Earlier this year I saw an article that was so good that I saved it, thinking that some day I would have a chance to write about it. It was a blog by a teacher named Katie Osgood, who teaches students with disabilities in a psychiatric hospital. Her insights were so keen, her description of her students so moving, that I knew that I had to write about this article.
Ms. Katie (as she calls herself) described what her students need. Not charter schools, not green TFA teachers, not teachers pushing their students for higher test scores.
What her students need are “caring, committed, EXPERIENCED teachers.”
They need stability.
They need ‘a village.’
They need extra resources.
They need to have their basic needs met.
They need creativity and flexibility.
They need strong peer groups.
What they don’t need is to have policymakers prattling that “poverty doesn’t matter.”
Ms. Katie’s eloquent plea for common-sense solutions stands in stark contrast to today’s education deform policies. She might have just as well have been writing about all the children in the Chicago public schools, or for that matter, students in every school.
She comes up with different answers than policymakers because she is interested in the children she teaches; our policymakers care only about their test scores. We mustn’t forget that children are, above all, getting ready for global competition. Except that they are not. They are children trying to grow up in a cold society. Let them be children. Attend to their needs. Help them become healthy.
I remembered this article last night when I read another blog by Ms. Katie. (Thank you, Twitter.) She had been thinking of teaching in the Chicago public schools, but decided that it was not possible. It was not possible because Mayor Rahm Emanuel is pursuing policies that will harm the children she wants to help. A brief quote:
“I refuse to teach in a school which your appointed Board purposefully starves in order to justify closure and privatization. I cannot watch the savage inequalities of school funding play out in children’s lives.
“I refuse to administer standardized tests to children with special needs over and over and over again. I did that once in a school, and I consider it immoral forcing a child who is having panic attacks, crying, flipping desks in frustration to take a test far above the level we know that child is currently learning. And all for the purpose of judging, sorting, and punishing.
“I refuse to teach the scripted curriculum forced on your teachers. My students need creative, responsive, individualized instruction. Not canned test-prep.
http://mskatiesramblings.blogspot.com/2012/04/dear-mr-mayor-why-i-will-not-teach-in.html
As I read Ms. Katie, I wonder why the powerful organizations that sponsor symposia and conferences about how to solve the problems of education seldom invite teachers like her. Instead, they stack their conferences with high-tech gurus, charter school advocates, and business leaders. A few days ago, I was invited to participate in a New York Times-sponsored event to discuss the teacher quality problem. There were no teachers (as yet) invited to speak. I declined. They need Ms. Katie.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“I refuse to be a part of the criminalization of my students, especially the African-American young men I work with.” This resonates with me, as a New York City public school teacher, where suspensions have been on the rise under Bloomberg’s reign. During my tenure at a Bronx title one school, students had to pass through metal detectors every day, and endure taunts from the NYPD which is very much present in our school halls. For more about this “pipeline to prison” system, go to:
http://www.nyclu.org/issues/youth-and-student-rights/school-prison-pipeline
Ms. Katie, you’ll be missed by the Chicago schools.
Ms. Ravitch, I would not hold my breath waiting for an actual teacher, that just teaches any sort of regular class. Expect to see some TFA ones that are working in places that get top hand pick their students and be held up as an example of the great work TFA does, and why can’t those “other” teachers do that? Or maybe one of those E4E (NYC teachers know who that “group” is) teachers to talk about the damage seniority has done to the teaching profession. No one to ask the question to all of these reformers and educrats, after I have contacted the parents, sometimes on more than one occasion, and the parents just says “I will talk to my child”, and the behavior does not change, then what am I supposed to do?
Chicago is not just losing Ms. Katie , they are losing LOTS of both veteran and younger teachers. The toxic policy of closing and turning around schools has made every teacher question WHERE they teach … high poverty schools in struggling neighborhoods will NOT get the best teachers, who worry about putting 5-10 years into a school only to end up on the turnaround list or closed, and then having to fight for a job. The flight to the “better” schools is already on its way, adding to the “starvation” of neighborhood schools as Ms. Katie puts it.
The veteran teachers at struggling schools know what their schools need to succeed. Unfortunately, they will no longer be there in the very near future.