how chaotic and impossible it would be to listen to all of these voices. Well, that is what a democracy constitutes. When everyone has a voice and their voices are collectively weighed, consensus occurs and incredibly effective change happens. Most importantly, eager adherence to the agreed upon choices expedites any efforts made that direct the learning process toward the collective goal(s). Now doesn’t that just feel better?

Authority and Domination is the Mask of Lazy

Author: Shella Zelenz

I have been giving great thought to the power structures in our society. Our parenting tactics, our employment hierarchies, and our relationship power struggles. One common theme has emerged for me that I feel needs to be looked at much deeper. That theme is power. We all know that power is used and abused. We are not oblivious to it. However, I feel that most of us just accept it and roll along without truly questioning what it really represents.

Of course, my primary focus is typically pertaining to adult/child relationships. I want to address that isolating the power and domination factor between adults and children in education is only a tiny scratch on the surface of the overall picture. Our entire society is based upon hierarchical structures. We have all been raised in this hierarchy and many of us conditioned to maintain it. The question I would like to pose is: Is maintaining this hierarchy really essential to success of the species or to the health of our world?

Let’s take it down to more personal levels that we can all relate to. I will start out with the traditional boy meets girl scenario. Regardless of culture, there is a power hierarchy involved. Some are more legally supported, some are just so intricately embedded that even the most liberated women can’t see their own submission to the power that is deeply entrenched in the most advanced societies. It can also be reversed. There are certainly instances where the woman dominates the man, and the reasons for this can be quite complex, and not the point of this post. The point is how power replaces effort.

The minute a relationship steps down the corridor of one person having to answer to another person, the power trip has begun. Sure, people can behave in less than honorable ways. That, however, is no reflection on the person who feels the need to ask questions. The scenario often goes like this: The person who feels slighted will ask questions of the accused. The accused will defend his/her position. This alone puts one person in power and the other in a position of weakness. How this can change is whether the accused answers the question or if he/she reverses the role and starts accusing the accuser of something and putting the accuser’s own behavior in question. It is easy to see how this is clearly a no-win situation for either party. What it has become is a power struggle. The irony in this concept is that those who feel they need to maintain power, do so because they think it is the most effective and efficient. Yet what they fail to realize is that they end up wasting much more time with power struggles than they do had they taken the time to communicate in a meaningful way in the first place.

This is where I feel that authority/power is a true representation of lazy. We pass more and more laws restricting movement of others and judges' hands are tied by those laws, so they are not even given the opportunity to use their own communicative judgement to decide if the punishment even fits the crime in each particular instance. We are handicapping our own society with our fervent attachment to control others.

Relationships, of any kind, require genuine effort if they are to succeed. This is true in intimate relationships, families, employment, and general societal functionality. The trend to become more powerful, has essentially encouraged laziness in our entire societal fabric. It is very easy to lord over someone, to dominate them, to make yourself believe that if you maintain the power and control, that the most effective and efficient process will unfold. On the surface, this may seem true. However, the undercurrents speak a different story.

We all know, on some level, what it feels like to be oppressed. When someone decides for you (we’ll address the invalidity of that statement later) that you are worthless, that you need to shut up and do what you’re told, that you need to conform, that you are causing trouble, that you are ineffective, and the list can go on and on, we do not feel happy to comply. We feel inner rage and resentment. In other words, the lazy effort of the one in power, just planted a seed that WILL germinate and grow. The more this is controlled by the one in power, the more they feed the growth of that seed. One only has to look at what is going on in our world around us to see the validity of that statement.

What the oppressed fail to realize, is that the power placed over them is a facade that covers true inner weakness. If that person of power was truly powerful, they would be able to communicate with you and meet you on a level that represents the full power of the collective good. That requires TIME and EFFORT. The oppressed are truly the ones in power because they DO understand the needs of the collective and they DO take the time and effort to uncover those needs. Where they fail to succeed is when they give in to the power. This is the same in parenting. Parents threaten to take things away if the child doesn’t comply. That is how employers, teachers, etc. treat those they are assigned to hold “power” over another in order to maintain the process essential to keep you complacent and oppressed.

