Ed Boland saw the movies where a smart and caring teacher saved the lives of obstreperous students just by the power of personality. He quit his job, to teach, couldn’t control his class, kept notes, and left at the end of a year, feeling beaten. He wrote a book about his year of teaching.
Okay, what’s the lesson here?
It is not easy to teach. Teachers cannot “save lives” in their first year. It takes time and experience to become a good teacher. Before entering the classroom, be well prepared. Know your subject matter. Learn classroom management. Spend a semester or a year as a student teacher, guided by a mentor teacher.
Teaching is is a profession not a pastime, not for amateurs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
William Glasser in The Quality School writes that teaching is harder than being a neurosurgeon! It is a craft, it is an art, it takes lots of time to really hone the many skills and to become a master teacher. It requires you to be a scientist, too. A psychologist, a guide, a motivator, an expert, a cheerleader, a coach, a person who can interact with children/students, parents, administrators, colleagues and the profession as well. To be a master teacher requires reading and learning the new ideas in your field, staying current on research, attending the best conferences and conventions to hear from the leaders of the day and so much more. It is not for the faint of heart, anyone who is even a little lazy, anyone who cannot multi-task, maintain order, yet be kind and motivating, clear and thorough, and then work hard on the endless paperwork, should think twice about it. And you don’t have a secretary or personal assistant either. Oh, and maybe you have a family, too, who needs your time and energy. I repeat not for the faint of heart. And parents are always always grateful for good and great teachers. Their description of those would include a teacher who cared, motivated, helped and honored their child’s gifts, helped the child work on their weaknesses and helped the child like school and love learning. Not. For. The. Faint. Of. Heart. Or those with a 2 week crash course in being a teacher. We are living in troubling times. But the pendulum always swings and houses built on foundations of sand will not stand the test of time.
Janet F., I appreciate your description of the teaching profession.
Like you I would describe the great teachers my children had as teachers “who cared, were motivated, helped and honored (my children’s) gifts, helped (my children) work on their weaknesses and helped them like school and love learning.”
The outstanding teachers my children were blessed to have had are always fondly remembered by my children, my husband and I when we go down memory lane. Certain names just well up in us great admiration and gratitude. That includes K teachers through college.
As a retired teacher, I reflect back on the phenomenal teachers that I was blessed to work with – so inspiring, caring, self-sacrificing, and knowledgeable. They had the expertise of orchestrating a class; that innate disposition of caring along with a great background of knowledge sprinkled with a sense of humor and kindness. Without those qualities they can’t be called a teacher but possibly a sergeant-at-arms or a “Miss Swamp.”
A hero teacher is worth his/her weight in gold.
I would add to Mr. Glasser’s excellent description that in recent years teachers have had to become warriors defending themselves and their students against big business, politicians, and their own administrators who introduce and enforce policies, curriculum and practices that are harmful to children.
And learn, and watch, and invest your time and your heart and your spirit….and one day you will become that teacher who changes a life. But you won’t know it. And you won’t have a movie made about you. You will just quietly pack up your work bag and go home to prepare tomorrow’s lessons.
From the NYT piece: ““The Battle for Room 314” arrives in a charged atmosphere, where public education has somehow become a contentious topic. “Teachers are definitely talking about it,” said Christopher Emdin, 37, who teaches science education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is the author of a forthcoming book, “For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education.”
For Dr. Emdin, Mr. Boland’s book wrongly blames students for what is really a failure to train teachers, especially those working with students from backgrounds that are different from their own.
“Teaching in an urban school is a specialty, like surgery,” said Dr. Emdin, who urges teachers to see beyond the thuggish behavior of difficult students, which might be a performance that itself involves great strategy and talent.
Teaching minority students, especially from poor backgrounds, requires “a particular skill set that you can develop,” Dr. Emdin said, emphasizing that those skills take time to emerge. “But I would not have my internist performing heart surgery. And I would not have Ed Boland teach in an urban school. He’s not trained for it.”
