Paul Karrer teaches fifth grade in Castroville, California.
He is doing his best to educate parents and the public about the destructive farce called “reform” that is ruining education for his students.
A student returned to his classroom and asked him why he was no longer teaching as he had when she was a student.
He explained to her that a federal law called No Child Left Behind had changed the way he is allowed to teach.
Last year, he wrote a letter to President Obama that went viral. I am reprinting it here.
A Letter to My President — The One I Voted for…
Paul Karrer | Education Week | 02.02.2011
Dear President Obama:
I mean this with all respect. I’m on my knees here, and there’s a knife in my back, and the prints on it kinda match yours. I think you don’t get it.
Your Race to the Top is killing the wrong guys. You’re hitting the good guys with friendly fire. I’m teaching in a barrio in California. I had 32 kids in my class last year. I love them to tears. They’re 5th graders. That means they’re 10 years old, mostly. Six of them were 11 because they were retained. Five more were in special education, and two more should have been. I stopped using the word “parents” with my kids because so many of them don’t have them. Amanda’s mom died in October. She lives with her 30-year-old brother. (A thousand blessings on him.) Seven kids live with their “Grams,” six with their dads. A few rotate between parents. So “parents” is out as a descriptor.
Here’s the kicker: Fifty percent of my students have set foot in a jail or prison to visit a family member.
Do you and your secretary of education, Arne Duncan, understand the significance of that? I’m afraid not. It’s not bad teaching that got things to the current state of affairs. It’s pure, raw poverty. We don’t teach in failing schools. We teach in failing communities. It’s called the ZIP Code Quandary. If the kids live in a wealthy ZIP code, they have high scores; if they live in a ZIP code that’s entombed with poverty, guess how they do?
We also have massive teacher turnover at my school. Now, we have no money. We haven’t had an art or music teacher in 10 years. We have a nurse twice a week. And because of the No Child Left Behind Act, struggling public schools like mine are held to impossible standards and punished brutally when they don’t meet them. Did you know that 100 percent of our students have to be on grade level, or else we could face oversight by an outside agency? That’s like saying you have to achieve 100 percent of your policy objectives every year.
It’s not bad teaching that got things to the current state of affairs. It’s pure, raw poverty.
You lived in Indonesia, so you know what conditions are like in the rest of the world. President Obama, I swear that conditions in my school are akin to those in the third world. We had a test when I taught in the Peace Corps. We had to describe a glass filled to the middle. (We were supposed to say it was half full.) Too many of my kids don’t even have the glass!
Next, gangs. Gangs eat my kids, their parents, and the neighborhood. One of my former students stuffed an AK47 down his pants at a local bank and was shot dead by the police. Another one of my favorites has been incarcerated since he was 13. He’ll be 27 in November. I’ve been writing to him for 10 years and visiting him in the maximum-security section of Salinas Valley State Prison.
Do you get that it’s tough here? Charter schools and voucher schools aren’t the solution. They are an excuse not to fix the real issues. You promised us so much. And you want to give us merit pay? Anyway, I think we really need to talk. Oh, and can you pull the knife out while you’re standing behind me? It really hurts.
Sincerely yours,
Paul Karrer
I’m speechless. What a profound letter. Subsitute El Barrio with Bed-Stuy and that teacher could be me. Did the President ever respond? *sigh*
Did he ever receive a reply? Even in communities that aren’t failing, you could have a failing family, or a failing sub-community. That’s all it takes.
If it weren’t so sad and true, I would say this is a beautiful letter. The phrase, “pure, raw poverty” describes it all.
Of all the many things I’ve read, this says it best. And that’s coming from a teacher in a wealthy suburban town.
“You promised us so much.”
Sigh. And some of us believed it. No more.
‘An excuse not to fix the real issue’….. wow… an amazingly profound description for the charter school movement..
When will the public wake up?
Hey, as this teacher describes, these kids are struggling because of poverty AND because their schools are inadequate with class sizes of 30, no art or music teachers etc. Why can’t we make this the message heard to education policymakers rather than simply repeating the poverty mantra? Might this not get more traction?
Every teacher should resend this powerful letter to the White House. It so eloquently describes the truth of the current state of education. President Obama really doesn’t get it and doesn’t want to deal with the truth. “pure, raw poverty”. Says it all. When will our politicians address the real problem? They create smoke screens to mask the fact that they refuse to face the very real issues caused by poverty. When the smoke and mirrors are removed the problems of poverty are still there, creating far reaching effects for our most vulnerable children. I don’t care what anyone says, today poverty IS destiny. Now more than any other time in history.