What I am not suggesting is some kind of revolution of dramatic proportions. What I am suggesting is that we truly and deeply consider what this means to us as individuals. Are we allowing an intimate partner to question our every move, to make us answer to them (thus weakening us and making them have the full power in the relationship) or are we owning our own individual power and fully acknowledging, in the face of the oppressor, our full value? We are in a powerful position to teach the oppressive powers what it means to NOT be lazy. Those who yield power as a sword, do not have true and meaningful power. They are weak. They are full of fear and insecurity. They are emotional children. We need to raise them up and teach them to be fully mature. We have the power to completely revolutionize the way that meaningful communication occurs in our intimate relationships, our parenting, our education systems, and in our employment scenarios.

We also must fully understand what their fear represents. They do not know any differently. They do not know how to function in any other way. For in order to have a democracy, they must actually experience one. 

Speaking of Sheep and Badass Wolves

Originally posted on TusconCitizen.com.
Reposted with original author's permission
__________________________________


After cuts to education hit Pennsylvania, a group of educators came up with a unique answer on how to make do. In some schools they released sheep to substitute for cutting the grass. It was cost effective because the sheep belonged to a middle school principal and he was willing to offer them free of charge for the grazing rights. 1)

But the vision this conjures up in my mind is that of sheep grazing, being sheared, being herded and even slaughtered. And that makes me think of teachers.

It is not a great leap of imagination as you may think at first glance. I think of sheep because teachers are well known for not rocking the boat. They are told that there is no money for the supplies they need, so they go out and buy them. They are directed to do things that they know are at odds with their training and research and yet they do them. They are given more and more work to do in their scheduled day as if they have blocks of unused time and they find a way to incorporate the mandates at the expense of the depth of instruction and time for reflection. They are told to assess children in skills they are not prepared to learn, so they teach those skills despite the schisms it creates in student’s learning.

As teachers we have been sheep.

Wait a minute. Did you hear that? Maybe, just maybe, some teachers have shed their sheep’s clothing for a new, more aggressive raiment.

There are some wolves howling in the woods and their howls grow nearer.

I was pleased to begin following a new group this week that is labeling itself: Bad Ass Teachers. 2) Go to their Facebook page and read their declaration of intent. It is a manifesto unlike most I have seen from sites purporting to be dedicated to education. And they are supported by no less than the iconic Diane Ravitch (my personal guru) and Dr. Steven Krashen: true heavyweights of educational theory and practice! I am in awe of the response they have elicited in a very brief period and yet I am guardedly cautious in my optimism that perhaps the revolution has finally begun.

I have been here before.

The educational landscape is littered with the forlorn debris of ‘ideas that will change public education as we know it forever’. Promises made and promises kept are two radically different things. One is an idea; the other is practice. Many seem to be willing to jump on the bandwagon but will they stay after the band goes home? It is easy to add your voice to others who are already shouting but to continue to shout when you are alone takes grit. Teachers need to cultivate this grit now and fight for the profession they have chosen, the profession they profess to love.

As educators we have been under attack for some time: “It’s teachers fault.” “Teachers make too much money.” “Why do teachers need a union they have all they want.” “They only work part-time as it is.” Choose your stereotype. Like all stereotypes there is a germ of truth in each one but when viewed as a unerring rule they falter rapidly. It’s a matter of distance. Seen from far away the generality can be believed and even touted. But when you get up close, in the bright light of day you realize that by and large those stereotypes will shrivel and die.

“But isn’t this organization trying to promote a stereotype?” you say. “Aren’t these ‘bad-asses’ just posturing for attention?”

Maybe, maybe they are simply sheep in wolves clothing . . . or maybe they are real wolves. A pack of snarling wolves, their hackles raised in indignation at the continued slaughter that threatens their extinction.

I’ll tell you what — let’s move closer and see if they bite. You go first.


1) http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/pennsylvania-school-district-using-sheep-cut-costs-152720890.html

2) https://www.facebook.com/groups/BadAssTeachers/

3) http://inschoolmatters.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/voice-not-choice-will-make-schools-better/


Written by:
Marc Severson
http://tucsoncitizen.com/tired-tucson-teacher/

Let's Talk About Tone

Guest blog entry by The Jersey Jazzman

Let's talk for a minute about "tone," shall we?

