Ty Alper is a law professor at The University of California in Berkeley, one of the nation’s most prestigious law schools. He is running for school board in Berkeley. As he thought about the challenges of teaching today, he realized that his child’s kindergarten teacher was teaching some of the same skills he was teaching:
“Brook Pessin-Whedbee teaches five-year-olds at Rosa Parks. I teach law students in their mid-20s. As a kindergarten teacher, Brook teaches her students how to collaborate in the telling of stories, so they develop not only oral language and story writing skills but also the ability to form partnerships and work together. As a clinical law professor training and supervising law students in the complex representation of clients facing the death penalty, I teach my students how to collaborate in the telling of stories — stories of our clients’ lives, of unfair trials, of prosecutorial misconduct, etc. Brook and I have the same goals: to improve our students’ oral and written skills, and to teach them what it means to work productively as part of a team.”
He doesn’t think that the work they do can be measured by standardized tests. He is right.
Ty is a graduate of the public schools in Berkeley, so is his wife. Both his parents worked in public schools.
I bet he would be a great addition to the Berkeley school board.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’d also bet the “Deformers” will have ahard time debating their points that are unsubstantiated. I can hear it now. Cite your peer reviewed sources please.
Well, for one thing, they are both called to highered speech …
The conception of teaching today is very different today from what it was in the past. At one time the pedagogues were only going to teach you the Rule of Three and how to spell “cat”. Today they are going to transform your soul.
I wonder if this has something to do with the decline in organized religion. Perhaps today the kind of person you would have become a preacher a century ago now becomes a school teacher. School teaching may be the principal outlet today for megalomanical charisma.
The profession is actually trying to impart upon our students a love of learning about self, others and the world. We are trying to make the learning experience the reward and driving force for continued learning- not the data, not the grade, not the test, not the title, not the degree (all that is secondary). . Learning without love, empathy, compassion or connectedness serves no purpose in the long term. This is not new in our profession. It is ancient, in fact.
Trying to explain concepts like “empathy” and “love of learning” to Jim is like trying to explain the color red to a blind person.
Jim: You are in rare form today. Bash both teachers and religion in the same post. Please stop.
I can’t imagine how you got that from this post.
As a mathematics teacher, I’m glad we no longer teach the Rule of Three. Calculators can do simple arithmetic; what they can’t do, and what our kids need to be able to do, is to understand the mathematics they’re using, so they can apply it to new situations, and recognize when it’s being misused. This isn’t “transforming your soul,” but teaching the real nature of mathematics. And this is true in other subjects as well: teach not just “that,” or even just “how,” but also “why.”
Politics is a good outlet for megalomaniacal charisma but there are a lot fewer positions than in teaching.
Jimbo,
No sé que contestarte sin usar palabras cochinas las cuales que se phohiben en este sitio. Tienes mucho que aprender en esta vida todavía.
We need Ty Alpert’s leadership on the Berkeley school board!
The common core and punitive environment it has created in the Berkeley public schools is becoming a nightmare for children and their families. When my son entered public kindergarten here three years ago, he was a happy enthusiastic learner. He was on the path to independence and had a wonderful positive outlook that sparkled. Now, after three years and in 2nd grade at LeConte Elementary, he has signs of depression and anxiety. He worries about making mistakes and has become withdrawn. After spending all day sitting in a desk with a rather stern teacher who yells a lot and functions more like a manager than a teacher, he comes home to do an hour of boring math homework with “common core” logo at the bottom, then goes to tutoring for another hour or so. Since he is in Spanish emersion, he needed to give up his music and sports after school for tutoring, which we are told “every” student at LeConte grade 2 and up needs to have private tutoring (which is costly). His typical days have become boring drudgery – all work and no play. When talking with other parents who also realize our children are losing their creativity and imagination and becoming more withdrawn and depressed, we don’t have to look too far to see the cause. We should not have to take our children out of public schools in Berkeley and pay for private schools in order to support our children’s social and emotional needs. The schools need to be reminded that it is the environment that shapes behavior, and when a child has little joy in learning, little social and emotional connections and support, and little physical play and activity, and age inappropriate boring work, there is a problem. We must stop the insanity that is becoming pervasive in Berkeley schools. California used to be a state that prided itself on people who would stand up, even it that meant civil disobedience? What happened? What has caused Berkeley parents and community members to become submissive to outrageous common core policy and teacher stress that has created an environment of abuse for their children?
Ty Alpert has my support, and I will happily volunteer as a campaign worker for his election.
Amy – your post makes me curious about public schools in Berkeley. Was the Spanish immersion your choice– a magnet school? Or was it forced on you by the neighborhood school? I don’t understand the connection between Spanish immersion and tutoring– & regardless, how can a public school in fairness exert pressure on parents to hire outside tutoring? Sounds like discrimination against those at the lower-income end. I’m assuming the music & sports you refer to would have been after school, paid by you. I get music (perhaps instrument lessons, before they’re available in public school). But re: sports, doesn’t your community have a rec dept w/free or low-cost weekend sports for little ones?