Wake up President Obama, there is still time to redeem yourself. Time to step out from behind the curtain of denial, and face the problems of poverty head on. There are solutions that can put us on the right track, but they won’t come from those who have no experience in the trenches. Bring teachers, social workers, mental health workers, public health experts, law enforcement, school administrators, anyone with real life expertise dealing with children and families in poverty, to the discussion. We can help guide the discussion to fond real solutions. There are no quick fixes and it won’t be easy or cheap. But our countries’ future depends on our ability to deal with this problem. If we can afford to spend 60% of our budget on wars, and to send millions/billions in aid to other countries, then it is time to put the needs of our own country first. Education currently gets about 2% of our federal budget. What’s wrong with that picture. Watch the youtube video of the Ben and Jerry’s CEO explain it with oreos. it’s not Al Quada that is the threat. It is our own refusal to deal with the causes and effects of poverty that will ultimately bring us down.
Well said Bridget and that’s a great idea to resend it to the President!
I agree. I hope that Mr. Karrar doesn’t mind that I use his letter as template. I’ll change the grade to HS students, barrio to the south Bronx, and the one knife to several knives because we have Bloomberg and Walcott also stabbing the teachers. Poverty in East LA or in Chicago or in NYC is still POVERTY!
Poverty is everywhere from the small rural communities to the largest of cities. Don’t forget the communities in the coal mine communities, and the communities that teach children from migrant families to those in the Mississippi Delta. We have them everywhere!
I agree Lynda. Bill Maher asked John Legend–and I paraphrase– if we end poverty by fixing education or fix education by ending poverty and JL said we must do both. But these people are doing neither. The powerful don’t give away power. They don’t want to end poverty or fix education. I don’t know what the solution is per se, but I know it won’t come from the top down. And it certainly won’t come from anyone who has no experience with truly educating our children.
This is very interesting however I do have to take issue with the constant reference to “poverty” as the cause of these problems. Do you honestly think that if you handed these families a trunk full of cash, their cultural problems would be solved?
This is heart wrenching for sure. I have NO doubt that what this teacher describes is accurate. However this is the dire results from the break-down of the family. Something that family policy groups have been WARNING about for decades.
Family policy groups advocate for the support of the family unit BECAUSE it is the children who ultimately suffer.
They’ve been mocked, ridiculed and ignored. Yet we can clearly see the destruction that occurs when the family unit is destroyed.
States USED to develop legislation and policy BASED on supporting the family unit. That is no longer the case.
Divorce laws are easy, single parenthood is acceptable, …remember…we are told that families come in different packages.
The advantages that students have are: Strong families with a mother and father to guide them. Those that instill a moral foundation and offer their children an example of what it means to have character and work hard.
One can still live in poverty and have these advantages.
This post is worth reading, I’d simply argue that the root cause is not poverty but the moral foundation that is built by a 2 parent household.
You have answered your own question. The word poverty describes a whole spectrum of social conditions beyond a mere lack of money.
I’ll add that I grew up rural poor in a single parent household raised by my father.
And he did a great job! Congrats to your dad!
Who is saying that low income families should be handed a “trunk full of cash”? You seem to have the opinion that low income people have a moral problem and low income is the result. So do you think the 1% that have wrecked our economy and shipped American jobs to low wage countries so they can become even more wealthy are morally superior?
The only problem low income people have is unemployment. Our prisons are filled with low income people while those who wrecked our economy are allowed to give each other million dollar bonuses even as their companies teeter on the brink of bankruptcy . Fix that and the family breakdown you pass judgement on will be alleviated.
My husband was raised dirt poor in Africa. He can tell you all about the on-going effects of poverty that last well after one has gotten out of poverty. Even today, seven years after he arrived in this country, he says things are still clicking in his brain that he was never able to understand before when nearly his whole focus was on where his next meal would come from.
Thanks Dienne,
Many Americans will never understand the true effects of growing up in poverty. It goes so much deeper than just an amount of money that gets you beyond the poverty line. The idea that a “trunk full of cash” is all it takes to overcome the effects of growing up in poverty shows the disconnect.
A living wage and support systems are just a start. Education is also a part, but so is access to healthcare, childcare, and a myriad of other resources that are needed to give families in poverty an opportunity to move out of poverty. As long as we continue to have policies that put band aids where tourniquets are needed we will continue to fail at this task. As long as “others” pass judgement without understanding, we will continue to have an “us against them” conversation. Until one has lived in the world that a culture of poverty has created, it is difficult to know the many landmines that stand in the way of these families. As a country, the problems of poverty seep into every nook and cranny of our society. Placing blame and passing judgement does nothing to move us forward.
