Here are a couple of viewpoints offered by others:
Teacher Magazine: Upending the Negative Teacher Stereotype:
Cyndi writes:
"Fix poverty, fix crumbling schools, fix neighborhoods, fix health care, fix the job situation, fix child care and over time, you will find that America's teachers will be producing top scholars from all areas of the country. To blame teachers for the poor results in some schools only shows the ignorance of the speaker, no matter how loudly he/she shouts."
Drturner writes:
"We not only teach, but make sure kids are healthy, keep an eye on the home environement looking for abuse (mandated reporting), have to raise parents who think that they are still kids also, deal with administrators who have no clue what is going on in the classroom because they live in a fantasy world of politics and self promotion, live with archaic testing methods, out of date text books, teach in ways that are not proper or appropriate for the children (i.e. lecture when we know that oral teaching only reaches about 20% of students) and are evaluated on that method only, deal with local politics and the oldboy system of hiring and moving to leadership positions (i.e. not what you can do but how many years have you been in the district which gives us hide bound administrators with no skills), in other words we need to rethink the whole system......."
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3 comments:
Pro—
In my opinion you left out the most important part of Cindy’s reply.
"If we were to look at the roots of poverty, and made the national commitment to improve the economic realities of the underclasses, teachers could teach academics and not have to fill other functions. Children from poverty enter school with significantly weaker vocabularies and educational skills to build on than do middle and upper class students. Their families are fraught with challenges unknown to people outside this environment. People in poverty are blamed for their poverty when reality is that economic decisions and conditions no one wants to talk about, are at least as responsible. Teachers are convenient scapegoats for the realities that economists and politicians and news media refuse to look at. Poor families want the best for their kids just like middle and upper class families do. All you have to do is look at the Harlem Children's Zone or the KIPP Schools or small independent schools such as Providence, RI's Community Preparatory School to know this. These schools have one advantage over public schools in that they control their admissions. Public schools must take anyone who walks in the door. If America really valued all their kids they would support teachers and schools who are doing amazing things in poor urban and rural public schools, starting by addressing the conditions that cause poverty, including the need for jobs. Ronald Reagan declared war on the poor and it continues to this day. Teachers are fighting the tide with a teaspoon. Fix poverty, fix crumbling schools, fix neighborhoods, fix health care, fix the job situation, fix child care and over time, you will find that America's teachers will be producing top scholars from all areas of the country. To blame teachers for the poor results in some schools only shows the ignorance of the speaker, no matter how loudly he/she shouts."
Ah, yes, public schools must take in the Po Boys and Mexican Jumping Beans along with the bad salad mixin's.
Motel Special Ed: After Wilted Lettuce and Rotten Tomatoes will it be Jumping Beans and Po Boy's?: "'If I were running a business, I'd try to control the product coming in,' she said. For instance, she said, a chef wouldn't prepare a gourmet salad with wilted lettuce or rotten tomatoes. In a public school, she said, 'I can't control who walks in that door. I take kids with learning disabilities, I take everyone. They come in at different levels and with different ways of learning.......'"
One aspect of this discussion is that I rarely see anyone say that the public schools must take in those who don't want to be there, nor does anyone address why this group does not want to be there.
At least Liberty Island makes it sound like America is inviting the wilted lettuce and rotten tomatoes.
I think it goes like this: "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Yet, as soon as these dregs of the masses enter the school house door, they become a burden and a reason for public education failure.
Instead of the public school systems cloaking their distain for those who are being targeted among the "anyone' who walks in the door, perhaps the public school system could just speak more honestly and say "if we can't teach you, we don't want you - no hard feelings."
I, smarkingly, for those who don't see it, submit that if we could just rescind PL-142, the school systems could get rid of the handicapped. And then, again smarkingly submitted, we could go back and rescind Brown vs. Board of Education.
I wonder how the Middleton community feels when they read the comments regarding their situation. I can't help but think that they, as a group, get the idea that they are not wanted. Or has someone from the school system actually gone into the community and said "We want you, you and you - but not you, you and you?"
I wished I could think of all this stuff at once.
I think I can help the system add to the point that public schools must take anyone who walks in the door.
It would go like this:
"We must remember that public schools must take anyone who walks in the door, and furthermore, many of those who walk through the door are getting in without a funding mandate."
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