Badass Seedling Sprouting

As a sprouting badass
I am like a seed in the rich soil
Who waits for rain to come
Drinking it, I smile and grow strong

Other badass seedlings push me up
Higher,higher...then comes the sun!

No stopping me now

I bloom in the face of a blue sky
My green leaves soak up the rays
My blossom smells fragrant to the masses

I am a badass seedling sprouting
I am a badass seedling sprouting GOOD!!


BADASSES WE ROCK AND WE HELP EACH OTHER TO BLOOM! AMEN???

Terry Preuss

Career Public Educator

Author, Voices in the Hall

Choose Real Education Over Mind-Numbing Numbers

by Jennifer Clarke

I am angry. I am hurt. But I am not disposable.

I gave up a lot to become an educator. I took on massive student loan debt, took almost a 50% cut in pay, and went back to college with two children, a full time job, and a household to manage. But I sacrificed sleep and worked hard to graduate Summa Cum Laude. I studied to pass the certification exams, and made exceptionally high scores on my first try, and I invested myself wholeheartedly into my training as an educator in order get everything I could from that educational experience so that when I stepped into a classroom I would be prepared.

My students quickly became my kids. I wanted them to learn the material, and we accomplished that goal. I saw them improve as writers, readers, and critics. We opened up discussions, and I saw them think critically and become more aware not only of themselves, but of their global community. I was inspired every single day I spent in the classroom.

I love the time I spent with these kids, and I loved how much they wanted to learn. I coached extra-curricular academic events and spent many weekends and evenings dedicated to helping these kids achieve and gain experience. I also wanted to see my struggling kids in the classroom become successful, and I spent countless hours after school was out working with students to help them master essential skills. Sometimes they showed up, sometimes they didn’t, but if they said they needed me, there I sat (with my own children asking about dinner) and waited until after they finished their athletic and band and dance practices, so that if they decided to come, I would be there to help them.

But with all of the changes occurring over the past few years, testing has eaten away at that time for class discussion, reading of novels and longer works has been replaced by excerpts, writing has been dumbed down to technical and short pieces that provide no real opportunity to build persuasive and fully developed ideas. In short, students are being robbed of the opportunity to think, explore, develop, and achieve.

Additionally, somewhere along the way, someone decided that reports and statistics were a better measure of student progress. But it doesn’t stop there. These same barely relevant measurements are applied when determining if teachers and schools are successful. Lower percentages in DAEP and ISS are a good mark for an administrator, despite what the actual atmosphere of the educational environment is like. Administrators are blaming teachers for lack of classroom management instead of backing them up by applying consequences for behavior issues. How does this impact the students in the room who are trying to learn when another student is willfully disruptive and obtrusive? Why is it acceptable to sacrifice the learning process of students to accommodate an administrator or school ranking by not following through with what is best for the integrity of the educational environment?

Someone also decided that schools would get rewarded for higher graduation numbers, but there is no monitoring to see how these numbers are achieved. The reality is teachers are often forced to pass students when students are refusing to work. Explain this lack of equity to the students who are working hard to earn those passing grades and now have to share the graduation stage with students who got the diploma for nothing. This lack of ethical standards is creating a breeding ground for self-entitled youth with no thirst for knowledge. We must teach these children to be self-reliant, self-assured, and able to think and learn, or we have handicapped them from gaining success in their future.

Students, parents, and teachers have become the unwitting pawns in a political game that will hurt all of them. Parents and teachers have become unwilling adversaries. Many times teachers and parents are truly working in the best interests of the children, but the gap in communication has left them open to becoming easy victims of this broken system. Ultimately, when the breakdown of the teacher-parent relationship occurs, the student is the one to suffer. Teachers and parents must begin openly communicating again. Public schools serve the community, and transparency goes a long way in building trust. When teachers and parents are talking, students will benefit.

Public education is the only guaranteed equity in access for youth in this nation to receive an education. Despite the hype, vouchers and subsidies will rob public schools of the sustenance they need for survival. Privatization means we no longer view something as a right. When we take away the access to education, we are denying knowledge to the citizens of this nation, and in fact, sacrificing our own future. In order to be successful, productive, citizens, our youth must be educated—they must learn to think independently and problem-solve while functioning within the boundaries of society. Starve the institutions that provide this knowledge, and you deny countless opportunity to the youth in our communities.

