Laurel Sturt was a fashion designer who decided to give up her career and become a Teaching Fellow. She was motivated by a desire to help children and make a difference, as most teachers are.
In an interview in the Atlantic, she explains what happened to her. Her experience is not unique, but it is important that it appears in a mainstream publication.
Laurel Sturt was a 46-year-old fashion designer in New York City whose career trajectory took an unlikely shift one day on the subway. A self-proclaimed social activist, Sturt noticed an ad for a Teaching Fellows program. Then and there, she decided to quit her job in fashion design and shift her focus to her real passion: helping others. She enrolled in the two-year program and was assigned to teach at an elementary school in a high-poverty neighborhood near the South Bronx.
She wanted to be a social activist but she arrived as No Child Left Behind and Mayor Bloomberg’s similar program took effect. This is how she described what she saw:
I saw a lot of problems with all the testing, with all the slogans everywhere, as if you were in North Korea or something. It was very strange. … It was all about achievement through test scores. I resented the fact that we were test-prepping them all the time and we couldn’t give them a rich, authentic education.
And she learned the reason for the “achievement gap” or “opportunity gap”:
It was a very poor neighborhood with a lot of English-language learners who knew little or no English. With poverty comes this condition called Toxic Stress. It explains why the children were so difficult to handle, needy, and so behind in learning. When your dad is in prison or your mom is on drugs, or your mom drank alcohol when you were a fetus, if you didn’t sleep the night before because you were allowed to play video games all night, or maybe there was a shooting, your cognitive ability is harmed. It rewires their brain so they’re unable to employ working memory, which is what you use when you’re learning. We’re charged with being the parents of these kids, being the friends, the mentors. Teachers are given all these social responsibility towards children that aren’t ours. It’s a failure of the system to address the poverty that creates the achievement gap.
Having been enticed by the subway ads to make a difference, she signed up, she did her best, but she eventually left teaching. Why?
I saw that no matter what I wanted for the kids, it wasn’t going to happen. The system purported to be supporting students just wasn’t there. They need remediation, tiny class sizes, one-on-one attention—they need parenting, basically. Their parents are affected by the same Toxic Stress that they are, and it repeats itself in a cycle from parent to child. In America, the wealthiest school is going to get ten times more funding than the lowest one. For every dollar my school was getting, one in the suburbs was getting ten dollars. That’s huge. The kids come in disadvantaged, and they’re subjected to this disadvantaged school. My school was completely third-world. And through it all, it completely negated your life outside school. It was so exhausting. To teach anyway means to be giving, to deliver something. You’re giving out, giving out, giving out. And when you come up against these natural obstructions because of poverty, and then the lack of support from the administration, it’s just too much.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Someone ought to have told this lazy teacher — *NO* EXCUSES! If she had been teaching with her hair on fire, she would have made a difference, but instead she chose to quit on her students. For shame!
I’m sorry but I don’t get this. Please tell me you are not serious about this comment. Sarcasm?
I think that is in reference to Michelle Rhee…total sarcasm.
But can you PROVE it wrong?
Yeah, sarcasm, but… Sometimes I do think about how much easier it would be to just switch over to the dark side. It’s a lot easier to do superficial, intentionally misleading research with lots of money being thrown at you than it is to have to slog through all of the facts without any cash supporting you (and a ton supporting the other side).
Honestly, isn’t jumping on to the corporate reform bandwagon just the intelligent thing to do? If you remove morality from the equation and follow the path of greed and laziness, it seems like a no-brainer.
I start to think this way even more when I witness co-workers who are willfully ignorant about what is happening in education on the national stage. In a way, don’t they DESERVE what’s coming?
If you do very well for yourself by deceiving others, isn’t it really the fault of the people who allowed themselves to be deceived?
I wonder how far you really have to go to start thinking like Duncan, Deasy, and the rest.
Well said werebat73 @ 12:27!
Quite correct about trying to live a virtuous life versus one of avaricious expediency.
Thought this was interesting:
“Contrary to what you might read, education reformers are not all wealthy philanthropists. They are not pushing a corporate agenda to dismantle public education. They do not want to turn students and teachers into test-obsessed automatons. They are not anti-teacher.
