A former student who all’s him/herself “ArtTeacher” left the following moving tribute to our beloved friend and frequent contributor Dr. Laura Chapman. I wonder if she knew how many lives she influenced, how admired and respected she was? I learned from everything she wrote here.
ArtTeacher wrote:
I was an art education student of Dr. Chapman and her life partner, Patricia Renick from 1974-78 at the University of Cincinnati. We called Patricia “Pat,” and she was vivacious, loving, and upbeat. Her nickname was “Mother Art.” Even as adults, my classmates and I had difficulty dropping the “Dr.” because we held Laura in such high esteem.
I was the first Art Education major to graduate summa cum laude from the school of Design, Architecture and Art, and I still have her letter of recommendation that described me as one of the “brightest and best.” I felt as if I had failed them both when I quit teaching after being RIFed from 2 schools in 3 years.
In 2000 when I became an art teacher again, NCLB was in full force in Ohio, and I boldly phoned her to meet and catch up on current education trends. She laughed when I told her how she struck fear in our undergraduate hearts if we showed up unprepared for her class. She was interested in hearing that two of my 8th graders filled in their scan-tron sheets to create a smiley face and a penis. When I asked what on earth they were doing, one of them said that he was only there so he could attend the dance that Friday. “I happen to know this test doesn’t affect my GPA,” he told me, pointing a finger at my face, “It affects YOU, and I don’t care about you. You can make me come to school, but you can’t make me try.” I told Laura that surely the principals and superintendents would protest the obvious flaws in forcing a school in a rural, low-income area to improve scores on such a test each year, when students’ home lives were such a struggle. The next year I was hired by a surburban elementary school to teach art to over 600 fourth graders, many of whom became physically ill on testing days because they wanted so much to do well, the opposite of the other school.
In 2012 she sent an email asking me to describe how I’m evaluated, how many students I taught, budget, schedules, etc. for a research paper. She said, “The evaluation of teachers by standardized test scores and principal observations is going in the direction that hit the teacher at Oyler (a public school in a low-income area near U.C.). In fact, more standardized tests are in the works and scheduled for administration in 2014, grades 3-12, as a condition for schools receiving federal funds from the ESEA. New state mandates are getting on the books regardless of the governor’s political affiliation. Since 2009, Bill Gates who thinks he is qualified as an expert on education, had been funding many projects that converge on more data gathering and sruveillance of teachers and the overall performance of schools.” So you can see that even as a retired professor, Laura was right on top of everything that was happening, who was doing it, and why.
I started meeting her for breakfast every month or so, to fill her in on what was new at school, and she explained the agenda behind it all, and warn me about was was coming next. I used to awaken in the wee hours with the chlling thought that it was like the plot of a bad sci fi movie, where there seemed no way to effectively fight the evil forces that had taken over. I joined BATs about a month after it began, full of hope that all we had to do was reveal what we knew was going on, and our communities (and unions) would shut it right down. I had even greater hope listening live to the first NPE convention from my home as I prepared art lessons. I remember our union presidents promising Diane to stop accepting Gates’ money, then reneging on that promise three days later.
In 2014 Laura gave a lengthy slide presentation at the Ohio Art Education convention that was titled “The Circular Reasoning Theory of School Reform: Why it is Wrong,” explaining in part why SLOs and VAM were invalid measurements of learning. It was, as you can imagine, annotated like a Master’s Thesis. Her voice was weak because was suffering from COPD and recovering from a cold, but her presentation had an enormous impact. Immeditately afterward we art teachers attended a workshop by the Ohio Dept. of Education intended to train us to write SLOs for our K-12 art students. We nearly rioted. Yet, the following school year, I had to give a test to my fourth graders the first day of school over a list of art vocabulary words I was certain they would not already know. At the end of the year, I tested them on the same 15 words, and nearly every one of 850 students passed with flying colors. Yet most were upset to see their low scores from the beginning of the year. “I can’t believe I was that stupid,” one girl said. I told her that I had to show that she learned something from me, so she was supposed to fail the test the first time. “WHY would you DO that to us?” she gasped. Now we have opted for shared attribution, where 50% of my evaluattion as an art teacher is based on 4th grade math and reading scores.
My students look forward to art class, and I have lost no enthusiasm for teaching them. This is my 20th year at my school, and every year I have something new to try, something marvelous to experience with my students. I rarely miss a single day of teaching. My way of fighting back is to absolutely refuse to let anything dampen my love for teaching art. I actually feel lucky to be an insider during these years, to see and know that even with the most misguided of mandates, my colleagues and I show up every day for the children who come through our doors.
The last time I saw Laura was in late February 2020 when it was becoming obvious that teaching in a building with 2400 fourth, fifth and sixth grade students was putting me at risk for contracting COVID, and that our Saturday breakfasts must stop to protect Laura’s health. I held my breath and hugged her. My school shut down mid-March, and I was allowed to teach online from home last year — to about 900 students in grades 1-4. I sent long emails describing what that was like, and she was fascinated by my reports. She said she was picking up groceries, staying in her condo, and of course, continuing her research and advocacy. In the spring I asked if we could get together again, and although she didn’t say no, she closed by wishing me and my famliy good health and happy lives. I knew that it was her way of saying good-bye.
Expecting students to get better scores each year is a “blame the teacher” strategy. Why should this year’s fifth graders get better scores than last years? Last year they were fourth graders. It isn’t as if they were another year advanced on the same topics, they are new to the topics of fifth grade. A rational expectation is that this years fifth graders should do about as well as last years.