The testing, the rating, the calculating of scores, all of this has done nothing to improve education. Because the evaluation is not genuine—there is no focus on individual student growth, there is no observation of teacher effectiveness overall, there is no one creating these policies that is educated and experienced in classroom dynamics and student or teacher success—the results are unreliable. The results are reports dependant upon data that is input. How that data is achieved is not questioned. How those results are obtained is not monitored. The equity in evaluation is not defined. Who is evaluating the evaluators for effectiveness and success?

These privatization efforts have done exactly what you would expect competitive, corporate-market style evaluation to do. It is a dog-eat-dog world in education. The classroom is no longer a place for teachers to tune into their unique identities that impact the lives of their students through creative and useful lessons, connections, nurturing, and support. The classroom has become rote and scripted. The teacher must fall in line with set standards and achieve numbers and statistics in line with the latest, “innovative” educational product. Students must conform to these standards in order to be labeled successful. Teachers have watched this happening and have been powerless to stop it.

Because teachers have been relatively docile and silent for so long, they have, in essence, sacrificed themselves in the battle for education. Many teachers stay silent because they are afraid to lose their jobs. Some teachers feel relatively unaffected by all that is happening in education either because of their current position or maybe their district. And some teachers are trapped, despite being beat down, due to retirement and years in the system. But teachers are reclaiming their position in the battle to save education. Teachers face a tough fight: choosing between what is best for their students or conforming to the corporate and political trends in education. To speak up means to go against the corporate ideal, and if you don’t fit the company’s mission, you don’t belong. True teacher effectiveness, that is, student impact, is of no real value in this new education market. The teacher’s role has become to train students to accept and repeat the product. But education is not a product. Children should not be treated as consumers. When we accept the lie, we fail the students.

I stood up for my rights as an educator, and I stood up for the integrity of the educational environment. My administration was not comfortable with my doing so, and many teachers warned me that it would make my life difficult. How sad is that reality? To understand that standing up for what is right will make life hard? Many agreed, but could do nothing but show their support behind closed doors. When we accept that we are powerless, and refuse to fight against the injustice of this trend in education, then what message are we sending? Teachers will lose, but most importantly, students will lose.

While I hope to go back one day, I have wounds that need time to heal. I am no longer teaching, and that is a very difficult reality for me to bear. Practically, I will be paying for the education I received for a very long time. But emotionally, I have lost a part of who I am. Teaching is never just a job. My kids are a part of my life. I learned from them. I connected with them, and I know they learned from me. Because I refused to sit silently and take the abuse, because I refused to be a cog in the machine and allow my rights to be trampled, because I did what I would hope to inspire every single one of my kids to do in the face of intimidation, I lost a lot.

But I have been freed to fight for education. And I would stand up again, and again, and again.

Nothing will change until all of us are willing to do the same.

Charter Schools: The Walmarts of Education

The American educational system is in a crisis. If one listens to the pundits and some of the politicians, he or she hears how American students are failing, teacher unions are keeping bad teachers in the classroom, and classrooms around the country are overcrowded and in schools that are dangerous. The solution some are proposing are privatizing our public schools and creating charter schools in their place. Many hear the term ‘charter school’ and think they know what they are and believe the rhetoric that these are the saviors of education. What is not said, though, is far more sinister and far less educational than the public realizes. Charter schools are businesses run using taxpayer dollars. Their business is to indoctrinate students into learning a set and many times rote set of skills that do not encourage much in the way of creativity or thought. It is education in a box. Another way to think of it is to see charter schools as the WalMarts of education—lower costs, cheaper output. There are many reasons why they are this way, but I will touch on only a few.

First, let us start by naming the primary corporations that run charter schools in the United States. Charter Schools USA and Academica are two of the largest players in the area. Other major charter school management companies are EdisonLearning, Mosaica, Achievement First, and Aspire Public Schools. It needs to be noted that these are companies who are accountable to an extent to school boards, but not to the same extent as public schools are held accountable. They are free to select students based on applications and even lotteries to determine which students may attend school at their managed operations. Public schools do not have the option, as they are required to accept any student zoned for their particular school. Essentially, charter schools are private schools using taxpayer dollars to run them, but can use that money with little say from the taxpayers on how they are run. Again, they are an educational business rather than a school.

The following is taken from a document produced by a group called The Philanthropy Roundtable entitled, “Investing in Charter Schools. A Guide For Donors.” It defines a charter school as the following:

·         is a public school funded with public money.

·         is tuition-free for all students.

·         is non-sectarian, non-religious, and may not discriminate in student admissions.

·         is chosen by families.

