Peter Greene, who teaches high school English in Pennsylvania, here reviews the Twitter outburst with the hash tag #evaluatethat.
The campaign on Twitter began as a way to point out that teachers do far more important things for students than get measured on standardized tests. And it grew.
Greene points out that people in many occupations go beyond their job descriptions.
So what is the point of #evaluatethat?
He writes:
“It goes back to what’s wrong with “college and career ready.” Because it is not enough to be good at your job. You need to be good at life. You need to be good at being a human in this world, and that is so much more than a job.
“I’ve maintained for years that teaching is a kind of guerilla warfare, that many of us are fighting in the underground, doing what we can in spite of the authorities. Under the current wave of reformy stuff, this is more true than ever. Education is occupied territory, and we are members of the resistance, not powerful enough to directly oppose the forces that have taken control of our home. Instead, we save who we can when we can, chip away at the occupiers, and work toward the day when we can send them packing.
“In the meantime, we have to do what we can to stay in contact with the rest of the underground and remind ourselves what we represent, what we fight for. I don’t think #evaluatethat will change much. I think people who are imagining that occupiers will slap their heads and say, “Yes, yes, I’ve been so blind” are kidding themselves. But for the rest of us, knowing that we are not alone, that other people get it, that other people are also standing up for what is best and brightest, that we are not crazy for thinking that we are in a classroom to help nurture and grow real human people and not to just collect data, read a script and do some test prep– I think knowing that is golden. Evaluate that, indeed.”

” But for the rest of us, knowing that we are not alone, that other people get it, that other people are also standing up for what is best and brightest, that we are not crazy for thinking that we are in a classroom to help nurture and grow real human people and not to just collect data, read a script and do some test prep– I think knowing that is golden. Evaluate that, indeed.”
this has been important to me; the “colleagues” I interact with do not share the values that we share in these groups and through Bats; yesterday a colleague directed me to read Michelle Rhee; another colleague attacked teachers unions. I tried to rebut what I could. Are people aware that there is a factional split between the colleges (arts and sciences faculty) and the teachers colleges? It was pointed out to me yesterday and I think the arts and sciences faculty are blaming the teacher training faculty for the perceived failure of public schools. This battle is wider and broader than I envisioned.
The friend who spoke against teacher unions I tried to rebut with “without unions there would be no middle class” and, “we would still need due process” … even if we didn’t have something called a “union”
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The biggest difference between teaching and other professions is that other professions do not have 1/2 the county (mainly Republicans and DINOs) using the considerable power of the government as a way to undermine and destroy every effort every day.
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College and career ready…
If at first you don’t succeed, redifine success.
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College (debt) and (poverty wage) career ready…
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You’re right there Michael!
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The power of #evaluatethat isn’t that it will change the “occupiers” (pseudo reformers) minds. I agree with Peter, they won’t slap their foreheads and say “Oh yeah.” The potential power of #evaluatethat is if it could get in the public arena: parents, community groups, etc., to CHANGE THE NARRATIVE that the Michelle Rhee’s and her ilk put out there. What parent or community member doesn’t have an experience with a teacher that has been described in the many stories on the BAT page? Who doesn’t know a teacher who’s gone over and above their job description?
A colleague and I started Repairs Not IPads Facebook page which has gotten a lot of media attention here in LA. The potential power of it is that it engages the community (who were appalled at the conditions of schools and who have their own experience with delapidated schools). It has the potential to possibly change the narrative of the iPad for every student conversation to talking about priorizing students’ basic needs.
I hope #evaluatethat continues and grows.
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CHANGE THE NARRATIVE is right. Put it on a tee shirt. Reflect it back at them. Be their mirror. I’ll just bet they can’t stand the sight.
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I found your page yesterday and shared it. We need something like it in Philadelphia. We don’t have the IPad problems, but terrible conditions and lack of resources abound. Great idea!
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On my bad days ( here in LA) I call it the French resistance. On a god day I call it the Margaret Meade society.
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“we are not crazy for thinking that we are in a classroom to help nurture and grow real human people and not to just collect data, read a script and do some test prep– I think knowing that is golden. Evaluate that, indeed.”
#evaluatethat!!!!!!!!!!
The present day evaluations are of NO HUMAN VALUE
Love this post!!
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In NC…you can not get the highest evaluation unless you teach Teachers..??????
You know…those workshops whose evaluations are in the negative..95% are Boring and Useless ……I have been to at least 2 that were great…..
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Duane, this post is for you. There are people who continue to teach in spite of the hoops they are required to jump through. It is a rare individual in any profession who gets to do things his/her way without oversight and concomitant restraints.
‘“I’ve maintained for years that teaching is a kind of guerilla warfare, that many of us are fighting in the underground, doing what we can in spite of the authorities.’
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Well, and maybe the silver lining to all of the recent storm and surge of reform is that we can finally say what is truly not making any sense in a way that we never could before. It is true I have always assumed that as a public school teacher I have to show evaluators what they want to see, and then add on to the lessons what I know needs to be there (based on experience having been a kid in music classes and having earned a living as a musician).