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I can’t comment on whether Boland in fact “blames students.” I can state that it’s not just minority students who exhibit “thuggish behavior.” And there is no question that typical teacher training does not prepare teachers for the sorts of challenging acting out that goes on in many schools. If Dr. Emdin (with whom I worked briefly a few years ago) has useful, practicable instruction for teachers on how to work in “urban schools,” (including those that aren’t, in fact, urban), that would be something worth reading and learning.
And I suppose this guy also thought he could save the world by dropping into an operating room after a few weeks’ training? Nothing is more disgusting than the general public attitude that anyone can teach, that teachers are easily replaceable, that the crisis in American education is simply due to the field’s being populated by losers. This attitude, and the lousy pay which drives away good teachers, results in a debased and demoralized profession. Finland has the right idea. Train teachers, and PAY them, as if their job were as difficult and important as surgery. It is.
This article depressingly reminds me of the many, many teacher re-training meetings which I, as a low-scoring-school teacher, was forced to attend. Re-trainings bent to a prescripted curricula where the “beautifully” crafted lesson plans and an “esoteric” set of disconnected expectations (crafted by idealistic, non-experienced reformers) repeatedly divorced our teaching from the actual students at hand.
All of those Gates Teacher Prep Transformation Centers are promising “classroom ready” teachers from day one. The Massachusetts Teacher Prep Transformation Center boasts that it will have first year teachers performing at least as well as third year teachers on the comprehensive teacher evaluation system.
With the exception of the two year mentoring programs for teachers who already have a degree, all of the Gates-funded initiatives seem to be counting on getting students to manage classrooms (Doug Lemov and/or mastering so-called “high leverage” teaching strategies with scripts, online “competency” modules, and so on).
The idea that teaching might be informed by scholarship about teaching (historical, philosophical, studies of child and adolescent development, even conditions that lead to the need for special education– all are fading away in favor of all tricks of the trade that produce test scores, keep discipline, and the like. And, the Gates programs are designed to be scaled up, curtail the influence of professional associations of teachers in various subjects (history, science, and so on), in addition to thwarting collective bargaining. The Gates initiatives are also designed to match up teacher prep with specific labor markets for teachers, identified by high demand per grade level, subject, but especially urban and low income, minority populations. Marc Tucker smiles.
Less Lemov, more Maslow!
Classroom management, or being able to observe and make good decisions regarding the social curriculum, can’t be taught. It can however, be learned. Sorry, but even that surgeon, or neurosurgeon (when writers want to suggest the task takes great skill), wasn’t as adept at the first surgery as she was after the hundredth surgery. In other words, there is only so much preparation that can be provided in advance. I agree with Laura, that learning of theory that informs practice is the best preparation for being able to act ethically, effectively, and responsively in the complex environment of a classroom full of varied people. Then it largely becomes a set of habits and dispositions–toward thinking, toward people, toward interactions. Most teachers can and do learn this. But it may take a while after being faced with the dilemma of “getting the cell phone out of the student’s hand.” My point is, in reputable teacher preparation programs, candidates are taught about classroom management, but they aren’t ready to “learn” it until the need to make decisions with long-term implications, come into play.
Kim,
Of course effective classroom management must be learned, and by effective I mean a classroom that has the students largely managing themselves but gently directed by the teacher. It took me years before I no longer had to raise my voice, substituting a gentle but effective word with great success. Without experience few teachers can succeed in this particular area.
The 5-week wonders who get intensive “training” just before they walk through their classroom door almost invariably end up at “no-excuses” schools, and ask yourself, what is their typical classroom management style?
Authoritarian, which is the only method one can use and rely upon without years of experience. Using the authoritarian style is easy – “I’m the teacher and you’ll do what I say, when I say it!” but in the long term it falls apart because the classroom dynamic becomes one of students vs teacher, instead of students and teachers working together for the good of the class.
The sad stories of these poorly trained teachers, agonizing over acting in an inhumane manner, going against their own humanity and judgment…IMO they show how the authoritarian style hurt both the students and the teacher and ensures they will only teach for a year or two, even if they were inclined to want to do more.
Authoritarianism is a very poor model for personnel management in any setting outside the military.
