I took my little guy to the local library today. It has a kid's area I would have loved (I still think it's pretty cool. He does too, because as soon as I set him down, he's running around like it's a playground. I can get him to sit through a few pages at most before he starts squirming off my lap to interact with the other kids).
As we were perusing the board books, I came across one (I can't remember the exact title, I can't find it on Amazon, and it's driving me crazy because I was reading it a couple of hours ago) entitled something along the lines of Our Beautiful Children. It was a book about black kids, and every page highlighted an attractive physical attribute of a whatever black child(ren) was (were) on that particular page. Then, every third page or so, there was the sentence "I am unique; I am beautiful," or something very close. Each page included beautiful sensory language, along with many educational similes and metaphors which were used to describe the various features of the children.
I was left uncomfortable, however, that a toddler book was emphasizing racial characteristics as a means of identifying something positive. The children in the book were unique, according to the author, because they were black, or because of some physical quality associated with the author's vision of blackness. Physical characteristics were the only items emphasized. I'm not sure how helpful it is to create race-conscious toddlers, and I'm firmly against teaching kids (let alone babies) that individuals should be defined by physical characteristics. This is one book among many, true, but this is a baby book for crying out loud, and it was one of the board books on display. Teaching kids to take pride in physical characteristics that are stereotypically (although typically accurate) assigned to a racial group is insidious and damaging at worst, and an empty feel-good message at best. I'm not against taking pride in one's appearance as it pertains to one's own effort or sense of self-respect (pride in a new suit that one saved up to buy, pride in physique due to healthy eating and exercise). Don't misunderstand me: every person deserves to look at themselves in the mirror and be comfortable with the idiosyncrasies they've been endowed with from birth. But to derive one's value from physical characteristics?
I'm half Mexican combined with an assortment of Caucasion flavorings, and growing up, I usually identified myself as Mexican.
I derive very little if any of my value as a human from my ethnic background. I could have been born to any number of parents with any number of cultural, ethnic, and national backgrounds, and thank God that I am free to form my worth as a person outside of any racial, cultural, or physical confines.
I had no control over being born to a Mexican father and a Caucasian mother. The shade of my skin, the hue of my eyes, the texture of my hair (all of which were emphasized in the children's book in question) have absolutely nothing to do with the person I am, and I would find it offensive if someone presumed to form an opinion about my value as human being based on any of those or other physical characteristics over which I have no control. I am a product of my choices. I control how I act, how I work, how I treat others, what I accomplish--these are the things that should be emphasized, because these are the sorts of things we as individuals can change. The physical traits with which we are endowed have little bearing on our value as humans, and to teach, or even insinuate to toddlers that such might be the case is unfortunate, and inaccurate. Ultimately,it teaches an objectification of human beings. We are humans. We are not inert pieces of art, or prizes meant to be treasured based on transient standards of beauty. To teach that personal value is associated with the physical is to play the flip side of a losing game employed by racists throughout history.
The content of an individual's character was nowhere to be found in the book, and I find it perverted that the physical attributes as a source of value would even be mentioned to youngsters--let alone without juxtaposing the physical alongside that which creates true value among humans.
I acknowledge right on the left coast for pointed to this video on dresscode.
This is just some of the crap you have to put up with, in my opinion, when we hammers home the idea that education is a right, and that education should be free. There are always costs and sacrifices that are made when a service like education is provided "free of charge;" unfortunately, many individuals do not appreciate the educational opportunities afforded to every minor in this country, citizen or not.
So school boards, teachers, and administrators have to come up with all sorts of ridiculous plans, like making students where jumpsuits, when those students can't figure out how to wear something appropriate to school. Then the kids, according to one student, are going to purposely dress out of code so they'll be forced to wear the jumpsuits.
This is indicative of a mindset that does not value a "free" education, and, seriously, it's sort of hard to value free things. I'm not particularly impressed with my free grocery bags. I do treat the canvas ones with a bit more respect because I paid a dollar each for them.
These stupid dress code wars also demonstrate how failure to value a "free" education actually damages the quality of the education itself. Those students who, through hard work and determination, have mastered the skill of getting dressed appropriately for school in the morning, now have to have their school day interrupted because of boneheaded individuals who clearly value personal style more than an education.
