A middle school social studies teacher in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was threatened with disciplinary action, either suspension or even firing, because he made pancakes for his students while they were taking the state tests. He was suspended without pay for his infraction, although he said he never heard of a rule against cooking pancakes during testing.
But students rallied for the popular teacher, Kyle Byler, and the school board turned on a dime and said he was reinstated. No, no, they never intended to fire him, where did anyone get that crazy idea?
These days, kids seem to have the most finely tuned sense of justice and injustice. The kids are alright. The adults need counseling.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yay for the students and the teacher.
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A teacher goes out of his way to enrich the lives of students who have been taking worthless tests and he gets reprimanded. Disgusting.
I’m glad to read that some publications are understanding the plight of teachers. Teachers are finally getting fed up. Good. It is about time. Bankers are expected to be well paid and never get enough but teachers are expected to be happy with nothing. Time for a change.
…………………………..
A True Labor of Love…New Republic
Why teachers are adopting a more militant politics
By SARAH JAFFE
April 18, 2018
Teachers are expected to do their jobs for the love of it.
For years now, that has meant getting by with tattered, aged textbooks, in buildings that are falling apart, and spending their own money on toilet paper, food, hygiene items, and socks for students, even as their own wages fall and their health insurance premiums spike and pensions are carved away.
It has meant, too, that any action by teachers to improve their working conditions—which, they have stressed since the 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike, are their students’ learning conditions—is immediately depicted as selfish, uncaring, improper. There is no amount of money that bankers must be happy with, but our culture tells us that workers whose job is not the production of widgets (or toxic financial products) but the care and education of others must accept any sort of misery out of their devotion to their work. ..
https://newrepublic.com/article/148034/teachers-adopting-militant-politics
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Good grief. Insanity prevails.
Diane, you are correct about the kids being “alright” and the adults needing therapy.
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We had the opposite happen when my children were in ES. The county made “food rules” which then restricted any kind of party or celebration of holidays. It was really weird that classroom teachers had to send home healthy broccoli, grapes, apple slices that parents sent in for special events. That year during MSA testing (before PARCC) one of the para’s was allowed/encouraged to bring in green jell-o in the shape of Shamrock’s (for good luck) as a treat to students for taking the test.
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“. . .as a treat to students for taking the test.”
Can we say “Pavlov’s Dog”.
And no I don’t mean the obscure early 70s rock band.
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Seriously. This is news only because there is not a shred of accountability for the top dogs who run the show–> into the ground!!!
The PLOY and the PLOT began with ending the RIGHTS OF TEACHERS!
Fake news did its thing…those bad ,lazy teachers…
Our removal is the CRUX OF WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW, and it is virtually UNKNOWN.
The ploy…take out the professional, the voice of the practitioner who knows what learning looks like.
Rid the ‘hospital’ of the experienced practitioner, and when the patients (kids) fail to recover, blame the teacher- practitioner -…endlessly in the media….those lazy, tenured teachers, working 5 hours day— and all those vacations.…NOWHERE is the REAL STORY known… the 20 year devastation and attacks on over 200,000 teachers, despite the FACT THAT IS IS OUT THERE!
http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2009/03/gotcha-squad-and-new-york-city-rubber.html
http://endteacherabuse.org
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/lausd-continues-to-target-teachers.html
Removing a professional teacher-practitioner BEGAN with the UTTER DESTRUCTION OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF THE TEACHER way, way back two decades ago! .
When this happened to me I WAS ONE OF The MOST CELEBRATED TEACHERS in NY STATE and in the nation —My work being taken round the country by the LRDC (Univ Of Pittsburgh) who were ran the Harvard research for Pew when I was the NYC cohort for the new Standards research
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
Cooking pancakes during the tests. This is the story?
THIS is the story>> I have said all this here , before and often, because it needs to be told to the new readers..pancakes indeed…Lorna Stremcha was set up by the principal to be sexually assaulted, and had to sue in order to get justice. https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/life/my-montana/2016/03/18/educator-recounts-harassment-school/81896206/
Time to hold the principals and administrators accountable for the shit they shovel. Pancakes.
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Susan Lee Schwartz: “Time to hold the principals and administrators accountable for the shit they shovel.”
Being a traveling music teacher, I have been in 5 different districts and a large number of elementary schools. I also worked in two American schools overseas. My opinion based on years of work is that principals and administrators who are decent and are totally respectful to the teachers are rare. Most principals are dictators who hold their power over teachers.
In one school that I worked the teachers put together a 17 page listing of their feelings on how bad things were. Nothing changed.
In another school, the teachers wrote a protest letter to the superintendent. Since the principal was a measly manipulator of the superintendent, nothing changed. The music teacher before me had sued the principal for the evaluation she had received. She won and got a year’s salary.