The thing about poverty in Africa is that it’s not generally correlated with the kind of unpredictable, sudden, random violence that is connected with poverty in this country. That has to do even more damage. My husband didn’t always have food, but at least he wasn’t worried about getting shot in his own neighborhood.
I swear I get two or three of these a day. I have been changing the email subject line each time and sending them back.
I just told Obama to stop complaining about a lack of donations or Romney having more financial support if you are going to preach to teachers about how poverty is not a factor in student learning.
Your lack of funding should not be a problem either if you are truly a great leader and the American people want you.
So, Obama, stop whining. STOP it NOW and get back to work!
Here is the latest request:
Linda —
I can’t do this on my own.
Supporters like you made the difference in 2008. Before tonight’s fundraising deadline, I’m asking for your help again.
We’re on the brink of a milestone American politics has never seen: 10 million grassroots donations in one election year. Help get us there.
Chip in $15 or more today:
Financial resources are not an excuse!
A fundraising deadline is not destiny!
“A great lobbyist in front of every politician!”
I keep replying to these emails saying that I will be using my money to help fight childhood poverty in the United States since the Powers That Be won’t acknowledge the devastating effects of poverty on children’s lives and instead want to blame the teachers. I always get a form email back thanking me for my response. I know they don’t get to Obama, but I always feeling much better after spouting off!
Thanks for the idea Lehrer! I replied to Barak’s email to me with this:
Dear Mr. President,
I have received your daily emails and phone calls – please take me off your lists.
I gave you some money in May, even though I didn’t want to – your phone volunteers are very persuasive!
I voted for you in 2008, and I will again in November.
What choice do I have? The alternative isn’t better, and probably worse overall. Though, I will vote for you reluctantly as I know your policies, and those of your Secretary of Education, like those of your predecessor, are destroying the profession I love and harming the students I teach.
I will instead be using my “$14 or more” to help fight childhood poverty. I will give one of my students a grocery gift card. I wish I had enough money to provide each of my students a healthy dinner at home with their families.
i will do this instead of donating to your campaign as you and many in the Democratic party will not acknowledge the devastating effects of poverty on children’s lives, and then blame teachers and schools.
Our schools need to improve, incompetent teachers need to be fired – as it is in EVERY other profession (including corporations and the financial industry – how is accountability working out there?)
But do not destroy public education because you will not tackle the real problems that face communities – violence, hunger, illness, homelessness…and hopelessness.
I know dealing with these issues is not as easy as a test score, and carrots and sticks. It would probably cost more money. Making education about winners and losers does not have a home in my classroom, and it is not good for our schools.
If our school had a library full of books (or digital readers), access to a full and holistic core curriculum, ability to enjoy art and PE every day, had adequate health care (and didn’t have to miss school for the free clinic), had a clean (and warm) place to live, were able to have a healthy meal, and were able to go home not worrying about having their basic needs met…it would go a long way toward improving student academic performance.
I had “hope,” I believed in “change,” now I’m a pragmatist when dealing with my elected political leaders.
It’s a Sunday night. I’ll go back to grading papers, giving my students formative feedback, and preparing lessons for tomorrow… trying to find one of my students a place to live in since she and her daughter were kicked out of a low income apartment (her income is too high now because of a new job), and secure childcare for another student so he can access an after school arts program. I will be organizing volunteers for a faith based organization trying to solve the issue of homelessness in our community, and will need to figure out which day I can volunteer for our Optimist club’s Christmas tree lot – all proceeds going back to our youth organizations.
I teach at an alternative school that keeps at-risk students and teen parents from dropping out. I see the effect of poverty each day. It’s tough for a teen mom who has been up all night with her own child to perform well on a one-time assessment, let alone graduate on time with the skills necessary to be successful.
As a parent, I am appalled by the 8 days of testing my 6 year old son will endure this year. I have excused him of all testing and data collection that does nothing but line the pockets of Pearson and ETS – The same folks who will be making a LOT of money off of the new Common Core Standards and ancillary products that will be peddled to our schools. Yes, I’ll sign him out of the new Common Core testing too.
If you’d like to talk some time, ring me up. I have many stories to share and ideas about how things could change for the better. Though, teachers are never asked what they think. Politicians and corporate donors get the most airtime – even though most of them have never spent a day in a classroom. I suppose it is because they have deep pockets. Money “talks” right?
