15 posts tagged “education”
I'd like to thank my neighbor across the hall for reporting another glorious exchange between teacher and student:
Student: That's pretty messed up how the school steals the Internet.
Teacher (and a few students): What are you talking about?
Student: This school steals the internet.
Teacher: No we don't. Where'd you get that idea?
Student: Yes, we do. I heard a couple of teachers say they get the Internet from the airport.
Well, Ontario International Airport is only a short car ride away. I wouldn't put it past us.
Two days down, and no major mishaps. One girl knocked over my coffee cup, but that's my fault for leaving it on the barstool in the middle of the room.
I had the kids jot down a few lines of something I could remember them by. Here are a few of the finalists:
"Your room smells like ramen noodles."
"I'm a BAMF. Think about it."
As for the ramen noodles, I would have to concur; especially during period 4 when the AC starts lagging, and the kids are fresh from PE. It is quite evident each year that many 8th graders have not yet discovered the joy of deodorant. They do, however, believe giving themselves an Axe body spray bath is an acceptable substitute.
The "BAMF" had me busting up as I ran across the hall to show some of my peers. I could let him know that he's a stupid AMF for telling a teacher to "think about it" on the second day of school, or I could gently remind him that even MF's with a 12-13 year-old BA like himself were believing in Santa not to long ago, and 6 months past it would not have been advisable for him to see the Wedding Singer or Batman Begins without a parent or guardian present. Plus there's the likelihood that he still has themed birthday parties.
I'm not hatin', I'm just sayin'. The BAMF's ain't what it used to be.
According to the head of my district union, there are two presidential candidates out there: one who wants to fix the problems of the educational system, and one who "wants to blame it all on the teachers."
This, of course, came on the heels of him telling us he knows that "teachers are complex voters."
*sigh*
In brighter news, kids show up on Monday. 8th grade scores are up, in spite of the fact that NCLB is still ruining education.
First personal assignment of the year: Define the word "ruin" and use it in a sentence.
In all seriousness, I'm excited to get down to business on Monday. If summer school was any indication, the comedy will outweigh the tears.
Some families are suing the CATHOLIC Diocese for an English-only policy at a Wichita CATHOLIC school. Their lawsuit "calls for an end to the policy and asks for an order barring similar policies at other Catholic schools in the Wichita diocese."
Perhaps I have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of public and private schools, but are these families actually asking the federal government to forbid a private school in the United States from requiring its students to speak English?
Just when I had all my wonderful "critical thinking" lessons planned out for the year, it turns out kids actually need to have some factual knowledge about which to think critically.
Imagine that.
So now I have to go back and add BORING facts to the things I'm supposed to be teaching. Daniel T. Willingham guy at the University of Virginia says critical thinking isn't much good on its own. Educational Columnist Jay Matthews quotes Willingham in an article, and Matthews himself points out the following:
"As your most-hated high school teacher often told you (will I be exempt since I teach 8th grade?), you have to buckle down and learn the content of a subject--facts, concepts and trends--before the maxims of critical thinking taught in these feverishly-marketed courses will do you much good.
'The processes of thinking are intertwined with the content of thought (that is, domain knowledge),' Willingham says. 'Thus, if you remind a student to "look at an issue from multiple perspectives" often enough, he will learn that he ought to do so, but if he doesn't know much about an issue, he can't think about it from multiple perspectives.'"
I guess this means Roger Ebert actually watches all the movies he reviews.
Sorry boys and girls. This year it looks like I'm going to have to make sure you actually know what happened in the story before we get whimsical with our critical analyses.
Teacher's Union Sues Over Dropout Prevention.
Ok, the title definitely contains a little inflammatory bias, but it's hard to get around the gist of the article, which is this:
Texas State Teachers Association is suing some state educational agencies for incorporating non-profit organizations as part of dropout prevention, which they (TSTA) say constitutes the use of vouchers.
Already getting more complicated than necessary.
What I notice, though, is that a teacher's union is actually suing an organization for attempting to reduce dropout. If I could put it in typical heart-wrenching NEA radio ad diction, I'd say: "organization sues group for trying to help the children!" Then I'd write up a little script and pass it out to everyone I work with and tell them to call their congressperson and follow the script, even if they're unfamiliar with the issue, because we created this mess, not the children, and the children are our future, and that if they only increased funding, everything would be fine.
Alas, in this ironic twist, those of the "fully fund" movement are actually suing to stop the funding of an educational intervention program. Wow.
Reg Weaver, head of NEA, shared this gem with us in an NEA ad not too long ago:
"I'm Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association.
It's time to tell Congress what your priorities are.
Not more tax breaks for the rich, but Great Public Schools for Every Child. It's their basic right, and our responsibility.
Parents are being told that their schools and their children have failed.
But the Administration isn't offering resources to make schools better.
NEA is leading the fight for real school improvement.
Smaller classes.
Better trained teachers.
And, yes, more funding."
So NEA is leading the fight for "real school improvement," and here's TSTA getting all touchy because they think money is flowing to their sworn enemy, THE VOUCHER. Of course the debate seems to hinge on whether the non-profits receiving the cash actually constitutes a backdoor use of vouchers, as TSTA claims. But honestly, who cares when you have repeated acts of blatant hypocrisy from unions who say they care most about the children, and then throw their heaving mass around trying to squash any school reform that might threaten the union? (I admit, I am assuming something about teacher's unions here, but I cannot otherwise understand what I perceive to be a near-pathological anti-voucher platform).
If this union truly cared about their students, it would be throwing its resources into determining whether or not the programs in question actually help students succeed. Instead, TSTA sues people that are "just trying to help the children." Perhaps if someone would just tell the head of TSTA that the money is going "to help the children," the suit would be immediately dropped, no questions asked. Then TSTA members could get into cooperative groups and discuss strategies for constructing knowledge about why they don't like vouchers.
The title of the article makes the union look petty and pathetic. Sometimes a biased title is just what you need.
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.
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.
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.
Update--check out this post, for a bit of wisdom on precisely this issue. I guess I wasn't the only one with this on my mind last week.
I asked this to a group of students the other day. I told them to exclude themselves, since that should be a given. Among the responses: teachers, principals, superintendent, school district, the president, government, the governor--finally someone threw out "mom and dad?"
Individuals are responsible for their own education. Until minors reach adulthood, or until they move out, parents are responsible for their child's education. Essentially, every parent is a homeschooling parent. The question is, how good of a job do they do taking advantage of educational resources available. In this country, we have resources coming out of our ears. Public schools are resources. After-school programs are resources. Teachers are resources. Principles are resources. District personell are resources. The internet, miscellaneous support groups, parents, relatives, friends, and libraries are resources. These resources are not equally available to everyone, I understand, but everyone has a degree access to some of them. Even if they aren't, parents have to find a way.
Then I noticed this gem from the head of the National Education Association, Reg Weaver:
"Education decisions...rest in the hand of politicians."
Ahh...it's nice knowing the government is there to take care of us. Especially our young ones. I guess parents are off the hook.