One new principal, on our first staff meeting of the year, became outraged when one teacher expressed an opinion. It kept the staff quiet for the rest of her tenure. Never express an alternate opinion unless you want to be creamed in front of everyone.
There have been a few really good principals and I relish the years that I worked for wonderful people.
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Carol, thanks for your insights. One of the reasons that the “teacher led” school movement is expanding all over the country is that many educators agree with you. In many professions, such as law, medicine and “real estate”, the professionals are in charge. The professionals set up law firms, or medical clinics or real estate offices. THEY are in charge. THEY hire people to handle business details. In a growing # of district and charter schools, the teacher led model is being used. More info here from NEA: http://neatoday.org/2015/02/12/teacher-led-schools-theyre-way/
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Also, more info here: https://www.teacherpowered.org/
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Joseph: Thanks. I had no idea such things were happening. I sent this information to people that I know who are still teaching…and a few retirees.
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Thx, Carol.
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How can we be taken seriously if we are making pancakes in class. It is obvious that we are without morality if we decide to make pancakes for students who really deserved to stacked into socio-economic piles in order to be better sorted out by the leaders of society.
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Roy: “It is obvious that we are without morality if we decide to make pancakes for students…”
It is becoming very obvious that morality for teachers is a much higher calling than the morality of politicians. Can you imagine Trump being fired for making pancakes and serving them to his cabinet members? This is an injustice but one that I won’t attempt to quantify.
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The adminimals are probably worried that the teacher is better at stacking pancakes than the tests are at stacking students.
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Touche!!!
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P.S. Glad to see you back commenting more!!!
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Duane, you made me laugh aloud.
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And it gets even worse—
What good is test-to-punish when you take some of the rheephorm joy out of stacking students because they have a few moments of enjoyment and personalized attention by eating the pancakes the teacher has stacked up?
🤪
Next thing you know people will insist on genuine learning and teaching…
And forget about the rheeally important stuff like ROI for the test-making companies and their enablers and enforcers.
Really!
😎
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It’s lovely how they all stuck up for him.
The testing is grim and horrible. If a pancake makes it less dreadful I don’t know why he can’t give them one.
They won’t remember a single question on that test 20 minutes after they turn it in, but they’ll all remember the kindness.
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Nothing can “make it less dreadful”.
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His only mistake was making pancakes.
If he had made grits, he would have been fine.
He prolly would even have got the Angela Duckworth Grit Award.
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Oh, SomeDAM, you made me laugh yet again!
BTW, is laughter allowed?!
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Second that.
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Laughter?
There is NO socializing allowed here.
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I always supplied healthy snacks for all the testing periods, Advanced Placement, SAT, and whatever tests were forced on us by the feds/state governments. I brought food all year long, in fact, often themed to the literature we were reading (biscuits and gravy made in a cast iron skillet as big as a wagon wheel for Grapes of Wrath). And I kept apples and peanut butter on hand, always. So put me in the electric chair. That story is proof that some administrators do not have enough to do.
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With your own money, I presume.
Teachers are expected to be monks–vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty.
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And to worship the data gods.
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And a vow of silence — especially about tests.
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That’s right – we are expected to be like Mother Teresa.
We should be paying them for the privilege of spending time with these fine, upstanding, well behaved, eager to learn children.
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Maybe they were afraid he would carve the answers in the pancakes withba knife or encode them in Morse code with dots of syrup and dashes of butter.
You never can be too careful, you know.
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More laughter, DAM…damn!!
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Why was he making pancakes in Lancaster, PA? Anyone that knows the local culture understands he should have been making funnel cakes. He was probably trying to keep up the students’ morale that was damaged from abusive bubble tests.
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After reading the article, I think that Byler should have grilled Grill, along w/the pancakes.
(I know–ouch.) I don’t know what all the fuss was about–after all, they were whole grain.
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Truthfully I see the point of the district on this one, even if it is stupid. Teachers are required to observe the students during the standardized test. We have to take a ridiculous video based PD module and sign an agreement. It appears he did violate this.
He obviously did not deserve firing or any real punishment, but what he did was not correct, as nice of an idea as it was.
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“We have to take a ridiculous video based BPD* module and sign an agreement.”
There corrected your statement Alice.
*Being Professionally Developed
Good thing they have the latest in Developing Professionals technology to work with. Picture comes out nice and clear.
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We always had two proctors for each classroom. I’m sure he could pour, flip, and serve all while supervising the test taking especially since they are almost chest proof (at my school there was up to four different test booklets so copying a particular answer was useless). Plus, who actually knows what the intended answer might be – not even the adults can figure that out.
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I remember some goofy test questions (from the NY sixth grade test inthink) a few years ago based on an article about “a plinth of space”
I even wrote a poem about it
“A Plinth of Space”
A plinth of space
Is Common Core
An empty base
Of Coleman lore
I never knew what a “plinth of space” was before that so I guess it was not all for naught.
