In its relentless quest to improve education in the United States, corporate reformers are turning teacher education into an online, for-profit business. Advocates say it is very successful because future teachers can beam into the classroom from their homes. Not much interaction with peers. Not much opportunity to practice teach in classes with living children, but who needs living children when virtual children are available and cheap?
Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching
A comment on the blog:
I have been recently forced out of Education after 30 years – perhaps there’s a truth that I am tired, a bit worn out and old school – I cared as much about the child as their progress. But I still have a child in the midst of it (although not in the US) and am appalled at what is happening.
Good teaching is paramount and that means good training and an understanding of educational theories and practises, such that most children can be taught and more importantly they will learn. I feel for young teachers who are led by inexperienced leaders, too many who have come through these ‘fast track’ programs. It’s the business-ification of teaching – cheaper teachers, profit and quick turn over if you fail to meet all these silly targets based on dubious data.
The persistent dismantling of the teaching profession in many Western countries is doing untold damage – to the profession and more importantly to the students. It’s very hard to delivery good quality lessons when you are constantly under attack, being observed by others, criticised by politicians and others who should know better. Our under-achievers need more consistency, more calm and continuity in order to feel secure in their learning, take some risks, learn and make the needed progress.
Teachers are being scape-goated for years of political interference in the US and UK especially: two countries that have NOT improved outcomes for the poorest students. Check the various reports and look to Finland and Australia if you really want to do something about social mobility.
If reformers genuinely want to improve education and not just grand-stand and parade their egoes, they should talk to classroom teachers and perhaps some exit-polling might be informative…
I received this beautiful statement to honor teachers on World Teachers Day. That was October 5. Funny, the day passed unnoticed in the U.S.
It was sent to me on Twitter by Pedro De Bruyckere.
Read this, stand tall, and understand how lucky you are to be a teacher.
It starts like this:
“Teachers are no superheroes
They won’t save the world.
But they will save their children in case of emergency.
They are authors who write new works every single day.
They are directors of their own plays…..”
Teachers: Admired by all except for the knuckleheads and trolls who leave snarky comments on blogs and by legislators who dream up ways to demoralize teachers, perhaps because teachers are held in higher esteem than legislators and add more social value.
A teacher-blogger in New York City sent me this post.
I have a grandson who just started second grade.
I look at this techno-trash and pray that his teachers are not required to pay attention to it.
If this is the kind of “work” that comes out of Tweed (the headquarters of New York City’s “Department of Education”), I have advice for the next Mayor:
Clean out the whole bunch of people who make up these charts, graphs, instructions, mumbo-jumbo statistical nonsense.
Clearly, none of them has ever been a teacher of first grade.
Probably, none of them has ever had a child.
Maybe, none of them ever was a child.
They see children as data.
They see teaching and learning as a statistical exercise.
They value metrics, not children.
Please, Mr. Mayor, send them all packing.
Let them go back to the corporate world where they belong.
Keep them far, far away from children and their teachers.
Mark Naison, one of the founders of the Badass Teachers
Association, explains
in a few words the harsh truth that will not be
discussed at NBC’s Education Nation by its lineup of CEOs and
rightwing governors: The more teachers are scripted and rendered
voiceless, the less likely it is that talented people will want to
be teachers or remain in the classroom. Why can’t they understand
that they are destroying the teaching profession, not attracting
the “best and the brightest”? They may come for two or three years
while they are waiting to decide where to go to graduate school,
but meanwhile the profession as such will no longer exist.
Before you write to tell me that the headline has a triple negative and to correct my grammar, please be aware that it was written knowingly and with a sense of outrage.
In this article, Lindsey Wagner of NC Policy Watch describes the massive demoralization of teachers and the prospect that some teachers will leave North Carolina to find a state where teachers are not treated with contempt, as they are by NC’s governor and legislature.
One businessman quoted says that NC is now exporting teachers because of flat or declining salaries.
And this:
“Teachers not only grapple with reduced budgets at home, but also in their classrooms. Significant cuts to instructional supplies over the past several years have left teachers with little choice but to dig into their own wallets for paper, markers, books and other teaching materials.
“And it’s not just supplies – many educators in North Carolina teach students living in abject poverty. When students comes to school soaked in urine and hungry, teachers once again open their hearts and wallets to get those students extra food and clean clothes so they can actually learn that day.
“Elementary school teachers rely heavily on teacher assistants to manage their classrooms and ensure learning gains, especially at a time when lawmakers have lifted the cap on class size. For the 2013-15 biennial budget, funding for 1 in 5 teacher assistants was cut. Some school districts have been able to save jobs with local funds, but many more have been forced to cut those positions from classrooms.”
