Peter Smagorinsky is a Professor of English Education at the University of Georgia. He often contributes to Maureen Downey’s blog at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In this post, he lets his students explain why they were inspired by Stephanie Johns, who teaches at Classic City High School in Athens, Georgia.
As you read about this model teacher, Stephanie Johns, you may realize that experience matters. She has distilled her dedication, love, and concern for her students into a daily practice, which enables her to reach them and teach them.
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“(Students)They speak to her care, flexibility, love, respect, compassion, patience, positive outlook, and other non-technical aspects of teaching. Her students in turn tend to work for her, because she makes the effort to connect with and reach out to them.”
Ms. Johns is an outstanding teacher that has earned the respect and admiration of her students. Students can smell a phony, and Ms.John’s former students know she is the real deal. I hope we can attract more young people to this embattled profession, but so many deformers and states influenced by them are making it difficult. We need to stabilize the profession and compensate teachers adequately in order to make this difficult career attractive to bright young people with big hearts.
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Love it. This is what authentic learning looks like. When the classroom professional enables and facilitatettes the young human brain to examine relevant events on their sage, it gives them practice in CRITICAL ANALYSIS (comparing this to that — comparing what they are seeing…. with what is known —prior knowledge.)
But in this political landscape, when a teacher introduces anything, a book, a document a newspaper article, in order to engage kids in a discussion, they face recrimination from the over-seers, not just parents complaining about political correctness) but. top-down administrators that prefer to choose what a teacher must do, must say, must follow in their practice.
The autonomy of the. professional teacher-practitioner has been eroded, until the point where administration can place trained temps in the room to teach to a test.
The disrespect for the professional teacher is rampant. Everyone admires the teacher that prodded them to think, who motivated them to do the hard work of analysis, but then they vote for politicos who derail the school system.
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the most surreal game being played: endless public accolades for teachers who go beyond what is expected, endless public voting for legislators hell bent upon shutting those very teachers down
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yup
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