To expect that they will do better is to expect that a teacher will magically do a better job of teaching and the fifth graders will do a better job of learning in just one year. And why should they?
If you give a salesperson a quota and then increase it year after year, you know what you get? A burned out salesperson.
Is it any wonder that teachers are leaving the profession?
Steve, the expectation that scores would rise for every new cohort every year was always magical thinking.
nicely said
As Albert Einstein said “The definition of insanity is expecting that students will become as smart as I am if you test them enough.”
Also attributed to Einstein, but not verified, “The definition of insanity is testing kids over and over and expecting different results”
As a former art teacher and retired Principal I find this to be a wonderful letter about the perseverance required to serve students. Thank you for sharing!
“As a former art teacher and retired Principal. . . ”
My condolences to you on the latter.
Thank you for this lovely tribute to Laura Chapman. I could always tell from her comments on this blog that she was a serious, diligent researcher that sought truth. She was a life long supporter of public education, and I will miss her insights and comments on this blog.
This art teacher’s comments very clearly addresses the “reign of terror” that public schools, students and teachers have faced for the past twenty years. So-called reform has been a disaster of repeated bad ideas, some of which have been eradicated, but many of which continue. The spirit of data collection and competency based education lives on even for those that teach the arts even if it makes no sense.
My cousin’s daughter is a music teacher. She taught in two different school districts in two years. This year she is working in Pittsburgh, although her friends and family are in the Philly area. Budget cuts always hit the arts first, and it is not uncommon for teachers to get furloughed through no fault of their own. It is part of the legacy of privatization.
THIS
” I HAD to give a test…
most were upset to see their low scores from the beginning of the year.
“I can’t believe I was that stupid,” one girl said.
I told her that I HAD to …
“WHY would you DO that to us?”
Enter: Just following orders,
as if the concept established at the
1945 Nuremberg Trials, was
something outside of “Never Forget”.
“I was just following orders”
DOES NOT EXONERATE
How about, “In order to remain your teacher, I had an awful choice to make.”
OK tultican,
Do they “learn” doing the wrong thing
with a “good” heart, is still wrong?
Is example not the best leader?
Can you say GAGA Good German attitudes in implementing educational malpractices?
You could say GAGA, or how about NOT-SEEZ ?
No.
Duane,
I know you like to berate Germans as a class, but it’s a slur against all Germans.
My wife is German, and she is a good person.
I am not berating Germans as a class. I am of German heritage. I am berating teachers and adminimals as a class for their Good German attitude in implementing the standards and testing malpractice regime without a bit of meaningful protest. . . except for the few of us who protested it all along.
I don’t know why you consider the term as a slur against Germans as it is not at all.
One of the noticeable behaviors I see in education today is a sort of predictable acceptance of testing based on whether it shows a win or a loss. Especially in administrators, this tendency runs deep. Horrible scores will bring criticism of the test, but good scores are celebrated. A school I know recently learned that their last year’s scores were at the top, despite Covid. Wild celebrations. Seems no one is asking whether this is really good news, or whether this was the same old crap information tests always provide us.
What you describe is adminimal public mental masturbation. . . it feels nice but is not the real thing in evaluating the teaching and learning process.
Please, let’s not compare a decent, sincere and very honest teacher to a Schutzhaftlagerführer. If a teacher refuses to administer a state or district mandated test, they will be written up or fired. Or the teacher will voluntarily quit teaching because of all the test craziness?
GAGA? In the case of the Germans during the Hitler years, if they didn’t go along, they would be visited by the SS, arrested and tortured. If they continued telling dirty jokes about Der Führer, they would be killed, sent to a concentration camp or sent to be a slave laborer at the V-2 rocket installations.
As for teachers, during the reign of testing madness, the best way to protest is as a group, a mass.
NoBrick,
Teachers that love their job and are doing what they have to do to keep that job and continue teaching is not in any way comparable to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals involved in the Final Solution that deliberately murdered millions of innocent people of all ages.
If it wasn’t for those dedicated teachers doing what they have to do stay in the classroom, the greedy, lying, manipulating frauds —
(like Bill Gates, the Koch family, all members of ALEC and the Walston family, et al)
— behind the privatization and profitization of K-12 public education would replace those teachers with clueless, gullible, easy to fool and manipulate TFA recruits and there would be few if any dedicated teachers like this art teacher left.
When President Reagan changed the health care industry in the U.S. from non-profit (back then, Reagan U.S. health care socialized medicine) to an industry based on profit, should all of the dedicated doctors and nurses quit and found a job in another sector like selling real estate?
The same thing also happened to the prison industry. When corporate profitization of private prisons led to increased numbers of Americans spending more time behind bars until the U.S. is always #1 with the largest prison population in the world, should all of the dedicated guards and police refuse to work?
An economic war is being waged in the United States that favors the wealth 1% and punished the other 99%. What’s happening to public education, the prison industry, and health care are battles in that war.
The dedicated teachers, doctors, and police/guards must stay and fight back.
I want to an example that running away as a way to protest something you disagree with is not always the best choice:
“Businessman Oskar Schindler arrived in Krakow in 1939, ready to make his fortune from World War II, which had just started. After joining the Nazi party primarily for political expediency, he staffed his factory with Jewish workers for similarly pragmatic reasons. When the SS begins exterminating Jews in the Krakow ghetto, Schindler arranged to have his workers protected to keep his factory in operation, but soon realizes that in so doing, he is also saving innocent lives.”
https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/oskar-schindler
How many dedicated K-12 public school teachers are saving children’s futures by staying in the classroom doing the best they can to teach in spite of the difficult to impossible conditions created by someone like Bill Gates?