It’s not even good in a corporate setting, since it discourages questioning and innovation and leads to a mindless “Yes Sir” mentality.
From what I have read of these tricks of the trade programs, I am afraid students will see straight through them for what they are,,,.. managing the savages (or in politically acceptable terms thugs.)
My experience taught me that you used some tricks–efficiency tips in managing groups and paper, etc.–and developed relationships.. You also stick around so that students will take you seriously. They want to know that you want them to learn.
And just sometimes they will let you know that they appreciated your concern, especially when they become adults.
I found, like you, West, that the key was developing relationships (as well as, of course, subject area competency and organizational skill). Once you gained a reputation as a ‘tough but fair teacher who cares and will help you’, the path is smooth. No ‘classroom management tricks’ needed because 90% of the students who are with you will police the small, disruptive minority (and, there always is one).
I spent a year in 1962, as I was finishing my courses in Education Practice, having completed th e psychology courses, and the content courses, student teaching, My final assignment was in the most difficult class in a ‘special service’ school. It was important because it was I who got to teach the special ed third grade, which in 1963 had 24 non readers aged 9 to 11, many of whom had behavior issues.
That practice teaching was crucial.
Thank goodness for an understanding administration which helped and supported me,.
I have no idea how teachers get practice in the 15,880 school systems.
I only know that what is happening is UNNECESSARY, cruel (to the practitioners of a real profession) and to the kids, and destructive to our society, and its promise of the American Dream.
Having just seen MICHAEL MOORE’S “Where to Invade next,” (which is NOT about war, and all about what we lost as a society…things that ironically have been adopted in many European societies that care about their people.
The oligarchs who run this nation do not care about our schools because they do not care about our people. That is why this teacher found himself thrown into a swamp with no support.
There is a chart, which I saw recently which I ,too, cannot get out of my head,…especially that last rearrangement of the WEALTH DISTRIBUTION IN AMERICA… which says it all… because it is those folks with the kind of wealth that once belonged to US -THE PEOPLE- now control our government and the party of NO.
It’s exactly what this education reform monster is about: deprofessionalizing a profession. It’s never been about anything else. It’s not really about testing. It’s not really about common core. It’s not really about education. It’s an economic program (privatizing yet another swath of the commons) disguised as an education program.
Unfortunately, the reformers have the language, narrative, and vibe of being a “reform” movement….in fact they have successfully captured the language of the civil rights movement. This has been their particular success. It leaves us in a real jam: because of how they have wrapped themselves in the language and narrative of a rights-based movement, they have captured whole chunks of the left side of the political spectrum (obviously they had the right, with the whole privatization thing).
We has a prescious few seconds at the beginning of all this to call the reform movement what it was and fight to control the narrative. Alas we did not do that. Important voices on our side thought it better to get a seat at the table.
Anyhow, while its horrific, this “teacher as savior” archetype that is now seen as legitimate, it is sadly the core idea and assumption among so many folks, right and left. It’s sad that nobody sees the racism, the class-ism, the paternalism, and downright insult that it is to think that an Ivy League (or equivalent) kid could save poor kids from things like deep cyclical poverty, deep established racism, and an economy that is leaving everyone behind. Few also see the sad irony in the fact that the “savior” teacher was probably educated on the dime of parents who are among those responsible for the awful structural economy we are now living in.
Having read dozens (perhaps over 100 or more) of his posts, I have great respect for the opinion of Arthur Goldstein and the content of his blog “NYC Educator.” Regarding the book in question and its author, let’s just say that Goldstein was underwhelmed … to say the least … calling the book “one of the worst pieces of crap I’ve ever come across.”:
http://nyceducator.com/2016/02/one-hit-wonder.html
NYC EDUCATOR: “I guess that’s where the writer comes from, culturally or somehow, but I can’t help but think familiarity with things that happened in the worlds of the kids we serve, say, in the last half century, may have better prepared him for teaching.
“The author appears to have been terrible teacher, lacking the common sense of a number two pencil. His dealings with difficult students, which comprise the first chapter of the book, are simply abysmal. He considers freaking out in front of the class, and appears not to realize, even as he’s writing this dubious memoir, that he has already freaked out in front of the class.