·         is semi-autonomous, operating under its own charter—hence the name—and thus exempt from many of the regulations and collective bargaining agreements under which traditional district schools operate.

·         is free to be a unique school designed to meet the needs of the students it intends to serve.

·         is required to meet the same graduation standards as other schools.

·         is responsible for improving student achievement and adhering to its charter contract, or face closure.

·         receives discounted funding (in most, but not all, states), thus making it partially reliant on philanthropic support.

·         can be a stand-alone school or part of a network of charter schools.

·         can be nonprofit or for-profit  (page 11).

Now, while most of this sounds good, note that charter schools are “exempt from many of the regulations and collective bargaining agreements under which traditional district schools operate.” That means that teachers and staff who work there are not allowed in many cases to negotiate their contracts, their working hours or conditions, or other benefits that traditional educators have. This would also include protections from termination without just cause. Therefore, if the administrator comes in and does not like a particular worker, then they can be fired on the spot with no recourse as would occur in the majority of the jobs, especially in states with “Right-to-Work” laws. It would also include situations where students may not be moving along at the pace required by the standards, which could be caused by the fact that children are individuals who learn at different rates and different styles or their socioeconomic conditions, where the teacher would be held at fault for the student not making learning gains and thus subject to disciplinary actions including dismissal.

This document goes on to call for a priority in “Priming the Human Capital Pipeline” in the form of encouraging more people to teach and lead their charter schools. The exact words they use are that donor are an important source in “supporting the development of a well-primed pipeline of talented human capital for charter schools and helping fund the development of innovative technologies that can decrease the dependence of the sector on finding ever more sources of talent” (21). In plainer English, it is up to those donors to bring people in from wherever they can find them to teach and lead students without relying on colleges and universities to educate their “talented human capital” (21). Teachers and administrators are no longer people, but “talented human capital” (21). Sounds like a business rather than a school, doesn’t it?

It does not stop there as they go on to call those who start up charter schools “education entrepreneurs” (24). Even some of the charter schools are praised for having created a “brand” (25) by which they are known. They make a comparison between industry and charter schools by stating that “consumers come to know a brand and what it signifies…Brands have proven very useful in the marketplace….Charter Management Organizations (CMOs” are the ‘brands’ of the charter sector, with quality control and cost efficiencies” (29). One further aspect they state in this document concerns the differences between these CMOs and their counterparts called EMOs or education management organizations. CMOs are non-profit while EMOs are for profit. One particularly damning piece of evidence states:

…it is important to note that many education reformers believe that EMOs hold real potential for revolutionizing public education. If investors in EMOs are able to deliver consistent student achievement and create a profitable investment vehicle, they will have discovered a highly attractive and sustainable model for charter schools specifically and public education generally. (30).

Did you catch what was said as well as what was not said in that statement? These people believe that education needs to be a business with investors and profits. The goal of the charter movement is to see public education be corporate operated and run. There is no mention of students learning aside from their wanting the delivery of “consistent student achievement”. Consistent does not mean improvement. It does not mean creativity. It means a steady keeping of the status quo. It means having the same results over time. If only 55 percent of the students pass on a consistent basis, then they succeed. Consistency not progress is the key for them.

So, just how do charter schools measure student success? One of the largest donors to the charter school movement is The Walton Family Foundation, founded by the family of Walmart founder Sam Walton. The director of the foundation’s K-12 education reform, Jim Blew, stated in this document that the foundation is very straightforward with our grantees that we expect them to dramatically increase student achievement, as measured by standardized tests in math and reading. We understand that there are other ways of measuring quality—attendance rates, graduation rates, etc.—and we want to hear about those, too. But, at the end of the day, we want to know that grantees are actually raising student achievement. (79)

Student achievement is not based on anything but how well students score on a standardized test. That is it. They are not deemed successful if they create something new. They are not deemed successful if they finally master something they worked on. They achieve if they can pass a test. World-class bubble fillers are the key to America’s success according to this supporter of charter schools. If a student can fill-in the correct answer, regardless of whether they actually understand why it is the correct answer, then they have learned. Learned what, you may ask. Well, how to fill in the correct answer because that is all that is needed to succeed in life. That is all that is needed to make America great again in the world. Well, at least really good at working in a Walmart where all that is needed is to follow the rules and do what management tells you to do.