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He made loving pancakes. The school board said no. The kids spoke; the board waffled.
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Competing with SDP, eh! Good one!
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This post is rich!
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In my opinion, the school board usyruped the teacher’s job
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Damn, DAM!
That’d be more likely in Vermont, though.
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This teacher has been professionally batter-ed.
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The comments here are like butt-ah!
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The teacher should charge the school board with assault on his battery.
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This was a school in my district. Alice in PA mentioned the video we have to watch which basically says we can’t do anything other than observe kids. Had Mr. Byler asked, he would have been told that he could not make pancakes during the testing. Before or after would be fine, but during is a no-no.
And before anyone “grills” the assistant principal, I know her. She is actually a very kind and supportive person, someone you would go to with a problem. When she taught, you would have wanted her child in her class. She is not as she was depicted in this article.
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But a fireable offense? That’s pretty stupid. Maybe this was decided higher up the chain than an assistant principal, but when states are desperate for teachers, who tries to fire a teacher for a pretty minor mistake?
It just shows that teachers have no rights and are expected to be 100% perfect at all times. I know this from sad experience. Teaching is a dead-end, incredibly stressful job. It didn’t used to be.
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Its insane.
Common sense has gone out the window.
This is what the testing regime has done– created a military mentality in our schools.
This stuff has got to stop.
It’s destroying education in the US.
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It makes perfect sense. First you starve the masses of any intellect, then you starve them by depriving food. A match made in heaven.
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Definitely not fireable, or it shouldn’t be in a sane world. Another bright spot was that the comments on the article were in favor of teachers and against testing, many noting that kids are more important than tests.
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You know, she could have manned the pancake station then.
Or she could have taken over surveillance.
Or she could have had the confidence that the teacher was capable of minding both the pancakes and the kids at the same time.
Or she could have understood that the kids knew the teacher was taking care of them and would repay his kindness by taking care to behave appropriately during testing.
She had choices, and this is what she chose.
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If I were administering the test, I’d have set up an organic hot and cold buffet, Viennese cart included.
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One afternoon as I was purchasing snacks for testing season, the bagger at the supermarket was a student of mine. He asked why I was buying so much stuff, and I told him it was for the tests which started the next day. His eyes grew wide and asked did I have to pay for them with my own money. Of course, I said.
When we began testing the next morning, he stood up and announced, “Yo, Ms L. bought us food for the tests with her own money!”
I had such great kids.
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Dear Christine Langhoff:
I love you. Your student shows his affection and appreciation to your care and true love through his announcement in class. May
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Oh, May! Thank you for such kind words!
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High school and college youngsters have always had and will always have the most finely tuned sense of justice and injustice. It’s not that kids today are better attuned. It’s that so many grownups in this 21st century Gilded Age have lost their souls and minds to greed. Grownups have lost their sense of justice. Seriously, it looks like my district is about to hire a Gordon Gekko -style investment banker as superintendent. “Greed is good” my foot! Life is NOT like a box of chocolates; life is like making pancakes; you don’t have to worry about filling in bubbles because they disappear in the REAL final outcome.
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“It’s that so many grownups in this 21st century Gilded Age have lost their souls and minds to greed.”
Ain’t that the truth!
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People making tests should be threatened with pancakes.
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Apparently, they are threatened BY pancakes.
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I wonder if they would freak out or call law enforcement if presented with a box of pastries, like éclairs, Napoleóns, and creampuffs.
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And if the threats don’t work, would you suggest battery ? (throwing partially cooked pancakes or even raw pancake batter)
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I saw this on Twitter today:
“First they came for the pancake makers, and I was silent…”
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Right on, sister!
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Again and again we hear those dedicated to the destruction of the American Public School System saying they are all “failures” and teaching professionals are to blame!
Well if a school is actually a “failing school” the people who should be fired are not the teachers. The school board needs to be totally replaced, any private managers, consultants, service providers, superintendents and building administrators need to be fired, without any severance benefits. The teachers have lost their right to make educational decisions in their classrooms, but are blamed for the big lie that public schools are failing. Now they can be fired for making pancakes to keep their students from being hungry and being able to concentrate on these meaningless test!
No wonder good students are avoiding the teaching profession.
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Professor Kolk – please see my post elsewhere on this thread in this about the growing trend to have classroom teachers in charge of critical decisions made in schools. The structure of public education (with school boards or appointees of mayors) is not working well in some places. Fortunately, some union leaders, teachers, and charter educators are creating a new model – that puts teachers in charge. In some places, these are district public schools. In other places these are chartered public schools.
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This abusive supervision has been happening for decades in LA and NYC. Here it’s lead to the summary dismissal of 5,000 teachers. It’s good to see you finally paying attention. Do you know anybody in the teacher unions that might be able to do anything about this? I didn’t think so.
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What a great teacher! Hip hip hooray, should be made teacher of the yr
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