I totally get the depressive effect of test-prep, it’s infiltrating the grade schools everywhere thanks to common core. But I suggest you dig your heels in on 1-hr math homework for 2nd grade. I am ashamed I let my eldest’s 2nd grade teacher bully me into it. It took a therapist (for me!) to ‘stand my ground’ w/the younger 2. I would mark the paper ’30 mins spent on this’ & let him go. Gradually, over the yrs, teachers learned that I would not be bullied into supporting their anxious demands that kids prop up their agendas w/hrs & mountains of pprwk. They soon figured out better ways to teach my kids.
Sad to tell you Freelancer, this Berkeley report mirrors what is going on in LA also. A very good public school in WLA (and another in Santa Monica) has parents from out of the district clammering to get their children placed there. There is a long waiting list of applicants for this public school where, at a new prospective parents meeting, the principal explained that parents were to understand the expectations of the school as follows:
1, Each parent was responsible for at least a $3,000 donation to the PTO.
2. That the ‘after school’, teacher run, program would cost another $4,000.
3. That Common Core is the curriculum…and that it is wonderful.
$7,000 plus additional tax payments as a starting point for a place in public school!
Yes, this does create a two tier public education system. Well to do kids get choice, poverty level kids do not. Seems that charters can be sold as a panacea to the inner city families with this kind of educational lack of fairness of opportunity.
Most public schools in California now have 501c3 PTOs to add to the children’s opportunities for enrichment. Not at all what Tom Jefferson had in mind for public universal schooling of America’s children.
Ellen Lubic
Amy, what would you like Ty Alpert to do about “a rather stern teacher who yells a lot and functions more like a manager”? What would you like Alpert to do about a school that appears to demand that he attend (and you pay for) extra tutoring?
Not a criticism of you – I’m interested in specifically what you would like the school board to do about these specific concerns.
Paige – But what you describe is exactly what the traditional role of preachers has been as oppossed to pedagogues. Perhaps this conception of teaching comes from the rabbinical tradition. Greek pedagogues plagued their charges with geometry but let their souls alone.
No, Jim, preachers are in the business of telling you what and how to think (lest you live in fear of going to hell). Teachers help you discover and learn to think for yourself. Polar opposites.
Yes! and when children put THEIR souls into the learning experience teacher’s try to capture that moment…it’s called inspiration! Each aha moment is to be celebrated!!!! and when five year olds DONT put their souls into learning it’s called disengagement, or boredom…
Jim– I have to agree that Paige’s response– though I understand it– is replete with the spiritual spin she brings to her work.
But getting back to the Berkeley teacher’s post & the law professor’s response: there is really nothing preacher-like at all here, nor any thing one might relate to the decline of religion in society. What you have here is simply a description of how to bring collaboration to the teaching of storytelling. Collaboration is at the heart of the project team, which is how many things are accomplished in modern business: the earlier the skill is acquired, the better.
As to your claim that this is a big change from pedagogy ‘back in the day’, I can tell you as the graduate of a one-room rural ’50’s grade school, collaboration is how we learned to read & do math. A teacher of 3 – 5 grades could not be everywhere, so we had ‘reading circle’ & ‘arithmetic circle’, where talented upper-grade students led others through their lessons.
Jim, Teaching is both an art and a science filled with paradox. I do understand your point, and know there is truth in your perspective (respecting diverse children, parents, cultures is imperative ); however, I have joyfully worked with five and six year olds for 25 years (primarily Vygosky-style) and have gained insight into how little ones learn…children are not passive, and THEYcannot separate feelings, values and soulfulness from the learning experience. It is their inspiration, curiosity and wonder that often lead the teacher in teaching skills. Again, teaching five year olds is an art and a science, and filled with paradox.
Which is worst – Geometry or Moral Uplift?
I’m asking the above question from Huck Finn’s perspective.
Well, I wouldn’t want to put words in Huck’s mouth….and I don’t know much about the phrase Moral Uplift…and sometimes the question is better than the answer.
Duane – No comprehendo!
Dienne – I’m probably a bit on the Aspergery side. Once when I was given a personality test the person administering the test told me afterwards that I had scored zero on the dimension “need for love and approval”. She said that I was the first person she had ever given the test to who had scored zero on that component of the test.
Now Jim..you have explained your apparent lack of human feeling and understanding which you so often display here…Aspergians are not capable of empathy. But since many, if not most, Aspergians have gifted IQ levels and are capable of learning, perhaps you are absorbing how much of the personal, of human feelings, go into academic interaction…when teachers work with students.
Ellen
Don’t bash people with Asperger’s, for heaven’s sake. Or paint any other group of people all with the same brush. After all, this is a forum about education!
If you disagree with Jim, disagree with what he says. You don’t know him or anything about him personally. So he doesn’t value the love and approval of others? When Beethoven dismissed the critics of his Fifth Symphony, was it because he was incapable of empathy, or because he thought (rightly, we now believe) that they were wrong?
By the way, I disagree with much of what Jim says and have a reply to him already on this thread. But fight fair.
Fiddlesticks. I hope you do not give such credence to personality tests! All that really means is that logic prevails for you; you conceive ideas in a binary fashion (like a computer!)– that hardly means that you have no empathy nor ‘need for love and approval’. It simply indicates that at the verbal level, you process facts alone; feelings are experienced in the non-verbal arena.