Charter schools are not good for the education of our students. They are standardized test mills. As long as students can pass the test, they are okay. If the student cannot, well, they can currently be tossed back into the public schools. How long that will last is yet to be determined by policy makers and the donors to them. That is unless you who are reading this find the idea of having your child treated like an assembly line worker and their teacher treated like human capital as appalling as many other people do. If that is the case, it is time for you to take a stand as a parent or as a teacher against this movement to privatize our public educational system. Our children are not all the same; therefore, we cannot allow them to be taught or expected to learn the same way.

Here are some ways to combat this growing trend of charter schools and even reliance on high stakes standardized testing. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but a small start.

1.      Get active in your local schools. Go to school board meetings. Volunteer in classrooms and/or the school office. It does not matter if you have kids there or not so long as you pass a criminal background check and care about the future of our country.

2.      Stay informed. Do not rely on the media outlets to tell you everything you hear about our public schools or even charter schools.

3.      Attend local public school events. Cheer on the sports teams. Cheer on the non-sports related groups and organizations as well.

4.      If you are a parent, find ways to opt out of standardized testing.

5.      Look into how the state tests are organized. Speak out if they only cover items that are rote memorization based. Multiple-choice tests do not measure thought, only if the right answers were memorized.

6.      If you are a parent, demand more essay tests or tests that allow your child to choose an answer and defend it with logical reasoning skills.

7.      Support your teachers. They work far more than what many believe they do. They do not have summers off as they spend that time planning as they do nights and weekends during the school year.

8.      Teachers, defend your rights to teach. Abide by your negotiated contract, but if need be, do no more than that if you are not being heard.

9.      Administrators, especially those of you who once taught in a classroom, go back into the classroom. Plan a period every day of the year to keep teaching. If you keep teaching, then you stay in touch with the changes that are happening on the front lines. And do not try to teach just the select students, branch out your roster to include all levels of student abilities.

10.  Political leaders, listen to the teachers who teach in your district. They are on the front lines every day. They are experienced professionals who know their job, their subjects and their students. Remember that standardized tests are snapshots rather than the big picture of what is happening in our schools.

If you would like to read the entire document referenced in this essay, please use the following address:

http://publicimpact.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Investing_in_Charter_Schools__A_Guide_for_Donors.pdf

Attention Teachers! It is Time to Take Our Schools Back!

It is almost time for another school year to begin around the United States; in fact, some school districts have already started classes and it is only the end of July. Yet, there is an evil that grows ever more severe as it grows like a shadow over our public education system. Teachers, up to this point, have cowered at the onslaught of this shadow that seeks to place our educational system into eternal darkness. It is time for the cowering to end and for teachers to take a stand for their jobs, but most of all, for the education of the future of our nation. The shadow of darkness comes in the form of the privatization of our schools disguised as education reform legislation and wealthy corporate donors who buy this legislation through our elected politicians. The so-called reform comes from places such as Teach for America, the Gates Foundation, and the Walton Family (Walmart). These entities cite studies that agree with their ideals or even some that they paid for which advocate the corporatization of our educational system through more charter schools and replacing experienced teachers with people indoctrinated into their mindset. These entities and their political cronies advocate high stakes testing rather than the basics our students need to be competitive in the global marketplace. These entities use the media to portray teacher unions as evil organizations bent on keeping inept teachers in their positions. It is time for teachers, and their unions, to stand up and voice their opinions and professionalism to the public. No longer can teachers and teachers unions cower and kowtow to the latest fad to come through the educational pipeline. Teachers must stand up and be heard. Teachers must be advocates for the public educational system that seeks to educate all students who come through the doors of the thousands of schools in our country. Teachers must be advocates for their students as well as themselves.

Teach for America (TFA), the Gates Foundation, and the Walton Family, among others, are pushing an agenda that replaces education with testing and a one-size-fits-all educational approach that they say will help our students to succeed in the global marketplace. The catalysts for their approaches stems from the problems that face our educational system: high dropout rates/low graduation rates, students who graduate yet cannot perform the basic skills needed to be successful, and students with low motivation to succeed. Rather than address underlying reasons for these, which I will discuss further, they take the easy route and blame teachers, teachers unions, and the educational system for these social ills. These three items are not necessarily the fault of our schools, but of our society as a whole. What they are calling education reform does not address these problems; it just blames the teachers for them. It is like blaming the fire department for there being fires. After all, if there were no fire departments, then there would not be any fires, right?