For several years now, we teachers have been taking it on the chin. Oh, sure, folks like Michelle Rhee and Bill Gates love to tell us how important we are, how much they respect us, how they just want to give us the "tools" to be better at our jobs. That never translates into policies that increase our pay or protect our pensions or secure our benefits or allow us due process or improve our working conditions...

What they seem to think we crave, instead, is more feedback on how poorly we are performing. Gates, for example, recently told an audience at the TED conference: "Until recently, over 98% of teachers just got one word of feedback: 'Satisfactory.'" That is, of course, a completely false and massively ignorant statement; one which says far more about Gates’ cluelessness than anything about teacher evaluation systems.

Still, he and his reformy acolytes believe we urgently need to implement test-based teacher evaluations, joined with student surveys and many more administrator observations. The premise for all this is that the American teacher just isn't doing all that good of a job; if we can find new and varied ways to let teachers know just how rotten they are, they'll have all sorts of incentives to improve.

For now, let's leave aside the dubious research methods and ignorance of the importance of out-of-school factors found in Gates-funded research such as the Measures of Effective Teaching report. Let's also set aside the issue of how Gates and his staff refuse to offer any serious ideas as to how to pay for all of this, and whether the time spent on a new evaluation scheme is worth it. And we'll also put aside the willing blindness of Gates to labor market forces (firing more teachers doesn't make the job any more attractive, Bill), and the damage an expanded test-based regime will most likely do to both curriculum and instructional practices, which will ultimately harm children.

Let's instead note how, once again, Gates has made the debate about inequity in educational outcomes all about teacher quality. In the wacky world of Gates, Rhee and Jeb! [sic] Bush and Wendy Kopp and Joel Klein all the rest, teachers are the primary reason - if not the sole reason - kids fail or succeed. Somehow, these people have convinced themselves - and want to convince the rest of America - that the teachers in Beverly Hills and Gross Point and Scarsdale are hugely superior to the teachers in South Central and Detroit and the South Bronx.

Poverty? Well, I guess that matters... but all children can learn! And if you say otherwise, you're a racist! So there!

Of course, one of the major flaws in their logic is that if those unionized teachers in the 'burbs are doing so well, it must mean all the prescriptions the reformy-types want - eliminating union contracts, eliminating step guides, merit pay, charter schools, eliminating seniority, eliminating pay bumps for advanced degrees, VAM-based evaluations - aren't going to address the real cause of the variation in outcomes. Because the 'burbs haven't implemented any of these people's policies, and they're still getting far superior test scores than the urban hotbeds of "innovation" the reformy-ists have taken over by disenfranchising local citizens.

So the latest reformy tactic is to bad-mouth the entirety of the American education system. We are supposed to believe that even the very best American public schools are still somehow failing our children, and that it would be worth it to introduce "choice" and "accountability" into the entire system, because it's only mediocre at best.

It's a measure of how desperate the reformy-ists have become that they are stooping to this level. Which gets us back to "tone"...

It often seems that the central complaint against snarky edu-blogging bastards like me is that we shouldn't ever second guess the motivations of those on the other side of the debate. Because it's "simply beneath" the dignity of our refined American discourse to engage in such loutish behavior. The pearl-clutchers fret and stammer that I and my fellow travelers are hurling us into the worst depths barbarianism when we dare to suggest that the reformy-ists may have ulterior motives.

When I make the case that the focus on teacher quality is a distraction to keep us from addressing the real issues - inequity, regressive taxation, a corrupt political system, corporatized media, an entrenched plutocracy, the destruction of civil institutions - they rush for their smelling salts and fall on their fainting couches. How could I dare to say such uncouth things! Have I no shame?!

The answer is to be found in the utter shamelessness of their own arguments. Because no one would ever put forward the poorly thought out, ignorant, innumerate garbage that these reformy types regularly spew - garbage that regularly questions the motivations of teachers and their unions - if they weren't driven either by ideology or blatant self-interest.