“Quite early in the book, he trots out impossible stereotypes about bad teachers. Right after I read about the guy who sits and reads a newspaper in front of the class I knew I would not be reading the entire screed. He also labels this guy as telling a class that automobiles appreciate in value. This is a cartoon, not a character description. Unlike cartoons that are amusing, appealing or funny, this one appears to be based on stereotype rather than truth. Were it about a racial or religious group rather than teachers, it would be considered offensive and unacceptable. For the record, I consider it pretty much the same thing.”
Teacher turnover and turmoil….It is here. The time of career educators of 35 years in a school district educating mom, dad, and brother and sister are very close to being over. Turnover like you’ve never seen it before is here. It is already happening in my school district. I honestly thought I’d never see the day. It is my estimation that teachers leaving every 2-3 years or sooner will fill my classroom when I retire next year. There is not a new “me” to occupy my spot. John Kasich and the state of Ohio, “Be careful what you wish for….you just might get it.”
It would be kinda cool to see a mass state-wide or region-wide reminder to everybody what happens when we, the last of the truly professionalized, career teachers, don’t show up to work.
A nice little reminder that we still have some leverage left in this game…..we wasted most of it, but we have one thing yet that is going away fast: we are the teachers in the classrooms right now. And there is power in that. Wouldn’t change a thing…..I am no fool on this…..but we need to realize that we need a take-away from having lashed ourselves to a dying career. We certainly don’t have tons of $$ to show for it. We certainly don’t have the pat on the back and respect from most of society. So maybe our take-away should be that we did one old-school, labor-like thing that articulated our absolute and total resistance to every single corner of the reform movement. After all, some dignity matters.
The ship is fully compromised and on its way down. It’s really now just about making some choices on how to finish it.
Well, I guess we can dream.
You got it right… not only dId not get a pat on the back for bringing millions go District 2 in NYC when Pew decided to observe my successful practice and match me to the standards, but the lawless criminals who ran the oOE in NYC, tried to strip me of my pension. My attorney cost me 25 k, because the union was complicit in the removal of tenured teachers
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
I ended up with a pittance, losing whatever savings I might have managed in the years that I would have remained in the profession, and diminishing my social security, since when I left, I was only making 58k… that with and MA plus 60. Three more years and it would have been $70k, and these days more.
if they could have murdered me, they would have… but look what they did to Lorna Stremcha in Montana.
http://blog.ebosswatch.com/2013/05/one-womans-legal-fight-against-workplace-bullying/
She wrote this… a must read. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/background-information-bravery-bullies-blowhards-lorna-stremcha
You break my heart because what you are saying is so very true, and yet so unrecognized by the larger society. I work and work and work at just trying to get anyone I know — wealthy, poor, White, non-White, anyone at all — to see that in fourteen years of viciously testing our students we have allowed the painful decimation of traditional public school expectations, yet so many people just look at me in disbelief. It can’t be happening at THEIR school, or in THEIR school district.
15,880 districts!
THAT is their biggest asset…the disconnect in our nation as to what is afoot elsewhere.
The media lies proliferate in all area of culture. How else can you explain trump.
Did you read Roger Cohen on the fascist propaganda that issues from Trmps mouth, and is swallowed whole by a population that cannot remember 1939 and Germany.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/opinion/donald-trumps-il-duce-routine.html?emc=edit_ty_20160229&nl=opinion&nlid=50637717.
Ciedie… what is happening to education is part of the rot that Cohen explains… here is a quote from the pice Europe, the soil on which Fascism took root, is watching the rise of Donald Trump with dismay. Contempt for the excesses of America is a European reflex, but when the United States seems tempted by a latter-day Mussolini, smugness in London, Paris and Berlin gives way to alarm. Europe knows that democracies can collapse.
”
“Trump is telling people something is rotten in the state of America. The message resonates because the rot is there.”