If anything, what they are is way too quiet. Education reformers have allowed a small group of people to control the debates and misrepresent their views and experiences.”
I wonder if it’s too late for them to distance themselves from the “reform movement” and regain credibility.
http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2022364375_kimberlymitchellopededucationreform01xml.html
I share many of your opinions on what is needed in education, however, the unfortunate part of this reform movement is that while there may be minority group like yourself who have very good intentions, it appears that the majority of people who are pushing reform are motivated by greed and politics, and they have no clue about what is really needed or they have lost touch with the original agenda – I don’t know if they even really care. They have put people in a position of power to carry out their ideas who are mean spirited and acting in very subjective ways. I think it is true that only the best teachers need to be kept in the classroom. Unfortunately, that’s not really happening most of the time. Teachers are being harassed and abused. You can tell an employee that they are not cut out for the job, but you can also do it and maintain the dignity of the person. What is happening today in many of these buildings is so amazingly wrong!! What I have witnessed first hand is select teachers being deliberately set up to fail. I have watched them fall apart over time because of the horrible schedules they have been given that were meant to break their spirits, then they received no consistent support in dealing with the multitude of issues they face in their classrooms. Finally, they are completely blamed for all of the failures. Curiously, this group of harassed teachers are disproportionately your more experienced and higher paid teachers. It’s become an insane and toxic environment – I believe even subversive on the part of administrators and higher ups. All this in the name of reform. So while you may have sincere intentions, it appears the people running your show do not.
“I think it is true that only the best teachers need to be kept in the classroom. Unfortunately, that’s not really happening most of the time.”
No, most of the time that “really is what is happening” in most schools and most districts in this country. Perhaps where you are there is such a toxic environment. Have good teachers been run out, no doubt. But the vast majority that make it through five years stick around.
Arne Duncan @arneduncan 17h
The bad news from #OECDPISA: US is running in place while other countries lap us. Good news: We’re laying the right foundation to improve.
How does he know we’re “laying the right foundation” to improve? Based on what? He’s surrounded himself with people who agree with his narrow version of “reform”. Would they admit it if they discovered they weren’t “laying the right foundation”? What would mean they HAD “improved”? Higher test scores, right?
Sometimes it’s good to run in place so that one doesn’t run off the edge of the cliff.
Which is where the Dunkster and his minions are running towards.
And the sooner they get there, the sooner the rest of us can start picking up the pieces.
“I saw that no matter what I wanted for the kids, it wasn’t going to happen. The system purported to be supporting students just wasn’t there.”
AMEN! The greater problem seems to be, we just can’t accept the system is broken and
has NEVER worked as claimed.
The preservation of “Privilege” requires the exercise of power, plain and simple.
Is the Social Order, or distribution of assets, (Income distribution-Poverty), a feature
of “Democracy”, IF Democracy relies on Equality, Fairness, and TRUTH, to exist?
Public Ed was established by POWER, to function as the “Cornerstone” of Democracy,
to create and maintain a culture.
Just as the Concrete evidence of income inequality, the lack of fairness, the lack of
truth in our government, clashes with those in a make believe world, so goes the
erosion of trust.
Quibble about testing and who has the cognitive abilities, and IGNORE the question.
Was the consciousness raised by Public Pedagogy, intended to provide equality,
fairness, or truth to a system lacking equality, fairness, or truth?
Middle school English teacher Lynnie Vessels also laments the impact of testing on her teaching, writing “I used to be a great teacher. Then I became a good teacher. Last year I wondered who I was as a teacher.” Her article “Now I’m Just a Teacher That I Used to Know” is here: http://www.veanea.org/home/2252.htm
What a moving account of her journey. And what a loss for the kids – to have such a passionate, creative teacher so reduced. Thank you for the link.
This is so true. The problem is that our people are poor and have no services. And what is the remedy proposed by our corporate elite? Turn the schools over to the military-industrial-media complex: the ones who caused the problem in the first place through their refusal to pay their share of taxes or control military spending.
