The New York Times was late in recommending carrots and sticks for teachers. Here is a school that is doing it already (satire alert!):
http://studentslast.blogspot.com/2012/08/grin-and-bear-it-teachers-paddled-in.html
Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching
This is what teachers work for: knowing they made a difference in the lives of students.
Have you thanked a teacher lately?
I have every single note that a parent has sent me over the years and every card that my students, once old enough to actually write (i teach pre-) has sent me years later. I have my entire fridge covered in notes and some of my kitchen cabinets as well, along with class pictures from every year I have been in my current school.
I have one family who send me pictures of the four of their children who have passed through my class. I have one more coming next year.
No amount of money can give me the feeling that those cards and pictures and notes give me.
When my students come back to my room and tell my current pre-k children what they did when they were in my class and how important it is to listen and pay attention, I want to cry.
The people who think that carrots and sticks are the answer don’t understand that some people have callings and others just get a job.
A reader asks a question, and I ask the teachers who follow this blog to answer him.
I suggest he read the earlier posts on the subject, but please feel free to give him your answer based on your experience:
| What if metrics could be established apart from testing? Does anyone have ideas as to how metrics could be gleaned apart from testing? Seems to me the state (and its funding) want to frame teacher improvement within their own understandings of measurement.
If you could somehow assess another teaching aspect on a consistent basis, do you think that would help remove the otherwise normally applied incentive to good, hard work (salary or bonus compensation)? I don’t mean to be rude, just curious as to your perspectives. |
Yesterday I posted a comment by a reader who said that his teachers had saved his life and changed him for the better.
He thanked four of his teachers in the Chicago public schools and he named them.
One of the teachers he thanked just responded and thanked him!
How cool is that?
That is true psychic income!
That’s better than the shekels that the teacher might have been paid for raising test scores.
She changed his life.
Hey, Roland Fryer, what about that as an incentive to teach?
She made a difference.
When I ask myself why I spend so much time on this blog, I’ll remember this.
This reader writes about the teachers who changed his life:
I had four CPS public school teachers to thank for recognizing and nurturing my strengths in English, writing and creativity, in 7th through 10th grades: Miss Fox, Mrs. Langdon, Miss Schwartz and Mrs. Gordon.
Until middle school, I did not think I had any academic strengths. In part, this was because, in 4th grade, when my mom remarried, I gained a step-father who frequently referred to me as “dumb”. He often said that, in his estimation, I was just too stupid to be able to excel at school. He turned out to be an example of how wrong non-educators can be about students and learning.
Thanks to these great CPS teachers, I developed confidence in my abilities, was inspired to broaden my interests, and I graduated with straight A’s from high school and summa cum laude from college. I will be forever indebted to them for rekindling my love of learning, because in spite of my achievements, my step-father never did change his views about my capabilities and always found a way to downplay my academic success. Thank goodness I learned at an opportune time in my development that his opinion didn’t matter as much as the professional judgments of those who are skilled in learning and teaching.
Teachers and others have debated the post “Why Are Teachers Silent?” The post has generated more response than anything else I have posted, with (so far) 101 comments.
Clearly, many teachers feel keenly that they should speak up against the policies they know are wrong, the practices they know are harmful to children, but many are fearful. There is a climate of fear and intimidation that now pervades many schools and districts. There is a belief in the corporate reform world that top-down control and direction are necessary, and that those who disagree are troublemakers who must be silenced. And as I said in the original post, teachers need to put food on the table and pay their mortgage.
This teacher has wrestled with her sense of ethical and moral responsibility as a professional. She responded to another regular commenter on the blog, who goes by the sobriquet “Labor Lawyer”:
Labor Lawyer,
Thank you very much for making this clear. As a tenured teacher, I feel very strongly that I must speak out. Given the current atmosphere of administrative persecution of those who do so, I advise our bright, young, non-tenured teachers to take their counsel in private with those they trust. I do feel that my speaking out is an ethical and moral imperative …… at least for myself. My problem is that I feel just as strongly about my perceived duty as a teacher of children to first do no harm. This ususally means abstaining from implementing stupid reform policies pushed (very agressively) by my administration. When asked about my abstention by my colleagues, I tell them that it is, for me, a matter of conscious. I have often said publicly (and I believe) that I do NOT work for any administrator. Instead, I work for the people of my district as represented by the school board. To my way of thinking, it is my moral and ethical obligation to teach the children of my district to the very best of my ability. To fulfill this obligation, it is imperative that I ignore much of the foolishness that is modern school reform. I must ask you (and will very much appreciate you expertise in this area), are my words and my perspective on this issue little more than bellicose rhetoric? Legally, ethically, and morally, where do I stand in you evaluation?