When I played baseball in college, we had a "personal appearance" code. We had to keep our hair trimmed relatively short, it could not be any unnatural color, and we were expected to remain clean-shaven for the duration of the season. At one juncture in the season, a player began growing mustache, in clear defiance of the coach's expectations. When it was apparent that it was not a case of simply forgetting to shave for a couple of days, the coach absolutely exploded on him in front of the entire team:
WHAT THE (expletive) IS THIS (expletive) ON YOUR (expletive) FACE?
(absolute silence from 25 young men)
DO YOU WANT TO HAVE A (expletive) MUSTACHE, OR DO YOU WANT TO PLAY (expletive) BASEBALL?!! (EXPLETIVE!!!)
(At both universities I attended, I had college coaches with an affinity for the F-word. One coach, in moments of emotional fervor, even made a habit of inserting it in the midst of polysyllabic words.)
I remember thinking the facial hair rule was pretty stupid, and I thought it was wrong to embarrass him in front of the entire team. But the lesson, expectation, and choice were clear: either have facial hair, or play baseball. Which did we want more?
I began shaving more than usual.
So this is my dream: All of those participants in K-12 need to be made explicitly aware of what behaviors detract from the educational experience. Those that demonstrate contempt for the expectations, and thereby corrupt the experience for other learners need to be removed immediately. If education is as valuable as all sides of the political spectrum claim it is, then any individual who inhibits a child's ability to learn needs to be removed from the educational environment. It is of the utmost hypocrisy to proclaim that all students should have the opportunity to learn, and then to continue to suffer the whims of those students for whom education is not valued at all.
One of many cool things about teaching is the 3-4 weeks of life I get every July and August where I have absolutely no professional obligations. So, every year I take the opportunity of doing something that, to some extent, I usually end up regretting. Looking back, these little adventures make for good stories, but the experience itself is bittersweet. More bitter than sweet.
I'm always interested in exploring local spots--urban, suburban, or rural--so I jumped at the chance to do a little impromptu backpacking with my brother and a church friend. My friend planned a route, we rented packs (none of us had completed an overnight trip before), bought some food, woke up at 5, and headed up to Mt. Baldy in the San Gabriel mountains.
2 days, 1 hellish night, 18.2 miles, and about 8500 vertical feet later, and I'm absolutely wasted. From the hike, I mean. I'm in good shape, but looking back, I think the route we took was something we probably should have trained for. We each had about 50 lbs, on our back, and the first leg the hike involved 6.2 miles and roughly a 5800 feet elevation change. There were some beautiful spots, but towards the end of day one, I was almost falling asleep when we took a break.
Which brings me possibly the worst night of my life. We had to pitch tents at the only flat spot in the vicinity when darkness was falling, and it seemed like a fairly decent (albeit rocky), flat spot overlooking the backside of baldy. As soon as we lay down, our little flat spot transformed into a wind tunnel, and both our tents began a flapping session that would basically continue throughout the night. Oh yeah, and the inside of my sleeping bag was wet (one of my back up water reservoirs leaked). So I was damp (not cold--the body heat turned my bag into more of a tropical climate) and for the life of me, I could not sleep because of that stupid wind. I duct taped the jangling zippers, and at one point, I even duct taped my ears. When that didn't work, I rolled up the used duct tape into an ear plug. That sucked too. For 2 1/2 hours I just lay there praying that God would make the wind stop. Looking back, I can see that was a bit selfish, seeing as there are hundreds of windmills in Palm Springs that rely on the wind to harness earth-saving energy. When I finally fell asleep, I awoke to my brother making strange smacking noises with his mouth. We were both thirsty, and he was too scared to get out of the tent (I wasn't feeling to hot about it either), so I crept out, scanned for hostile wildlife, and retrieved a Gatorade. All in all, I managed to catch about 5 combined hours of sleep, which is pretty lame considering we went to bed at 8:30.
Up at 5:30, I caught a nice sunrise, and we were back on the trail an hour later.
11:18 we finished up. We absolutely killed the last section of the hike, and only on 5 hours of sleep at that, was pretty stoked on finishing.
On a trivial note, my church friend consumed only 6 chewy granola bars for the entire trip. I consumed 3 Cliff protein bars, three egg/chicken burritos, three hard boiled eggs, 3 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a huge bag of trail mix, a big bag of beef jerky, 2 Snickers bars, a large baggy of raw oats, and a protein shake.