The teacher featured by the posting, Laurel Sturt, comments at one point: “I saw a lot of problems with all the testing, with all the slogans everywhere, as if you were in North Korea or something. It was very strange. …”
Robert D. Shepherd: strange that “education reform” regimes resemble a Stalinist authoritarian holdover from the Cold War?
I await your reaction.
😎
I had been saying we were seeing the “Sovietization” of public education what with “Five Year” plans with outlandish “goals” that everyone knew couldn’t be met. But as long as one provided all the proper paperwork and reports, they were left alone.
Now I call it the McDonaldization of public education where the goal is to provide a “standardized” education on the cheap while tooting how great that standardized McNuggetized education is.
The big mistake this woman made was going into teaching midlife given the rampant age discrimination in the field.
You never really believe it until it happens to you. And then, to find out the laws against age discrimination are useless…somebody got political points for standing up for the older constituents. BS!
“They need remediation, tiny class sizes, one-on-one attention…”
I teach in a school where we have all this: class sizes average about a dozen students, lots of para-professionals, lots of money to spend on texts, technology, teachers and extracurricular programs. We Still can’t get it done. Learning rates are low, and the students who do manage to graduate generally are ill-prepared for work or further education. How can it be that with seemingly every advantage educators clamor for we are beset with these problems?
Administration. Leadership. Clock-watchers counting the minutes to the end of the day, the days till the end of the year, the years till retirement. Reform packages have all but been handed to them, and yet they persist in yesterday’s top-down model, presumably because that’s the easiest way to do things in the short term and in their leadership certification programs that’s what they were taught to do. The management philosophy is nothing but short-term: the fire in front of me.
But, uh, yes. Ms. Sturt’s example is instructive. A fairly ubiquitous one in American K – 12 education.
What do you think administrators need to do in order to turn this around? In my experience, most administrators (not to their fault) spend the school day putting out fires; just trying to keep the lid on the building. If they assume a far different role as you suggest, who keeps the lid on? who puts out tjhe fires?
Your expectations for what can be achieived in most schools may sinmply be too high; too unrealistic.
Your thoughts?
School leadership preparation programs in colleges teach people about a wide variety of different management models, including those in business. Top-down is what has been coming from Broad, DC and state politicians.
I’ve been teaching kids with severe emotional problems for about 20 years. The standard burnout time is usually 5 years, tops. If you want to last longer, you need to have an understanding of where the kids are coming from, a fair and consistent sense of discipline that they will understand and respect, and you can’t take what they say personally. No matter how many times they curse you, your mother, and family out, day in and day out. And you have to be a good mediator because there are a lot of fights.
What makes it especially difficult, nowadays, is that the academic demands placed on the teacher are out of touch with the realities being faced in the classroom. We used to have lots of workshops focused strictly on behavior and socialization problems. Anger management, movement/theater/music in the classroom workshops. The schedule was geared towards this and teachers were allowed flexibility because the principals were experienced educators who understood the student population and were given a strong degree of autonomy.
But the past decade + has seen a sharp increase in academic demands that have taken the time away from those programs. Principals don’t have the freedom of choice that they used to have and, as a result, either do the teachers. Regarding all the programs we used for behavior issues: at first we were told to “fit them in somewhere”. Now they don’t even bother offering that. You either get them smarter or you and/or your school are done.
The writer of this post saw this first hand. And she’s right: it’s exhausting work. Hard enough to work with the kids. Then add the pressure to “produce!!!!” and it’s off the charts.
Anyone who thinks that talk like this is a copout is completely out of touch with reality.
Regarding putting the best teachers in the toughest neighborhoods/schools. I think this looks good on paper, but there are a couple of things to consider:
1) “Best” must include strong behavior management skills. Without them, you are toast.
2) “Best” must allow remediation programs in all subject areas. No more 5th grade tests for kids who are reading at a first grade level. Imagine working your tail off all year and proudly getting up to beginning 2nd grade and then failing test after test after test as the end of the year drew closer. “Coddling”. Get a grip, Duncan. You don’t have a clue.
3) Don’t shortchange the needs of the kids who are attending schools that are known for strong academics. We need “the best” teachers there, too.