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I was nurtured in a progressive school district, so I was totally unprepared for administrators who were wedded to the latest educational fad. Silly me, I thought they wanted to see me teach not demonstrate the latest trick.
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Paolo Freire, 1968 – “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”
Neil Postman, 1969 – “Teaching as a Subversive Activity”
Two reasons why old teachers are a threat to rheephorm.
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College and career ready…
If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success as, we are in a classroom to help nurture and grow real human people. “Real human people” of the “Nurtured” variety compared
to what???
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When our 10 year old experienced the anticipated drop in his scores (first year of CCSS), we told him not to worry, that this did not determine where he would go to college. And he said, “but I thought these tests show if I’m college and career ready.” And that is when I wrote a letter to Raleigh saying, “please stop!” Quit using propaganda to justify your actions. A 10 year old does not need to be hearing the language of “college and career ready” as his sole purpose for going to school.
I caught their attention. I now serve on a Parent Advisory Board for the state.
So if you are a parent in NC, tell me what you think.
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Fabulous! I am glad to have you representing us!
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Joanna Best: you have hit on a critical reason why this blog and others like it are so important.
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” [Frederick Douglass]
You cannot create and sustain a two-tiered education system unless you get the consent, however forced and artificial, of the vast majority. The leading charterites/privatizers and their edubully enablers and accountabully underlings massage numbers, torture stats and abandon good sense, decency and logic in order to get the general public to “voluntarily” agree to an inequitable and unequal education system.
What they mandate for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN is startlingly different from what they ensure for THEIR OWN CHILDREN.
Just go to these four websites:
Link [think Michelle Rhee]: http://www.harpethhall.org
Link [think Bill Gates]: http://www.lakesideschool.org
Link [think Rahm Emanuel]: http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu
Link [think Chris Christie]: http://www.delbarton.org
I also refer you to a recent posting by Jersey Jazzman—
Link: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/01/yes-reformers-we-should-talk-about-your.html
Frederick Douglass also said:
“I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”
Knowledge. Action. Freedom.
You set a good example for your son.
😎
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I tweeted the web sites. No Common Core here. We need to Go Away. It’s not our business, remember?
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KTA–but with that consent comes enslavement of the master, huh? The master is really the slave because they are beholden to perpetuating their mastery, which relies on the submission of the enslaved.
(A roar of scary monstrous laughter . . .like the kind my father would gust forth with when telling us a somewhat creepy and suspenseful bedtime story—and we would hide our faces in the pillow and wait for the story to resolve with the victory of kindness!!! And indeed it always did. And then he would kiss us good night and we would sleep in the comfort of the knowledge that this world is a wonderful place in which to live).
This too shall pass.
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I think the “College and Career Ready” propaganda I have been hearing out of NC’s DPI indicates that reformers were successful in making public schools feel insecure about their merits. Public school has always been about more than “college and career ready;” heck, we hosted integration in a way no other institution did. The public school experience represents so much more than just college and career ready, and yet in a defensive reflex and with the carrot of Race to the Top dangled in front, this limited and narrow bandwagon was grabbed as if to say, “we do too have rigor!”
It reminds me of the situations one might see when a woman who has numerous wonderful attributes becomes insecure because she isn’t super model caliber. . .and suddenly she suppresses what she did have going on that was attractive and admirable to suddenly attain plastic surgery and expensive clothing and accessories. . .like in THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA. Our DPI has been on this garden path and it has to stop. We had so much going for us (public schools) that has been forgotten for this narrow view.
That’s what I think, anyway.
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They’ve also limited the understanding of using technology in teaching (looking only to see if Smartboards, Ipads and Ladybug Document Cameras are being used, as part of teacher evals). The evals are inconsistent and not reliable methods for evaluating in all cases (especially with the test score factor, as has been demonstrated many times in blog posts). The terminology of 21st Century skills has also contributed to the limited focus, while trying to say “hey. . .see we can keep up! We’re modern!”
It is becoming the tail wagging the dog.
tech·nol·o·gy [tek-nol-uh-jee]
noun
1.
the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science.
2.
the terminology of an art, science, etc.; technical nomenclature.
3.
a scientific or industrial process, invention, method, or the like.
4.
the sum of the ways in which social groups provide themselves with the material objects of their civilization.
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Diane,
I am a huge Peter Greene fan and liked this post a lot. Many of his blog entries are insightful, humorous and great food for the soul. I read pretty much everything he writes. (Also I read everything you write and Mercedes too). But one piece he wrote recently has really been haunting me and making me really think about what is important and not. You may have read it already and not had the same reaction I did but I do recommend this highly to as many of you as possible. Thanks for introducing me and others to Peter.
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/02/if-not-for-those-darn-kids.html
( also read the CCSS training he had to sit through too- that was pretty funny)
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As one who agrees with or was provoked by almost every post/comment here, that we would do better to say that Peter teaches English to high school students rather than high school English. I think he makes the point that teaching and learning and human interaction are the essential to education so to make the subject matter rather than the process in the center negates what he has to say. As a middle school teacher and teacher educator I know who I teach is more important than what I teach in terms of any long term learning.
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