I don't think I'm meant to survive in the wild.
It's not the first time I've read this sort of statistic, unfortunately. This one's courtesty of J. Martin Rochester's 2002 book Class Warfare:
"Michael Kirst, an education professor at Stanford, acknowledges that 'regrettably, when compared to applicants for professional training in business, medicine, and law, education students have low grades and dismal SAT and GRE scores.' In one study reported by Kirst, teachers-in-training ranked fourteenth out of sixteen occupational groupings on SAT verbal scores and fifteenth out of sixteen on quantitative scores" (202).
This data is not exactly current, and I wonder how teachers stack up as of 2008. I know that every graduate program in education I've ever heard of doesn't even require you to take the GRE. I had to take it to get into an educational policy program, but the graduate program in education at the same university was one of the only ones that did not require applicants to submit GRE scores.
And how's this for embarrassing: In the early 90's, the California Teacher's Association actually filed a brief that stated
"the (CBEST) was a 'major impediment' to achieving ethnic and racial diversity in the schools....50,000 minority plaintiffs in the class action suit not only sought to dumb down or abolish the CBEST altogether; they also wanted back pay for all prospective teachers who flunked the test and were not hired. Not just back pay: additional monetary damages to compensate for psychological trauma" (Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White 350).
The CBEST (California Basic Educational Skills Test) I guess is designed to ensure a minimum competency for teachers. It's not exceedingly difficult. I've heard that it tests math and language at the 8th grade level, and at highest the 10th grade level. When I read this sort of whining about minimum standards, for teachers of all people, it is embarrassing, maddening, and motivating at the same time. How can a union that sided with prospective teachers in arguing that the CBEST was keeping qualified educators out of the classroom simultaneously proclaim to the world that its members (including myself) be treated as professionals?
Hopefully when existing and prospective teachers read this sort of nonsense, they take it as a kick in the pants toward becoming indisputable experts in their subject area. Knowing how to teach is important, but we have no right to be taken seriously if we don't first become proficient, and eventually masters of our content area.
In an Education Week article regarding McCain and Obama's likely different approaches to education funding, I came across these quotes regarding federal spending on education, which induced a moderate degree of mental constipation. I believe the quoted individuals are referring to the same federal government, and the same educational system, so I'm having a bit of trouble reconciling the two. I'll bold the source of my confusion.
- "Dan Lips, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, based in Washington, said that federal education spending has risen by more than 40 percent since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind law more than six years ago, and that the boost hasn’t led to a significant increase in student achievement."
- "Mr. Kealy of the Committee for Education Funding said, though, that Sen. Obama’s proposal could represent a 'turning point for education funding, which has seen only modest increases in recent years.' "
Isn't there a philosophical law of non-contradiction that states something along the lines that a statement cannot be both true and false? So, either "modest" is one of those words I always thought I knew, but turned out to have an entirely different definition, or one of these fools is lying (or shamelessly, shamelessly manipulating, and when someone can't talk straight, I just so happen to get a little nervous, and a little offended. I'm nervously offended). I always thought modest meant, you know, modest. Apparently, I need to recontextualize.
- Bodybuilder increases lean mass by 40%. (a modest gain).
- Patient loses 40% of blood (a modest flesh wound).
- Diet increases risk of heart attack by 40% (modest risk).
- School suffers from 40% dropout rate (a modest lack of success).
- Man spends 40% of salary on gambling (a modest lapse in judgment. Wife should not be upset).
Now maybe I should go back and give it a second read.
In a fitting end to a summer school session that began with an admnistrator telling us that "these kids have been beaten down all year long," this group of enjoyable youngsters has proven that they are no slouches when it comes to administering a little beat-down of their own.
After returning from the restroom, one of my students informed me that there was huge, buzzing, green-backed beetle bouncing back and forth in the hall outside my door. I stepped outside to have a look, and of course it turned out to be one of those situations where I couldn't resist taking one or two awkward swipes at the dive-bombing insect. One or two turned into 15 or 20, as my competitive side got the better of me. Next thing you know, I'm having a serious, cooperative, hands-on lesson with one of my students on how to swipe a bug out the sky. Thankfully no one came upstairs, or they would have seen me and one student twirling, ducking, leaping, and pawing at the air. Finally we chased it into another teacher's room (it was empty, except for the teacher). Finally, my professional instincts got the better of me, and I delegated the task of bug-capture to my student, and began walking back across the hall. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a veritable colony of these beetles meandering about the outside of another classroom door.