We've hit a point in the debate where edu-bloggers and actual journalists have amassed a huge pile of evidence to substantiate this charge. The antics of Pearson, Amplify, TFA, KIPP, Academica, K12 Inc., Uncommon, DFER, StudentsFirst, Stand For Children, the Broad Foundation, Chiefs For Change, and so many others have become the stuff of legends in the "real" reform movement. And the anti-union, plutocratic stance of the Waltons, the Broads, the hedge-fundies and all the other titans of American capitalism is beyond dispute.

How, in the face of this evidence, can anyone ask a teacher to meekly accept the drubbing we've taken from these people? How can anyone ask us to sit silently by while these people make the case repeatedly that our interests are not aligned with the interests of our students - a case that is based almost entirely on fraud? How can anyone agonize about our "tone" when we are being crushed by an agenda whose justifications are built on transparently bad-faith arguments?

We educators have been taking it and taking it and taking it. We've played the stereotypical role of the teacher, mildly bowing our heads in our chalk-stained, irregular-rack cardigans while our betters wag their fingers at us and blame us for problems we've done nothing to create. We've strained to continue to teach our students how to think critically while the most ignorant, illogical, ad hominem nonsense has been lobbed at our heads. We've deferred to the mandarins of American life while our very profession has been trashed in an orgy of palpably idiotic teacher-bashing.

Enough!

Screw all your worry about "tone."

It's time to be a badass.

Do Not Try To Control Anyone Else

Author: Shella Zelenz

As educators and parents, we are often told that it is our job to control the children in our care. We are told that we are irresponsible if we do not. We fear the consequences of allowing students to solve their challenges without intervention. We are told that it is our duty to decide for them what they need to know and how they need to learn it. We may even believe that all of this is fact.

Simultaneously, we are controlled just the same by administrators and government figures who decide for us what we can and cannot do in our classrooms. It angers us. It frustrates us. It makes us feel smothered. It disrespects our knowledge and makes us feel that we are given no respect or dignity. It makes us even angrier to add corporations to the list of heavies lording over our every move in our classrooms. Imagine how the students must feel.

What? Did she just say what I think she said? How do the students feel? Interesting how that isn't a question we ever ask or even give ourselves permission to ask. Perhaps you have, but you feel your hands are tied. Maybe you were like me, relating to the students and feeling the entire situation was unfair for all of you. What other choice do you have? The parents push you to meet their needs, which can go for or against student interest. That is the quandary of our society. When are students considered persons who deserve a voice in their own education? Is there a set age?  Is it a maturity? Is it a level of intelligence or establishment of basic skills? What would happen if the students started their educational journey in charge from the start?

Oh I know she didn't just say that! Yes, actually, I did. Students are the voiceless in education. They feel just as you do when you are controlled in your experience. They feel frustrated and angry. Some are so eager to be in school that they will thrive at anything handed to them. However, there are many who feel oppressed. Their behaviors are a result of the way that they are respected. Yes, I said respected. This is a tricky term that is often seriously misused in our society.

What does it mean to be respected? Respect means that your voice is valued. Respect means that your personhood is acknowledged. Respect means you have the right to protect your physical being from unwanted invasion. Now, consider what behaviors adults often do to children and how they don't align well with these definitions of respect. How do teachers feel when their physical beings are infringed upon? How do teachers feel when their voice isn't valued? How do teachers feel when their personhood isn't acknowledged? That's the point.

What can be done to change this? Well, for starters, classroom management has to be student generated. What does that mean? That means that the students have to select what rules they feel are important to them. They should have the opportunity to vote on them as a collective body. They should be entitled to nominating consequences for infractions and to vote collectively on the nominated consequences. They should have democracy. For how else will they ever understand what it means to live in one, if they never experience one?

Imagine the impact that would have on our future society, if all graduates were fully aware and skilled at utilizing and implementing democracy? How would that impact what we see in our country now if we had all been educated in schools that treated us that way?