The problem of high dropout rates/low graduation rates is not the fault of the educational system as a whole, but the fault of our society as it does not value education as highly as other countries in the world. The media constantly bombards us with news of how US students are behind students in Japan, China, Russia, or Finland. What they do not show is the culture of those countries values education as a highly important part of a civilized society. In China and Japan, for example, parents pressure children to do well in school and it is shameful if students slack off when it comes to schoolwork. The homework assigned is much more than in the US, but it is meaningful, it counts, and it comes with the expectation that it will be done on time and correctly. Students are expected to ask for assistance if they need it. As a teacher, I faced numerous times when students would not do their homework or ask for extensions. When I attempted to enforce a no late work policy, they complained to their parents who many times went to administration who then forced me (and other teachers) to give in and allow the student to turn their work in late. When I attended school in the ‘70s and ‘80s, this did not happen unless there were extreme circumstances. Furthermore, students who committed discipline violations that caused them the consequence of an out of school suspension were allowed to make up their work. Also, a rare allowance for my generation.

Another cause for the high dropout rates/low graduation rates is that educational programs, especially at the middle and high school levels, only address the academic areas of success. By this, I mean that many do not offer vocational programs for students who are not academically inclined. Instead, students are told that they all have to go to college in order to succeed. While that is a noble idea, the facts are that some students simply do not want to go to college, but would rather enter a trade. If there are no vocational courses, these students fall through the cracks and many become disruptions in the classroom. They see no need to study the academic areas in depth if they plan to become an auto mechanic or a cosmetologist. Yet, where is the funding cut many times, vocational programs and the arts. The arts are another area that usually faces cuts in funding, as they are not seen as necessary. Many students, including myself when I was in public schools, needed the arts to give me a reason to go to school. The arts connect with every academic area and many students who are gifted with a talent, when allowed to learn and use that talent, will also succeed academically. If you do not believe these to be true, listen the next time when a school board threatens to cut funding. The public remains relatively silent when vocational or arts programs are threatened with cuts, but when cuts to athletics are mentioned, the outrage is tremendous.

The next area consists of those students who manage to graduate without mastering the basic skills needed to succeed in the workforce. Again, those in power want to blame the educational system for this. However, take a closer look at why they are not mastering the basics and you will find another story. Part of it ties in to what I already mentioned prior to this, but another part points to the darling of the so-called reformers—high stakes, standardized testing. Students are taught the test in some places from kindergarten through the 12th grade. Yes, the mantra is that teachers teach to the standards not to the test. Bullshit. When a teacher’s career and salary are tied to how their students do on the tests, then the teacher teaches to the test. That is the reality of it. In addition, the tests themselves, which are products of big businesses such as Pearson, do nothing to measure usable skills. They measure how well students take tests. Most of them are multiple-choice where the student must simply figure out which answer the test makers want them to bubble in. They do not allow for a student to choose an answer and defend why they chose it. That would be placing learning above test taking skills as it calls for critical thinking and reasoning skills rather than bubble completion. Would those tests take longer to grade? Yes. Would they measure student knowledge better? You bet they would. The global workplace demands the ability to think critically and reason, not to fill in a bubble. I taught a great number of students who could bubble in tests with great success, but if assigned an essay where they needed to think critically, they faltered and many failed. The love affair with standardized testing has to end. Good teachers know this. Good teachers know that students must grapple with problems that cause them to think, to research, to reason, and to defend why they come up with the answers they do. That is what made America great over the years. Standardized testing only serves to enable students to work at places like Walmart or fast food because they do not really have to think, but just do what others expect them to do.

The American public laments as to why “Johnny cannot read”, but they also fail to see how Johnny’s parents do not read to him or make him read. Past generations had a parent or someone who read to and with their children. A major form of entertainment for students was to read. It increased vocabulary, enabled the ability to imagine and think about the story lines and the various plots, and it caused the child to have to picture the action in their head. Today, many students are babysat by the television or the video game system. They can text, be entertained, and not have to think because the media barrage of images does it all for them including when to tell them to laugh even if the jokes are not funny. Reading is a skill and needs to be cultivated. Math is another area where we are falling behind. How often do the children of our nation practice it? Obviously, not often enough. It is also a skill that needs nurturing and practice. Science is an area where we are getting our rears kicked. One reason for this is practice, or the lack thereof, but also it goes back to a skill gained though reading—imagination. Think of some of the great scientific discoveries from America’s past and they have their genesis in imagination. Imagine if man could travel to the moon. People did and made it happen. Students do not have to imagine anything if the media just gives it to them. That is a travesty in our society, not in our schools. If more parents would just stop and read to their children, or find ways to incorporate math or science into their child’s life, then the educational gaps would start to disappear. Any good teacher could tell you that, if people would listen to them instead of the corporate donors and their puppet politicians.