Maybe if I had donated 10K or 100K to your Super PAC I could meet you and share my ideas. Perhaps if I started a non-profit that solicits money from corporate donors, then works to privatize schools you would listen to me. But I don’t have the money, and my ethics keep me from using public schools for profit…
Please consider the professional experience of your teachers in the trenches. It’s hard work helping our students achieve their dreams. We are willing to do it even after the bell rings at the end of the day. We teach because we believe in our students, our schools, and America.
I’ll be expecting the requisite form letter…so thank you in advance for listening.
Your constituent,
Ed
My “good friend” Michelle Obama just asked me for money, too. here is my response:
Dear Michelle,
I would love to contribute to your husband’s campaign, but alas, I feel that the president has sold the teachers of the United States down the river with Race to the Top, which has been described as “NCLB on steroids”. Because of RttT, we have narrowed our curriculum, emphasized test scores over learning, turned public schools over to profiteering charlatan “reformers”, and demoralized teachers across the country. When do we address the REAL issue, which is childhood poverty? Why is your husband listening to those who have NO experience teaching (but tons of money), and not to those who have experience teaching? It must be the money. Perhaps your husband should ask his new friends for the money.
Linda,
You did it again. You made me laugh out loud.
Did anyone see this article in the post this morning?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/new-teacher-evaluations-start-to-hurt-students/2012/09/29/f6d1b038-0aa6-11e2-
afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html?wprss=rss_higher-education
Retry on the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/new-teacher-evaluations-start-to-hurt-students/2012/09/29/f6d1b038-0aa6-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html?wprss=rss_higher-education
Although every word in this letter is true, I agree somewhat with MomwithaBrain. In this atmosphere of teacher bashing, it’s imperative for teachers to go on the offensive and come up with their own answers. I too am incredibly disappointed with President Obama and have refused to send money this time around (But I will vote for him – what choice do I have?)
For me, a far better approach would be to stress what we know in regard to the education of impoverished kids and then ask the President to support these measures. We need to remind him that he wanted to be the “data president” but he is in fact ignoring over 50 years of data on education. He is also ignoring what we know from countries such as Canada and Finland. Everything about Canada is so similar to the USA that there should be no reason why we trail them in education. Let’s just find out what they do and copy it.( Oh, I forgot that our country doesn’t do that. Sorry).
So basically I would like us to ask President Obama if he would take the common sense applied to the education of his own daughters and apply it to other children, at least to some degree. He needs to be reminded that other kids also need good health care, two teachers to a room (with one being experienced) low class size and an enriching curriculum devoid of a year of test-prep. We need to remind him of the voluminous research that informs us of the critical importance of the child’s first five years of life. He needs to be reminded that testing experts have told us repeatedly that test scores correlate with the socioeconomic status of the child and not the perfomance of a teacher. To evaluate a teacher fairly other professionals must be personally familiar with the progress of the students in her class. I’m certain he is smart enough to know that this can’t be done with one whole group test!!! ( But Arne Duncan doesn’t seem all that bright and likely does not understand the function and limitations of standardized tests. I’d be willing to bet that he thinks the kids at Sidwell Friends score above the 90th percentile because they have “good” teachers while the kids in Chicago public schools have low scores because they have “bad” teachers).
And of course I’m certain the President knows that our American habit of educating kids by zip code is a national disgrace that has to stop now. Is there something he could do to support low-income housing in ALL communities? Could he stop our American tradition of placing the least experienced teachers in schools located in the poorest neighborhoods? How about open enrollment for all public schools?
About twenty years ago I sent a letter to the Department of Education telling them that we need to have high quality preschool for all impoverished children so as to get them ready for formal education. I received a reply from an “aide” who told me that “everyone” suggests that. If this is the case why don’t we do this one thing to help our least privileged children?
It’s time for parents, professors and teachers to go on the offensive. There is a mountain of research telling us what to do. How about a letter citing that research and asking the President to respond to the data?
(Yes, I’ve done it myself but my writing skills never get more than a form letter in response. A better writer needs to do it.)
Hope you don’t mind of I use some of your response above to help me compose another letter.
Thank you! Please do. We need to work together.
As usual Linda, you are spot on! I can’t imagine anyone stating it more articulately than yourself. If you reprint a letter here, in your graceful and exacting language, complete with specifics and research, I, for one, will be happy to use the info to send a letter to our Pres. I have tried before, but also get a nice form letter in response. Maybe if we bombard him, he may pay attention??? It took me a while to find the link to send him an email. If we all do this, it can’t hurt! I always enjoy your responses.