And the legislation, in its war on teachers, said that no one would get a salary increment for earning a master’s degree. In other words, the state does not want its teachers to get more education.
Voters should throw these wreckers of public education out at the earliest opportunity.
– See more at: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2013/09/26/is-north-carolina-a-net-exporter-of-teachers/#sthash.ZCz4Rooy.dpuf
This will be a wonderful event. You will love hearing
Anthony Cody and other leading advocates for Real Reform.
WHAT: “School Reform(?)”
A Talk By Anthony Cody on the multiple and often
contradictory messages and meanings of school reform.
WHEN: Thursday, October 24th 7:30PM
WHERE: Connecticut College, Ernst Common Room,
Blaustein Humanities Center,
270 Mohegan Avenue
New London, CT 06371
SPONSOR: Connecticut College Education Department
and the Consortium for Excellence in Teacher Education
The Education Department at Connecticut College is hosting the annual meeting of the Consortium for Excellence in Teacher Education, a northeast regional consortia of 22 liberal arts colleges with teacher education programs. The meeting, on THURSDAY OCTOBER 24, at 7:30pm will be keynoted by Anthony Cody who writes for Education Week. Anthony will speak on the national impact of the current definition of “reform.” There is an amazing panel who will respond to Anthony’s remarks including Helen Gym, co-editor of ReThinking Schools and founder of Parents United, a Philadelphia based parents advocacy group, Robert Cotto, policy analyst for Children’s Voices, and a member of the Hartford CT board of education, and Thomas Scarice, superintendent of Madison Public Schools, who was featured earlier in the year by public education advocate Diane Ravitch. Cody’s talk and the panel’s response will be in Ernst Common Room on the campus of Connecticut College and is open to the public.
The map of the campus can be found at http://www.conncoll.edu/at-a-glance/campus-map/
Moi Naturale is a new blogger. She is Evan Seymour, who worked for KIPP in New Orleans until she learned that had a disability and was unceremoniously abandoned, including losing her health insurance. This is her report on her disenchantment with charter schools.
I will be perfectly frank here. I have seldom criticized KIPP. In part, it is because I like Mike Feinberg, one of the founders. I was very impressed when Mike invited me to speak in Houston a few years ago, knowing that I was a critic of charters. That is the kind of open-mindedness that I admire. And I feel I don’t know enough about how KIPP schools operate, so I have hesitated to make any generalizations.
For those who credit KIPP with having cracked the code of urban education, I have issued what I called the KIPP Challenge: Take over an entire district, no exceptions, no excuses, including the children with disabilities, the ones who don’t speak English, the ones who don’t want to go to school. All of them. I hit a hornet’s nest when I suggested it, and received many vituperative responses.
Evan Seymour knows more about KIPP than I do. She has a personal issue with KIPP, because of the shabby treatment she received, but she has other issues.
She writes:
This is the truth when it comes to charter schools — they aren’t working like society has been led to believe they are. There are a variety of problems with the country’s charter schools, including these:
- a lack of oversight
- exploitation of teachers
- non-compliance with Federal Law as it pertains to students with disabilities
- fiscal irresponsibility
- hiring practices (see: inexperienced teachers, teachers who aren’t interested in remaining in the classroom, teachers who do not at all represent the demographic make-up of the student population they serve)
Evan Seymour was born in Pasadena, California, earned her BA at Spelman College, and studied journalism at the University of Southern California. She currently lives in New Orleans.
Ken K. Kumashiro’s Bad Teacher! How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture should be on your reading list. He has written a thoughtful critique of the current fad in which it is fashionable to blame teachers for the ills of society and for low test scores and student misbehavior. The current fad eliminates any accountability for those who make the laws, write the regulations, decide the policies and context in which teachers work.
Here is a good review of his book.
Reformers often say that they love “great” teachers. They
think that if they drive out all the “bad” teachers, then “the best
and brightest” will flock to teach in the schools. They think they
are restructuring the profession to make it attractive to the top
third of those who graduate from the very best universities.
This comment from a teacher: I feel
both embarrassed and horrified to be a teacher these days. What
keeps me going is being with the students and knowing I am helping
them. However, as a member of this ‘profession’ I am completely
disheartened and turned off by the politics and the bobble-headed
morons who make decisions that impact all of us. It’s like being on
a plane without a pilot….or a train without a conductor….or a
carriage without a horse…or….well, you get the picture. It’s
bad.
Diane Ravitch's blog 