Finally, the lack of motivation in our students is lamentable as compared with the rest of the world. Yes, they are motivated by not passing a class—sometimes, if their parents get on their cases. One cause for motivation stems from the lack of support educators and education in general receive from the public, including parents. If students do not see education as valued, then they are not motivated to do the work. Lack of motivation also stems from students not being able to see why all of what they are learning is relevant to them and their goals. I can attest to this as an English teacher. It is hard to convince a student that Shakespeare matters. Yet it does as his plays teach us human nature and psychology. It is up to the teacher to show it. Good teachers find the hooks needed to reel in the student. Do they succeed with every student and every time? No. However, teachers try repeatedly until something clicks. The vast majority of teachers never give up on their students even if the students give up on them. It emotionally hurts teachers when students fail. Teachers take it personally when their students do not grasp a concept when they have tried everything they could to help them to do so.

What the so-called reformers are calling educational reform is the application of business principles to education. This results in a one-size-fits-all approach to education. Many of the ‘reforms’ they call for have teachers reading scripted lessons to students some of which even have maps that prompt them to say certain things as responses to student questions. It is like having a robot teaching classes. Good teachers know that all students are different and they learn in different ways. This is why the vast majority of teachers practice differentiated learning with their students. One form of this is through the use of multiple intelligence theories with students. Multiple intelligence theory basically states there are different ways students learn and if the teacher locates the areas where a student is strongest and gears learning toward using those areas, then the student will learn better. For example, one assignment I would give my students was to read a novel each month. They were then to present the novel to the class in whatever form best suited their abilities. This resulted in the traditional book reports from some; however, it also resulted in student created comic books, artistic works, musical compositions, plays adapted from the novels, videos, collages, and a number of other projects that proved to me that the student read and understood the text. The point is that the student read the novel, but presented their understanding of the concepts, themes, and overall idea the author had in mind through a manner best suited to their way of learning. It took me a longer time to grade them, but the students accomplished my goal, which was to learn. Any parent who has more than one child can tell you their children are different and do things differently, even the same task. The problem is that these so-called reformers do not see this and would rather throw a test where students bubble in an answer as being the solution to the problem.

I do wish to address one thing that always seems to be touted by these so-called reformers before I end this piece. That is the myth that teacher unions protect those in education who cannot teach. While this happens, it is usually not the fault of the union, but the school administration. School administrators are human. Many times, they are become friends with teachers or the teachers do not rock the boat for them, and yet the teachers cannot teach. The administrators protect these teachers to keep things easy for them and reward them with high ratings. I knew Social Studies teachers who relied on showing videos the entire year rather than teach their subject area. These teachers kept getting good ratings regardless of the evaluation system being used. The teachers who took a risk did not always fare very well, especially under evaluation systems that looked for a standard set of skills rather than if the students actually learned anything. I had this happen to me as I presented a lesson where the students were engaged and learned for a formal evaluation one time. I received a low to middle rating in part because the lesson carried over to the next day when the evaluation would not be held. However, a few months later, when the students were taking their final exam, I was again evaluated and received a high rating because the students were demonstrating their skills because they were being tested on a paper test. The first one was active engagement, but it did not fit into the specified period allowed by the evaluation instrument. The second was just students sitting there taking a test. Not something one could really call active engagement with material.

Teachers unions do not want teachers who cannot teach. It is that simple. Many teaching contracts are written with plans in place for teachers who are not performing well to be placed on developmental plans to improve their teaching skills. However, it is up to the administrators to place the teachers on them. If a teacher is placed on an improvement plan, they are expected to improve whatever skills they are lacking within a set amount of time or face further disciplinary measures including being reassigned to an area where they could meet with more success and learn the skills they lack or termination. No professional organization wants people who are not professionals within it as that only make the organization look bad. Unfortunately, the unions do not do a good job of bringing this to light in the media.

A new school year is quickly approaching. Rather than cower in the shadows, teachers need to stand up and speak up for public education. Teachers need to unite and be vocal when politicians and special interests groups try to lament the problems with public education, especially when those problems are societal rather than within the educational system. The problems within the educational system are societal more than with teachers or teacher unions. Are teachers getting more vocal? Yes. There are organizations beyond the unions, such as Badass Teachers Association, who are fighting back with words and protests to those who wish to change the system who have never really been in the system to begin with. Teachers are professionals, let them lead the reforms needed and have the support from the public and politicians and they will reform our educational system and save the future of our country.