“It’s not just that Trump re-tweets to his six million followers a quote attributed to Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” It’s not just that Trump refuses to condemn David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who has expressed support for him. It’s not just that violence is woven into Trump’s language as indelibly as the snarl woven into his features — the talk of shooting somebody or punching a protester in the face, the insulting of the disabled, the macho mockery of women, the anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican tirades. It’s not just that he could become Silvio Berlusconi with nukes.”
“It’s the echoes, now unmistakable, of times when the skies darkened. Europe knows how democracies collapse, after lost wars, in times of fear and anger and economic hardship, when the pouting demagogue appears with his pageantry and promises. America’s Weimar-lite democratic dysfunction is plain to see. A corrupted polity tends toward collapse.”
This is scary stuff. As I have had to watch year after year of the treachery behind a corrupted polity move us ALL toward educational collapse, my cry now becomes: Trump “is a deadly canker in the body politic, and I will have it out!” 🙂
I would like to offer an essay written by the recently deceased Italian author Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism as food for though regarding the cult of ‘hero teachers’, the dismantling of unions, and many other disturbing trends in US politics, culture, and society.
It is provocative and disturbing and all too familiar in several places. In other words, necessary reading today:
Click to access eco_ur-fascism.pdf
Some excerpts:
“. . . the free press was abolished, the labor unions were dismantled, and political dissenters were confined on remote islands. Legislative power became a mere fiction and the executive power (which controlled the judiciary as well as the mass media) directly issued new laws, among them laws calling for preservation of the race (the formal Italian gesture of support for what became the Holocaust).”
“Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism. . . . The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.”
“In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
Read this essay and watch a Donald Trump rally, watch a Fox News roundtable discussion, see a heroic teacher movie in a new light, or take in a rant from any one of dozens of pundits in the Washington Post and the New York Times. I shuddered and wept.
I wept when I read this in The NY Times Book review. It doesn’t happen every week (or every month, or even year), but every once in a while a book comes along that changes the national conversation. The book on our cover this week, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” by Matthew Desmond, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/books/review/matthew-desmonds-evicted-poverty-and-profit-in-the-american-city.html?em_pos=large&emc=edit_bk_20160226&nl=bookreview&nlid=50637717
looks to be one of those books. In her review, Barbara Ehrenreich, author of “Nickel and Dimed,” calls Desmond’s book “astonishing.” This follows a rave review by Jennifer Senior, a daily book critic for The Times, who compared Desmond’s work to Ehrenreich’s, and a profile of Desmond that ran in The Times earlier this week. We sent a photographer out to Milwaukee, the center of Desmond’s research, to shoot a (rare, for us) news photo for our cover. The goal was to convey the immediacy of the topic; these kinds of evictions are happening every day across the country.
AZ is about to pass a law that each district or charter school can “certify” their own teachers…that process will ALLOW anyone those entities want to allow to teach, to do so…..let the nightmares begin…..
Writing a book after one year of pretend teaching? Makes one question his intentions from the get go. Either he was amazingly naïve or inked his book dal in advance.
So..someone who bought into a fantasy about teaching has been enlightened and wrote a book about it.
All the training and re-training and scripted programs will not help children who are living in poverty, homelessness, and domestic violence situations. The lack of support for students and their families is very sad.I can have all the classroom management and feelings charts and “strategies” to encourage students to develop self regulation but when students come in to school sleep deprived, hungry, and worried about what they face when school is over, it is often difficult for them to focus on academic lessons.
We are ignoring the real issues because they are hard to fix and rather blame teachers for what society is ignoring.
Thank you for defending our profession,Diane. Now I will go back to grading papers- my Sunday night activity.
I’m disgusted by Mr. Boland and the general praise in the media for his decision to take his white, wealthy, connected self to the classroom to save children of color.
Teaching is not missionary work. Nor does he deserve any praise for the racist ideology that brought him into the classroom utterly unprepared for it. And he should be shamed for his decision to share the details of his students’ lives for his own profit – apparently he didn’t feel the need to apologize for enriching himself by publishing lightly disguised details of their lives (in published excerpts, his deficit perspective toward his students, propensity to rely upon and feed stereotypes about poor children of color, and his tendency to blame his students for his shortcomings are evident).