Thank you for your encouragement, Bridget. I’ll start working on a letter that emphasizes the important research from the past fifty years. You do it too and maybe together, with other teachers, we’ll have an impact.
Diane,
Is it possible to repost Linda’s comment to help us organize others here?
Bridget, Diane (Everyone) how is this:
Dear President Obama:
I want to share my ideas on education, but first let me tell you about my granddaughter Gloria.
Gloria is five years old and in kindergarten. She is doing extremely well, except that she developed Type I diabetes when she was eleven months old. As you know, that means that she is insulin dependent. My son, her father, also has the disease, but he too is doing well and working on projects for the United States military as a civilian electrical engineer.
But her story is not a sad one. You see Gloria, like many American children, is a privileged child. Her parents, who both have doctorates from Stanford, are very attentive and well able to care for her. She has an excellent pediatric endocrinologist in clinic near home, and a nurse at her public school in an affluent community. Thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the school was quick to offer “anything that is needed” to make certain Gloria’s needs are met at school. Also, thanks to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and the generosity of people from around the world, Gloria is able to keep her blood sugar at near-normal levels just as my son does. Both are basically just as healthy as anyone else.
Gloria’s diabetes is not an “excuse;” it is a fact. It means that in order for her to be healthy and well-educated, she must have accommodations that other children don’t require. Because she is privileged, these accommodations come to her easily (but not inexpensively) and that’s why she is doing just as well in school as her older sister and brother.
And that brings me to education for all our children, privileged and underprivileged. We know that many children, like Gloria, have special needs. Some were born with very low birth weight; others are neglected, abused or ill. Some are hungry and some are sad. All these conditions are not “excuses;” they are facts and they all affect learning. However, like Gloria, these children can all be helped so their particular condition does not have to adversely affect their education.
When you first ran for President, you promised to be the “data president” in regard to education. “Finally” I thought, “we’ll begin to acknowledge the mountain of research that we’ve had for the past fifty years.” But instead I was horrified and terribly disappointed to see another round of “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” and at a time when we cannot afford this massive waste of money once again. To put it another way, merit pay, charter schools and test prep will not help Gloria or others like her. When you look at an individual child, this is so easy to see.
Please, please consider the solid research that we do have. Here’s what we know:
Pre-natal health is vitally important to the brain development of the unborn baby;
Verbal interaction with the infant enhances language development, which is closely related to cognition;
Problems with speech, hearing and vision should be detected and treated as early as possible;
A high-quality preschool is especially helpful with impoverished children;
Children who get to kindergarten significantly behind academically often do not catch up;
The education of the parents, especially the mother, has a strong impact on the education of the child;
Standardized tests correlate with the socioeconomic background of the student at every level;
The teacher is the most important variable at the school, but her influence only accounts for about 15-20% of what a child learns during a given year;
Orderly and safe classrooms are essential to learning;
A classroom with 15 or fewer children usually gets much better results;
Children learn a great deal from their peers;
Children of color do better academically when they are in integrated, mainstream schools;
Poor children housed in low-income apartments in middle-class communities do better in the neighborhood schools than they do in highly segregated schools in the “inner-cities.”
Yes, I know it would be prohibitively expensive to give every American child the same opportunities that my little granddaughter has. We all know that is almost impossible to completely level the playing field but surely we can get started instead of pursuing expensive “solutions” that research has told us
repeatedly will not work (such as “merit pay” for teachers. Heck, when I was a teacher I spent half my take-home pay on my students! )
Even now with the recession there are steps we can take that will really help the children who need it so badly. We can
insist that every classroom is safe and orderly;
stop the shameful practice of placing the least experienced teachers in the most challenging schools;
find a way to enforce laws that require low-income homes in every community;
allow open enrollment for all public schools;
combine many city services in neighborhood schools so as to create community centers that would be open all day;
make health care (including mental) and food very accessible to poor children;
make teachers fully professional (like college teachers) so the profession will attract and retain highly skilled people. Intelligent people want to be decision-makers and they want career ladders (as opposed to “merit pay.”);
honor the teachers that we now have. They, along with parents, are the people who put “students first.”