It’s OK to Like Common Core and Hate it Too

By Teresa Wiley

Not long ago I had a conversation with one of my fellow grad students (who just happened to be young enough to be my grandchild) about my dislike for Common Core.  He made the observation that resistance to the CCSS was mostly an age thing.  In his eyes if you were a more experienced teacher (read: old) you were against the standards and if you were a bright, young little to no experience teacher you absolutely loved them.  This guy could not understand how I could be so stupid, stubborn, and pig-headed (his exact words) as to not see how these standards were going to change teaching, education and probably the entire world!

Fortunately, we had a very wise and experienced professor leading the class discussion and she challenged my colleague to explain why the Common Core standards were so great.  We all listened politely to a long explanation and defense that included all of the best of the education-speak of the day; rigor, critical thinking, scope and sequence, and no more status quo!  It occurred to me at the end of his speech that he had not taught in a classroom yet so I am not sure he really knew what the “status quo” was, but he was surely against it.

Next came my turn to defend my views. I explained that I didn’t object to the Common Core standards, and in fact the standards really did not affect my classroom because I teach Art and there have been wonderful state and national standards around since the late 80s.  I really could not defend my dislike for any particular standard or even the whole group.  But what I truly dislike, no I would say hate, is the way the Common Core standards are used.  To make my point I had to discuss a little bit of my experience with teaching in Indiana off and on over the past 30 years.  As an Art teacher I have been riffed often.  I teach an unnecessary subject in the eyes of an administrator that has to make budget cuts, so I can say that I have taught in five different school systems in my 25+ years of teaching.  The first time I was riffed in the late 70s everything was all about the “Back to Basics” movement.  We could only spend time on Math and Language Arts, everything else was unnecessary.  In the early 80s there was the push for vocational programs.  If you could not prove that your subject would result in your students walking out the door of the school and immediately landing a job then your subject was unnecessary.    The next thing was any subject that wasn’t going to be a part of the high-stakes graduation exit exam was a complete waste of time and of course unnecessary.  It has always been the same thing; Math, Language Arts anything else is not needed.  Forget about educating the whole child, we had to get back to basics; there were skills to learn and tests to take.  No time for those unnecessary subjects.

Now here we are again with another assault on the curriculum.  Narrowing it down to only the most noble of subjects and ridding ourselves of the waste, the unnecessary subjects like science, art, music.  I continued the defense of my position on Common Core by explaining that it may be OK to think the standards are fine, great, useable, and the best thing ever created.  I am sure that there are young or inexperienced teachers that find them great, but I don’t think those young and inexperienced teachers have had the opportunity to see how these standards will be used as a weapon against public education.  Just like the “Back to Basics” or vocational movements of earlier years, the Common Core is a tool make public education so awful with high-stakes testing that the public will scream for the privatizers to rescue their children from grips of educational hell.  Standards are not going to save or destroy education, but the way they are used will surely put an end to our cherished public school system.  

Teachers, the unions, and even administrators have fought back against the forces that have constantly tried to narrow the curriculum and dismantle our public education system, but this one seems to be a little fiercer.  There is big money behind this movement and their weapon of choice this time is the Common Core standards.  So to the defenders of CCSS I can understand if you like them, but please look at why many of us don’t like how they are used against teachers and students.  

BATs of History

Which Comes First - The Art or the Informed Interest in it?

Author: Shella Zelenz

A little while back, I posted videos of The Firebird ballet on my Facebook page. My kids and I watched it together. It was magnificently performed and staged by an amazing Russian ballet troupe. What was even more awesome was when we went to the library later that week and my daughter picked out a children’s book about the different ballets. Both kids automatically recognized the ballet when they turned the pages in the book, and both pointed to the page and said “Look Mom! The Firebird ballet we saw!"

I think they write children’s books thinking that this is how to introduce the art to kids. I think that some teachers feel that their own artistic limitations or the presumed negative responses from the children they teach prevent them from fully exposing children to such art for fear of behavior issues (classroom management problems). Budget cuts prevent many from taking the children to see live performances (as I was privileged to do growing up in a rural school in Montana). Utilizing video recordings of musicals, opera, theater, etc. can facilitate exposure with minimal expense, but is often seen by others as lazy teaching. So for some reason, people think that reading about the art (which obviously helps with literacy) is sufficient exposure to the artform itself. I prefer experiencing the art first (so did my kids – and they LOVE books!). In fact, having exposed them to the ballet, and seeing the artwork that reflected what they had seen, made them want to read the book even more.