Who do you think should be required to teach? We are watching the entries in the teacher survivor contest, and here is another strong contender:
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The contest: Nominate someone who should be a teacher and see what it is like. Here is a strong contender:
I would nominate my superintendent. He would have to teach according to his allotment of minutes per subject area that he sends out every September. The only problem with his schedule is that it allows no time for snack, transitioning between subjects/ specials, sharing, and sometimes just having fun (I should whisper that last word: fun left the curriculum years ago). I currently teach second grade. One kid coming in upset or eager to share the news of a new baby in the family can put the whole day’s schedule off. Children aren’t machines that can be turned on/ off when it suits our purposes. When did learning to be a human being leave the curriculum?
Earlier today, I suggested a “teacher survivor contest” and invited readers to propose candidates to teach, as well as the rules of the competition. A reader suggests that teaching in an urban classroom is no more challenging than teaching in a rural classroom. I did not specify teaching either in an urban or a rural setting. She proposes a rural edition of the contest:
| I’d like to see the contest as the RURAL edition. Bill Gates and the Waltons assigned as the teacher in a 1 or 2 room school, teaching from 7:30 AM to 4:00 PM, 4 days a week with students in grades K-8. Lunch is a brown-bagger with students. There is a morning nutrition break, which the teacher must prepare, serve, and clean-up.The teacher has all duties, and there are no “specials”, except music for 45 minutes, once a week, about 3 out of 4 weeks per month. Of course, there is no on-site special education teacher, so the classroom teacher must make all accommodations and modifications within the regular classroom, and/or must facilitate, (in the regular classroom with all other students to attend to) therapy via computer teleconferencing.The teacher(s) must provide lesson plans for every grade, every subject, every day, with reference to state and common core standards. There are no colleagues within a 75 mile radius. All disciplinary problems must be handled by the teacher, on site.Parents may show up at any time and may remove their children for such reasons as “he [a 5-year old] is needed to work the round-up”, or “he [an 8-year-old] has to go on the deer hunt with me if we are to have any meat this winter”. Oh, also, on a fairly regular basis, the teacher must deal with scorpions and with sidewinders on the playground, and the yearly tarantula migration that goes right through the school yard. No special training is provided or required to deal with these issues, and of course, they were not likely covered in the 5 week training (or even in a 4-year course). The teacher is expected to live on-site in a trailer. The nearest grocery store and gas station is 75 miles away, and the prices are much higher than in the city.None of this is made up or exaggerated; these are the actual working and living conditions in a Nevada rural school where I taught for 3 years., and the same conditions still apply. More often than not, the teacher hired for this position has little or no experience teaching, so perhaps the 5-week preparation isn’t all that much of a factor. I’m betting the oligarchs wouldn’t last a month, but if they should survive, they get the lowest pay in the state for their efforts, and if they leave before their year’s contract is over, their contract specifies that they will be billed for the cost of finding a replacement for them. Of course, they could also be sued for “abandonment” in this state, and lose their teaching license into the bargain. |
A comment by a reader suggests a new contest. Who would you like to see assigned to teach for a year and under what conditions? What are the terms of the contest and how would you determine the winner?
Put your thinking caps on. The contest lasts for 24 hours only and may be shortened or extended by the decision of the judge (me).
Ready, set, go!
Sounds like a good show but I’d prefer to watch “Survivor Inner City Edition” where in September they put ed reformers like Gates, Broad, various politicians and members of the Walton family in a city like say Newark with only 5 weeks of TFA training. They would have to live on a 1st year teacher’s salary and use only the resources available in that school. Of course they would get that extra “loss aversion” incentive money but they won’t be able to spend it until the following year when their test results are finally posted. The one who makes it to June wins! What you ask? The chance to do it all again the next year! But then again if their scores didn’t improve well then maybe not.
Diane Ravitch's blog 