His current position in education philanthropy doesn’t combat poverty even though he claims in the Times to understand how negatively it impacts urban schools. Rather, it’s a reform gig that “saves” certain kids from teachers like Mr. Boland by placing them in private schools. It feeds the narrative that public schools fail kids and are beyond. Even out of the classroom, Mr. Boland is doing missionary work that harms urban school communities.
This is so true, and the people who are hurt the most by these experiences are the students. They don’t get that year back.
You can empathize with students, but if you’re coming in with a pity or savior mindset, you’ll never be able to build positive relationships.
I don’t know what the best way is to train teachers. Student teaching with a mentor is how I was trained but before that, I was a substitute and went to many different schools all over the district. This experience was crucial in that I experienced many schools, teachers and administrations. What I learned is that kids like structure and assurances that their teacher will be there regularly and manage their class in a fair way. The teacher does not have to be friends with the students but must demand respect from them and give it. When is the teacher training over? It never is, everyday there is new things you learn from your students which can modify and enhance your practices.
This is a bit staged, but I felt a lot better after seeing it than I did after reading about Ed Boland’s no good, awful, terrible, bad year in school. Maybe you will, too.
What if there is no training that prepares you for the degree of classroom chaos Ed Boland faced? What if even most vets get steamrolled in such classes? What if there is no “skill set you that you can develop” (despite what the esteemed professor from Teachers College says)? What if everyone who claims they can teach you a truly efficacious “skill set” is a quack? What if the ones who do have the special knack for managing a class like that are literally one in a million? What if teen mob power is an intoxicant that kids can get addicted to? What if breaking that group dynamic, once established, requires as much force as that required to split an atom? What if teachers and principals across the country are having nervous breakdowns as we speak because of the daily pummeling they endure in schools like this? What if drinking at the “Security Meeting at 4” is the only way a lot of teachers can survive daily anarchy and psychological abuse? What if old fashioned discipline, as unpalatable as it is to many of us, is the best humans have come up with for quelling odious behaviors that harm the perpetrators as much as their victims?
Alternate learning programs for the chronically disruptive is one possible solution. My district has set up a shared service program with a few other districts that has really helped both the chronically disruptive and the chronically disrupted.
The concept of mob-like unruliness is often insurmountable for a single teacher; and it happens more than some would think. There is a critical mass of 3 or more chronically disruptive students per class that makes management a near impossibility. And rarely mentioned is the fact that some of the very irrational and bizarre misbehaviors can be traced to drug and alcohol intoxication.
What would make you think that a vet would necessarily be more prepared to handle an unruly class? I think this indicates your mindset – the only way to deal with “those kids” is power and control, to bully them into submission. Maybe a better solution is to look at why they’re so unruly to begin with. Clearly they don’t feel that their needs are being met or that they’re getting anything out of the school experience that makes obedience worthwhile. Maybe if you start from that perspective you’ll have better success. And you don’t need to be a drill sergeant for that.
One size fits all discipline does not work for all students. I have dealt with a few hardcore sociopaths in my day. One had to be removed from the class of a former marine and retired NYC police because they were going to kill each other. I handled this troubled young person through behavior modification. It kept him from being reactive and violent. Low key and calm worked best with him. If you tried to lock horns with him, it was a downward spiral. When this child got to middle school, he was sent to a more restrictive environment. He was very disturbed and angry.
This reminds me a lot of a two-year stint I spent as a foster-mother of three adolescents in Michigan in the 1970’s, while my then-husband was in law school &
I working full-time. We (me & my husband) were in mid-20’s, solicited because husband had been successful as a volunteer soccer-coach, through local social services, for needy kids.
Michigan was looking for couples to provide a temporary ‘group home’ for kids as they transitioned between state residential facility back to their own families. The stipends offered covered food & housing for the kids; you had to have full-time jobs to make it work.