Here are ideas that would cost money but we can start many of them just by saving money on all this foolish testing and charter school fraud:
Find a way to keep pregnant women as healthy and drug free as possible;
Provide high-quality preschool for all poor children;
Give poor mothers the opportunity to have their young children’s development closely monitored;
Provide parent education for poor and unskilled parents;
Provide subsidized housing for communities across the nation so as to expose the children to the dominant culture and “better” (i.e. more affluent) schools;
Lower class size to 1:15 in our poorest schools. It might be best to have two teachers for each classroom, as they do at Sidwell Friends;
Offer summer and after-school enrichment for poor children (museums, camp, trips etc.);
Hire qualified senior citizens to mentor poor kids;
Find a way to show gratitude and respect to the teachers who take on the most challenging assignments so they will stay more than a year or two.
Read the book “The Other Wes Moore.” Would more testing, merit pay and a young teacher from Yale have helped the Wes who ended up in prison for life? What would have helped this child? Those are the things we need to do.
Have I forgotten something? If so, please consult with an EXPERT in education and he or she will gladly help you.
You promised to become the “data president.” Please keep this promise. Thank you.
Where’s the “like” button? Nice job!
Very good…love it! Will you let us know if you get a reply?
I’m not going to send it until I get feedback from others because I want to be sure of my facts. Please send corrections or additions. Thank you.
stop the shameful practice of placing the least experienced teachers in the most challenging schools
LAUSD teachers union opposed this in the Reed case.
While you have a good starting list of “hows,” I don’t see the goals (“whats”), How would your “hows” be prioritized to achieve goals.
There is policy and budget work to be done at multiple levels of government. It’s nontrivial for human services (federal dollars passing through states for services delivered by counties) to coordinate with school districts (one to twenty per county)
We share a collective “duty to rescue” but government structures seem too difficult to effectively navigate, and government policies too susceptible to mischief.
The easiest way to end practices that hurt schoolchildren is to not writhe them into teachers’ contracts. For more, see: Sharail Reed, a minor, by Victoria Wiggins, guardian ad litem; et al., v. State of California, et al. http://www.aclu-sc.org/reed/
When I wrote of placing inexperienced teachers in the most challenging schools, I was referring to the tradition of hiring young people out of college (e.g. people on emergency credentials and Teach for America) and assigning them “inner-city” schools. This is an administrative decision that isn’t affected by the union. I’ll edit my letter to make it clear that urban districts should hire fully qualified, experienced teachers whenever possible. Thank you.
Linda,
You have me in tears. I too have a daughter who was diagnosed with diabetes as an infant. We were lucky to be able to provide for all of her needs. I quit teaching to stay home and care for her for a few years. To be able to volunteer at her school and be available for her medical care until she was old enough to take care of it herself. I returned to teaching high poverty kids when she was ten. Each day at work I was keenly aware of the different worlds that existed between the school my children attended and the school where I worked. Each day I tried my best to give my students the same opportunities as my own two privileged children. I read to my students, introduced them to the wonders of the world, helped them discover things about their own world, taught them to create things and appreciate different music and cultures. I am proud of the way I taught back then. I taught those kids the way my own children were taught.
I don’t think education today is as broken as people are made to believe. We have great, hardworking teachers who care about kids. There aren’t as many bad teachers as people think there are. They aren’t allowed to stay. Most good teachers don’t accept bad teachers in their presence. I hope we can hang in there long enough for this tide to turn.
It saddens me to see how our state and federal government have narrowed the curriculum and created an environment where testing companies control what and how we teach. It is a hard fight to try to support teachers and help them to educate our students in the current environment. The people making decisions at the top know nothing about what great teaching looks like. I feel sorry for students today. I wish I had a time machine to go back in time and stop NCLB from being implemented. 😦
I will write my letter, and then another and another…until the Prez finally gets it!
I had my hands full trying to meet the needs of my special ed students. I loved working with them and would have ended my career in the classroom quite happily. Every day was an education; as a teacher you never stop learning. I don’t need a career ladder, just the time and resources necessary to teach those kids (…and a job). I do agree with teaching being treated as a profession. If I am treated as a professional, opportunities beyond the classroom will be available if I choose to pursue them. I spent far too much time on bureaucratic paperwork proving that I was complying with the 25,000 mandates from every agency in creation. I spent far too much time trying to mold my teaching practice to the latest administrative cure-all.
LInda, I think you’ve covered it all! There really isn’t much more to say, the rest would be merely details after the fact.
Well done Linda. Send it. I just hope the President actually gets it!