As a music teacher, I was warned in the 1990′s about the new focus of cutting the arts from schools. Perhaps it had been around longer, but I had grown up in Montana where schools were not accredited if they did not offer music EVERY DAY in all grades. The same was true for physical education (which ties into the dance aspect of art). There has been serious research done for decades that explain all of the intellectual benefits for keeping music in the schools. Yet despite the scientific evidence, it is always one of the first things on the budgetary chopping block.

                                         

Photos of some of my choirs

I always had mix-mode art in my music classrooms. Dance, film, poetry, language, instruments, and singing were all part of it (including composing). I had my band in Rosebud, MT watch Rabbit Proof Fence when they played In Quest of Uluru so they would understand the culture who worshipped the massive rock structure. When they competed with the song – they received the highest mark they had EVER experienced in the school’s history. It’s not about me being anything special – it’s about the students identifying with the song and its deeper meaning. I did the same with the plethora of culturally diverse songs that my students sang or played. I saw consistent success with their performances because not only were they able to perform it technically well (the result of teaching), but they were able to express it with true depth (something that cannot be taught).

Private Voice Student of mine: Juliann Namson 14 years old

This video is followed by other private or former choir students of mine

The experience I’ve had with administrators who did not understand (and admittedly stated their lack of interest or understanding of art), is that they look at it as a fluff course. What is more concerning to me are the tactics I’ve seen them use to obliterate art from their schools (especially if it was a highly successful and publicly supported course). Many will attempt to hire what they perceive to be potentially inept teachers so that interest in the subject will be lost and the students will not sign up. I was actually involved in such a scenario in Poway, CA. Having only taught one year in a very rural town in Montana, the principal who hired me assumed that I would completely cave in and single-handedly destroy the monster program that I inherited (325 kids per day). Unfortunately for her, that did not happen. We took home every trophy as expected and demanded by the students and parents from their established reputation. We added new groups that didn’t exist before (aiding the limitations of band students who couldn’t fit choir into their daily schedule) and expanded our fundraising to phenomenal levels (over $100,000 in 4 months).

One of my choirs in Poway, CA

Since I was clearly not doing what the principal had expected me to do, she proceeded to use very underhanded behaviors to try and find some other reason to let me go at the end of the year. She hid under my classroom risers. She would put pressure on me about my masters program hoping that I would be too stressed out to complete it and thus jeopardize my ability to be credentialed and keep my job. She did not support my creative approach to classroom management and absolutely abhorred and wrote me up for allowing the kids to have autonomy in their experience. She tried everything she could to create a case to not renew my contract at the end of the year.

How did she finally do it? She told me that the class enrollment had decreased for the following year and that it was my fault because the kids didn’t want to be in choir. What did I find out from her secretary upon leaving this upsetting meeting? The secretary told me that the principal had capped the class enrollment so that less students could even be in the classes. The principal lied to my face so that she could proceed with the destruction of the enormously successful choir program that she couldn’t single handedly destroy without massive public outcry. Parents and students created petitions and flooded the school board and district offices with pleas to keep me. It was all to no avail. I was not tenured and the principal’s unsupportive write ups kept her position.

The following year, the new choir director effectively destroyed the program as the principal had hoped. I had received phone calls while at my new teaching position in the SF Bay area from parents asking me to call the new teacher and help her out. My brand new choir in Newark, kids who came from much less privileged backgrounds and who had never experienced choir in their lives, successfully took home the trophy (in their very first performance ever )when we competed with my former Poway choir at a major competition. I was so heartbroken for my Poway kids. This was not their fault, but they were the pawns in an adult’s personal agenda. This is so much more important than destroying competitiveness. This destroyed spirits.

All kids love music – ask your teen what they do to escape reality and find something they can identify with. MUSIC is us. ART is us. DANCE is us. Any school that thinks cutting the arts will improve their scores – is run by an administrator who has lost connection with him/herself. When the educator’s nightly ritual of release consists of sitcoms focused on popular culture consumer-based shallowness, alcohol, anti-depressants, etc. so that they can cope with their daily job, they have lost their humanness and have absolutely no ability to know what is best for the children they are in charge of educating. If teachers lose touch with their deeper humanity – they can’t possibly reach the children. If adults can allow themselves to be completely consumed in the depth and beauty of the arts – they can more deeply connect with their partners and their families. We need art much more than we need literacy. We need both. However, art is the human spirit, literacy is just a means to an end. What are we really destroying?