I made the mistake of poking my head inside the classroom to check with the instructor as to the bug-status of his room. He told me that he had killed three already, and then all hell broke loose in his room. I shut the door quickly, and promised to round up the remaining critters on my own (but not before leaving him to contend with small-scale chaos. I could hear him accusing various students of releasing the horde of beetles through the door.
Finally, with the help of my student, I rounded up the beetle battalion into a Yuban can, and sent him outside to release them. I'm not sure of who brought the bugs to school, but all but one of the beetles refused to fly, so the joke sort of fell flat. It made for a nice end to one of the wackiest summer school sessions I've ever been a part of.
Overall, the kids were a huge improvement from last year. But I hope, in the future, we will refrain from referring to summer school kids as helpless victims of the beat down.
While searching for an inspirational quote to round out a writing assignment, one of my tough/funny guys, (but dead serious in this instance) asked: "I like the quote 'life is what you make it.' Who said that?"
Now, my pop culture knowledge has been fading fast as of late, so I punched it into Google as my students watched the LCD projection breathlessly.
Result #1: Hannah Montana.
Result #2: Hannah Montana.
Result #3: Hannah Montana.
And so on.
Hey I thought it was pretty good too, but I let him take the fall for picking Hannah Montana as his (and I guess my) motivational speaker.
I've read that the part assessing risk/consequences with regards to decision-making is not fully developed. I witness it every day. Today, with 4 days left of summer school, a kid I liked set of a firework in the midst of a throng of exiting students on the way out. In the presence of at least 4 teachers.
That doesn't explain the behavior, however, of the weirdo who followed one of the young ladies to school this morning. This was the reason for increased staff presence at the front of the school, at the time my young pyrotechnic decided to go out with a bang.
The fun seriously does not stop.
Smaller class sizes: better for everyone.
Alas, this is one of those befuddling scenarios where the facts don't always line up with what we just know to be true.
Thank you Instructivist, a very cool commonsense blog I've just discovered, for pointing out that smaller class sizes aren't necessarily a magic bullet.
Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom's book No Excuses also notes that mandating smaller class sizes actually dilutes teaching talent, so it should come as no surprise that a decrease in the quality of instruction will follow:
Decades of research, however, have failed to establish that smaller classes have any measurable impact on student achievement....If districts have to hire a great many teachers in order to reduce average class size, they are forced to be less selective in picking those teachers, with a decline in quality as a consequence" (159).
In addition, I can say from personal experience that class management (a component of teacher quality), and willingness of the learner (along with support from parents and administration), play a much bigger role in educational environment than class size. I would love smaller classes as a whole, but I've had classes of 16 where I spent more time on discipline, routines, and teaching of simple expectations than I have in classes of 40.
Class size is easy to talk about, and it's easy to ask for more money to subsidize smaller class sizes. It's for the children, it's not their fault, education is the cornerstone of our state so cough it up, etc--the typical babble aimed at guilting citizens into forking over ungodly sums to an system that has very little accountability.
There are underlying issues, however, that are much more germane to fostering a healthy educational climate, and these issues require more than a fat green band-aid.
Have you ever broken a bone? If not, what's the worst injury you've sustained?
- 3 concussions-- 2 snowboarding (one mini-competition, one freeriding), and 1 knocked out in a bench-clearing rumble (Cal State San Bernardino vs. Cal State Stanislaus, April 2000, I think)
- broken nose (4th grade face plant off some monkey bar rings)
- Broken fingerX3 (hit with a baseball)
- torn ligament on finger (sliding head first into second--finger stayed with the base, body went flying past)
- 2 broken arms (first grade monkey bars, 10th grade snowboarding)
- Dislocated rib, still pops out so I can't lay comfortably on my stomach (snowboarding)
- Broken bone somewhere near sinus cavity (hit in the face with a pitch, now I get brain freezes behind my right eye).
I apologize to my parents. Now that I have a kid, I can sort of imagine the daily hell my brothers, sisters, and I put them through.