You have all inspired me. Here is an email I just sent to Arne Duncan & his Assistant Deputy Secretary for Turnaround Schools:
Dear Assistant Secretary Snyder,
I have the privilege of teaching pre-service English teachers in an M.A. program in the teaching of English. Several days ago, one of my former students wrote the blog post I have included, below. As the Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education with a particular focus on turnaround schools, you are the leader who would most closely understand this teacher’s concerns. Your response to his closing question would be very helpful.
You may respond in the comments section here: http://literaciesandtechnologyblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/open-letter-to-veteran-teacher-for.html Alternatively, I would be happy to directly convey your response to this teacher.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
——
Open Letter to a Veteran Teacher for Advice/Help/A life raft
So . . . I’ve started my first year of teaching here. A quick background: I’m teaching freshmen at a school in ________. The student population is mostly black, a little Hispanic, very few ELLs. Most are on free lunch. It’s a vocational school, so most of my students are boys (I’d say it’s 90-95%), three of my classes are literature, two are grammar, classes are forty minutes long, I have no books to use (and so make a lot of photocopies and write a lot on the white board), zero technology in my classroom (not counting the lights) and very limited access to it elsewhere (unless you count a TV with a VCR and an overhead projector, but I use neither since I have PTSD of teachers wheeling those out in front of the class when I was in school), my classes sizes are 30-34 per and my room is small, which has proved highly prohibitive to any arrangement of the desks that doesn’t constitute rows. So my students are sitting mostly in rows, rows which have such narrow aisles that are otherwise clogged with backpacks and feet that they prove difficult to walk down if I wanted to, say, tap on a student’s desk and ask him to please get his head off the desk. Or if for some reason I didn’t want to constantly have to stand in front of my students and wanted to stand in the back. And so, you know, group work’s hard to do for purely physical reasons if not for all those typical, sometimes confounding and always frustrating reasons stemming from teenagers being pathologically repulsed by having to do any sort of academic work with someone whom they don’t know and on whom they scent the faintest whiff of difference, low-grade coolness, whatever. I taught ESL in _______ in the Peace Corps for two years and taught in school rooms with broken desks and bare shelves and chalkboards, packed to the rafters with students who were so different from myself that the only common ground we seemed to have at times was that we all breathed oxygen and this . . . this hardly feels different.
Additionally, I am constrained by a department-wide curriculum map that I’m not opposed to on principle, but that I have little faith in for a number of reasons. One, it’s extremely uncreative and uninspired. As best as I can tell it’s been copy and pasted together piecemeal from the NYC DOE and Common Core, most apparently in what texts I’m to be teaching my students. And so with little regard for my particular population of students and their background, or what they might respond to, or our (the teachers’) own taste in literature (I can teach texts I’m not enthusiastic about, but I can’t teach boring texts I don’t care for), the creators of this curriculum map have cribbed the canonical suggestions from the DOE and the Common Core and slapped them on there. We are to teach those poems and short stories and novels and teach them together at the same time. (Absurd for reasons I don’t need to elaborate on.) And the suggested end-of-unit projects or papers and even what of the texts we’re to teach are equally dry, bleak and uninspired and clearly test-driven. When I asked how much we can waver from these circumscribed units, I was told not very, but that if I chose to teach a poem or a short story outside the map, I was to get approval from everyone so that we can all be on the same page. (Why, exactly, we need to be on the same page, is beyond me.) And which leads me to the second reason why I have little faith in the curriculum map: I’m almost positive none of the other freshman academy teachers are following it closely. I’ve seen print outs left out on the copy machine, peaked into the rooms and the lessons are almost never centered around texts from the curriculum map. And these deviation from the very teachers who shut me down during the department meeting when I meekly challenged the circumscription of the maps. It’s all for show. I know it, they know it, and no one wants to admit it out loud. And three, the curriculum map isn’t teaching my students what I believe they actually need to be learning. Last week some mentor group came in and wanted to talk to the boys to try and recruit some of them for this after school program. Leaving aside the fact that these guys were young and black and were from the same neighborhoods as my students and I was lamenting the fact that I’ll never be able to speak to my students in the same way these guys do (or connect, I should say connect) (and same goes with most of the other teachers, too, who are mostly older and black or Hispanic and have a certain rapport with the students I simply will never have and while I am mindful of the fact that, yes, I have something else to offer my students all I see when I see them seeing me is them seeing a teacher who is basically from another planet and so cold comfort my own particular “uniqueness” is), I was looking at my lesson on the whiteboard behind them and it was about sonnets or some other such bullshit and I nearly had a break down because I was thinking to myself Jesus Christ this is not