It was a disaster & I can’t imagine how MI expected it to work (tho the soc worker in charge was a phenom). We had 3 kids. The eldest (& easiest to deal w/) had twice rescued his mother from suicide [ended up later jailed after attempting to rob a bank w/a stick in his pocket, supposedly a gun].The middle kid was an abandoned kid of KY immigrants to the auto industry who terrorized the others w/a knife while we slept. So he was bounced from the program & replaced by a local kid, youngest of 4, whose handicapped single-mother placed them all on the local services as ‘incorrigible.’ The youngest, a native-American, was as an infant victim of neglect who came to us after 14 foster placements– a psychopath-in-the-making who killed our cat w/a brick.
We couldn’t even manage the full 2-yr commitment & bowed out feeling very guilty– our kids had been abandoned so many times & here we were piling on. Looked back wondering how on earth MI Soc Services had thought to place such damaged kids with some white-bread young grad-student couple.
Thank you Christine for the link. It is a beautiful and touching story. The song “Amazing Grace” has always been my favorite song since I profoundly trust in God = goodness in humanity. May
They were supposed to be “my success story” and several other things he said make me believe we have to start calling people out when they make it about them…even if it’s inadvertently done. That would be most of TFA also.
Oh, my, so true. The young teachers suddenly hired to replace old, “bad” teachers in our district’s low-income schools have tied so much of their own identity into the theory of being The Movie Queen Teacher: the one who can, out of deepest compassion, immediately work magic in the classroom. They have no reason to see a long-term dedication to teaching as the real reward since long-term, stick-with-it teaching is no longer an NCLB or R2T goal.
Another privileged and clueless white savior cultivates narcissistic fantasies of “saving” children, has a (predictably) bitter cup of coffee in the classroom, gets (predictably) slapped down, markets his failure in a book that blames everyone but himself and his self-serving ideology, goes on to “better things” at a educational malanthropy, and prays for a movie deal.
Next…
This is one of the most offensive myths out there. Unsurprisingly, an assistant principal in the Bronx under whom I served had the gall to show a segment of “Mr. Holland’s Opus” at a professional development session. He seemed to have no sense that this was scripted entertainment.
“Bo Bo Land”
I’m clueless, but I care
Said Boland after school
There’s really no there there
He simply is a fool
Great teachers are rarely born that way. Teaching is part science, craft and on occasion, art. For those of us that have taught for decades, we have evolved into being effective teachers. It didn’t happen over night. I agree with Mr Boland that classroom management is the most difficult part of the job in the early years. Teachers that feel isolated and overwhelmed are mostly likely to walk away from the job. I have served as a mentor to several beginning teachers. Using tools I had acquired over the years, I was able to give these teachers some concrete suggestions to help them address some of their management and instructional issues. I did NOT judge or evaluate them. I was there to help them be successful. With effective mentoring, we may be able to retain good people that can learn to be outstanding career teachers.
I really liked what you said here. Over time, a person can evolve into an effective teacher. I don’t know any teachers who just walked into a classroom and became inmediately effective at their jobs. It’s a process in which you learn.
This is true, but after teaching since 1963, and seeing hundreds of classrooms in dozens of schools, including over 12 years when I was a sub, I have come to believe that not everyone is suited to be in a room with children, and that the BEST ( most effective) teachers love children and want to SHARE WHAT THEY KNOW, which is all that any teacher actually does.
That first year, I was a mess, in that managing the kids was more than I expected…but the class was under 21 kids, and I learned… and I had support services when real discipline issues arose. Over a lifetime, I learned that kids loved to be with me, and I cannot say if that was a gift or a talent, but it was real, and it worked for me so that I could ‘teach.’
I met a number of teachers over the years that were unable to relate to children… and should never have entered the profession.
With a due respect, Diane Ravitch, I did everything you suggested: I got my masters in education in advance of teaching,I did even more student teaching than was required, I sought out good mentors. This was not a silly whim. I may not have had the chops for the job, but if so I have plenty of company: 68% of new teachers leave NYC high poverty schools within 5 years. The school where I taught has had 100% teacher turn over, many of them were dedicated veteran educators. I’m trying to call attention to the fact that we are expecting teachers in high poverty schools to do too much. We must end the myth of the hero teacher.