Find Your Sass (A Few More Words on the Name Badass Teachers Association)

There has been a fount of discussion about the name, “Badass Teachers Association.”  The multitude of those who have come to this group embrace the name.  Many have defended it saying that teachers have been polite for too long; teachers have tried to play by the traditional rules of etiquette and civility.  The teachers who know they belong, who have yearned for a group that understands the grief, frustration, and anger they feel, realize that there is little that is more heinous and vulgar than the draconian corporate takeover of public education (ever wonder why the wealthy business people and politicians send their children to private schools that do not administer high stakes test that the rest of our children endure?).  On September 11, 2001 Reuters released a citizen’s video of a plane hitting the second of the World Trade Center towers.  On that day, before the video was edited, you could hear the camera operator or someone nearby uttering a curse word.  That word was later removed.  A friend of mine waxed, “Really?  They censored the word? Is there anything more vulgar than what we are witnessing in the video?”

We’re now at a point in public education that what we are witnessing is far more vulgar than any words that teachers could possibly use to define themselves.  Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Koch Brothers, Arne Duncan, Barrack Obama, Michelle Rhee…these people are doing blasphemous things to our schools and our children.  They are robbing teachers of their love of and commitment to creativity and relationship building.  They are stealing meaningful childhood experiences in art, music, and physical education away from our children, in an effort to ensure that our students are “college and career ready.”  But we all know that to be ready for life, for its beauty, pain, depth, and challenges, that rote memorization, galvanic skin response, and learning to take tests are not the answer.  Not even close.  In fact, these things are so far from resembling what we should consider education, that we should all be up in arms.  We should all be cursing at the powers that are enforcing this sort of deformation on our children and teachers.

I want to quote at length some passages from Bill Pinar’s 2004 book What is Curriculum Theory?  In these words, Pinar explains the origins of the word “sass,” and how the language and attitude of sass empowered enslaved black women, for whom the only source power was the use of language thrown back at those who sought to control and dehumanize them.  It’s important, because it’s what we teachers are learning to do now.  We can’t win by their rules, because their rules are made so that we end up losers.  I leave the original references in so that readers can find the sources if they need to.

What possible defenses could black female slaves employ to defend themselves and their children from white abuse? ‘Sass’ and invective functioned as verbal weapons (Braxton 1989).  Derived from West Africa, sass is associated with the female elements of the trickster, a concept found in Gates’ (1988) discussion of African mythology and Lemelle’s (1995) discussion of contemporary African-American men…Webster’s Dictionary defines sass as talking impudently or disrespectfully to an elder or a superior, as in ‘talking back.’…In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl…whenever Harriet Jacobs (Linda Brent is her pseudonym) is sexually threatened, she uses sass to defend herself (Braxton 1989).  Through sass she ‘returns’ a portion of the poison the master has injected into her…In this way sass protects something of her self-esteem, partly by increasing the psychological distance between herself and her white master (Pinar, 43-44).  Recall that, in speaking of Linda Brent (Harriet Jacobs), Joanne Braxton (1989, 16) observed that ‘language is her first line of defense.’ (Pinar, 250)

We teachers have found ourselves in a position in which we are being forced to act against what we know is best for our students and communities.  We have been harassed for too long.  We all know now that the greatest factors influencing students’ academic achievement are outside of schools.  Level of income is now the number one predictor of student achievement.  We know that teachers are amazing, worthy, and valuable; but they are not to be the whipping posts for those who know nothing about education.  They are not to be treated as pawns in billion dollar deals.

When the rules are stacked against you; when the very system ensures that you will fail (100% pass rate for all students by 2014, anybody?); when your value as a human is given no heed; when you are forced to take medical leave for the stress and anxiety you experience in your school, they only way to start is to find our teacher voices and use language to return some of the poison that the masters have injected into us.  I’m very hesitant to make analogies to slavery, so I want to be clear that I’m not saying that teaching now is the same as slavery.  But it’s a dehumanizing and disrespected field.  If you think the word “badass” is vulgar and off-putting, please take a moment to look around and see the vulgar state of education “reform” around us.  No word can be as vulgar as the money interests that heap abuse on both teachers and students. Badass Teachers (BATs) aren’t badass because they came to play nice.  Badass Teachers are badass because they are starting with the language, the words, that will transgress the rules that have been thrust upon them, without so much as an invitation to table where education is being discussed.  It’s time to find your sass.  It’s time to be BADASS.