what my students need. It does not matter that they learn what the “rules” are for what makes a sonnet. Even further, it doesn’t really matter that they’re able to identify what the “theme” (yuck) of the sonnet is. Sure, there are skills associated with finding those things out that help my students academically, but so many of them seem to need so much more help in other non-academic areas (focusing, getting organized, staying on top of the work) that teaching them what a Petrarchan sonnet is feels absolutely ridiculous. And which is not to say that my students are throwing desks at the window and standing up and telling me to suck their dick and eating nachos in class, because they are all very nice and seem to like me and respect me and want to do well, and so it’s not like I’m working with the worst of the worst here, but focus and attention and being organized and actually doing the work are daily mountains to climb nevertheless. And so I bring up the “sonnet” thing merely to highlight how in yet another way how constraining the curriculum map is because if it were up to me, I’d have designed an entirely different poetry unit that would have engaged them (I believe) on a deeper, more important, more relevant way that didn’t just answer the what and the how of the literature, but of the why. (Though a current professor eased my mind by wisely offering the counter argument to this which was that “the WHAT is important foundationally, and/or the WHAT develops certain capacities and habits that are missed by an exclusive focus on the WHY or even the HOW. And might it be the case that the WHY is lovely for readers who have certain luxuries to begin with (such as time and resources outside of school), but that other readers (including the more left-brained) really can benefit from a focus on the WHAT?” which helps. And in fact I did, but was told I couldn’t use it. So.
As a result of all this–what I feel is a bad curriculum, little pedagogical autonomy, zero access to digital technologies, overcrowded classroom, little physical space–I feel very strongly that I am failing. Class management has become an issue, most especially for one class (if not two), and while that may have to do with other factors, I also think it has to do with how little I am able to engage them and vary the instruction. I’m finding myself standing in front of the class for almost the entire period, either lecturing or calming every one down because it’s so so so difficult to get them to focus. A lecture that I imagined would run 5 minutes, with an reinforcing group exercise I imagined would take also five minutes ends up taking the entire class. Group work has proved fruitless. I find it impossible to go around and make sure everyone’s working or everyone’s understood the concept simply because most of my time when I send them off to do individual work) is consumed with a few students who are talking or refusing to do work. I do not want to be the center of my classroom. The only time I have success with that is when they do journaling (which they’re better at some days than others; I’ve been experimenting with prompts) or independent reading, but that’s new, and I’m only using it in my grammar classes. I don’t want to result to simply handing out worksheets and asking the students to do them individually, but I don’t know what else to do.
And so . . . the big question for you, the veteran teacher, and one with a lot of good ideas and a lot of good advice . . . what do I do? Given what I have and where I am, what in the goddamned hell do I do?
I love these letters. The ones by teachers are especially compelling. There are amazing people participating in this blog. I think a good number of commenters here are voting for Obama, despite him being dead wrong on education. I think most of us here want him to win. I also think that there is zero chance that he will make any policy moves between now and the election! I think that once he wins (which I hope he does), we should collectively identify a week during which we are sending these letters to the white house, to our congressmen and senators, and to our newspapers, saying that this is the change we hope for during the second term. I read some of these letters and am moved almost to tears – these letters should be in the New York Times and our local papers. We should coordinate it though so we make a bigger impact. Dr. Ravitch, maybe you could pick a week for this!
This is quite pathetic. The fact that this guy is blaming Obama for any of the educational problems in the poor areas is ridiculous. He has changed a lot of things for Americans and it starts with the fact that kids that never cared to listen to Clinton, because mommy and daddy paid for everything took care of everything finally care if they have a job or not.
The Bush administration is and always will be the poorer areas get poorer and his students end up in prison. They created the perfect virus called the NCLB and it is that knife in his back; if he is even a teacher at all. An educated person would understand that its a gun and an educator would never forget that its being held to his head; by the same republicans that would blow Obama’s family away if he ever made education fair for Hispanics.
It is funny so much recollection of Lincoln is in the air this year. Ever hear of foreshadowing?
So anyone that wasn’t able to read through the quote Viralness of this eloquent piece was exactly the kind of person that was meant to read it. I assume the job creators will prove to have been the perfect education providers in 2014 as well.
Let’s create more students with fluency in no languages. They tote guns the best!
Reblogged this on patthaleblog and commented:
NCLB has caused more damage, the longer it has been in place. I have no doubt that the testing emphasis on discrete skills, such as reading comprehension, taught and tested without meaningful materials has made students less worldly and less knowledgeable.