Dear Ed,
I applaud you. I began teaching in 1963 and they ended me in 1998 when I was the NY State Educator of Excellence.
I have told mystery here, many times, but I would like to invite you to my author’s page at Oped news. http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
I wrote a few pieces, (may I recommend “BAMBOOZLE THEM” “http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html and “Magic Elixir,” but at Oped, I report on what is afoot in the 15,880 districts as the INSTITUTION of Public Education (which the media reports as ‘schools,”) is dismantled.
There are buttons there which go to my series http://www.opednews.com/author/comments/author40790.html my commentary and my series.
My comments are well-read, and my latest one which attends the article on MEDIA LIES, is promoted to a headline. I think you would enjoy it.
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/As-News-Media-Changes-Ber-in-General_News-Bernie-Sanders-2016-Presidential-Candidate_Lies_Media-And-Democracy_Media-Bias-160226-816.html
You can message me and I will give you my private email
Loved your piece. I sent it to Diane (in case she missed it), and I am so happy she posted it.
Ed, you are purely intentional puppet tool for corporate to smear or put down public education and to support privatization.
You are after public education fund of billions dollars. Your background is in EXECUTIVE fundraising. some charities are fraudulent from the exposing news. You change title and remain to be in bad scheme: “take advantage of public naivety FROM looting their tax money for their children’s public education fund INTO corporate pocket and your commission + bonus. It is shame on your pretension. Back2basic
I was wondering what made Mr. Boland go from Prep for Prep to Henry Street:
“At the time, Boland’s new school was considered a bold experiment — not a charter but an “autonomous” one, given freedom in both management and curriculum. It was endowed in part by the Gates Foundation, and the principal hired only teachers who had once lived abroad.”
Mr. Boland, a homosexual, even had sexual harassment charges filed against him by a girl.
http://nypost.com/2016/01/17/my-year-of-terror-and-abuse-teaching-at-a-nyc-high-school/
Today, less than four percent of the students at Henry Street School are on grade level.
To Triumph104
I am sorry that you provide useless and irrelevant info about Mr. Boland’s personal preference of sexuality versus his love of teaching career.
Please do not smear and attack people whose intention is pure.
Mr. Boland’s ideology in teaching in poverty district is common to all young TFAs minus some greedy and intentional business CAREER minded people who are after becoming Charter OWNER later.
I fell sad for young people who are easily becoming SLAVES for corporate who does not care for others’ well-being, BUT, their own PROFIT and POWER.
It is digital era. Please actively seek out resources with logical mind, critical analysis, and absolutely NO EMOTION with IF sentences. Back2basic
I think it’s naive, actually and arrogant, for someone with no inner-city experience to get a masters degree in education to prepare for making sweeping changes with at-risk youth in poverty-stricken neighborhoods. With no exposure to that environment the students would literally chew you up and spit you out all over the place on a day in, day out basis. It’s easy to get disheartened after giving it your first best shot….it’s even ok to decide it’s not for you….I respect the message that the public can’t expect teachers to go into those environments mentioned and be hero teachers, like in the movies….but what’s expected is for someone to have the chops to go in day after day and make a difference in increments…..maybe they’ll get burnt out. I got burnt out in my MBA-Consulting Career, why should teachers in inner-city schools be any different. The big differentiator, however, is intention…if you go in thinking you’ll pull off some big “save” for some class that will be suitable for at least a telemovie if not something for the big screen….shame on you…..The idea is to go in thinking maybe if I’m really lucky I’ll make a connection with a few students and at least give them the idea that they have options…if it goes farther than that, I’ll consider it a terrific year.
and what if you are assigned there…. what if you are sent into places where ,despite your own knowledge and skills, there is not a shred dod support because the SCHOOLS HAVE BEN DEFUNDED and are intentionally failing. Using you down experience and comparison to make such a judgement is … well, still mere opinon… not convincing.
My point was about the naivete of going in thinking you’re going to single-handedly turn things around and make sweeping changes, whatever the circumstances, not a judgement on the performance OR the intention of teachers in general.