No matter where I go across the media spectrum I constantly hear that the problems in public education are all due to the teachers. So many people remember how horrible school was for them, their teachers forcing them to do all the typical school stuff and how hateful it felt being forced to do what they didn't want to do in the first place. And as a consequence teacher bashing finds resonance.
Indeed, teachers, the spear-points of elected government school policy, get hammered for the constant punctures to each child's intellect, self-esteem and soul. Yet, how sad it is that the teachers get it in the neck when they are, especially at this time, quite powerless to do anything about the policy for which they are so crucified.
Our elected officials who make policy have been jumping on-board the high stakes testing train for decades, for instance. However, it has been since the Good George W. Bush elevated these evaluation tools into a national standard have the electeds been in full testing mode demanding our teachers make excellent test takers out of our children, more than ever reducing the initiative of teachers within their classrooms to just about zero. But, teacher as order taker has been long in the making, pre-dating No Child Left Behind by quite some time.
My natural teaching environment is within the university as in no other level of formal learning can one engage in the learned conversation which is a life-giving force to me. But, for lots of different reasons I've been able to only stay short periods within that ethereal realm. During one spell between appointments I had the idea of teaching high school here in New York City. And so I was appointed in September of 1992 to teach Social Studies in Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn.
I was assigned four classes of ninth graders, along with one class of super-seniors. The super-seniors, those who for one reason or another remained in school at 19 or 20 years of age, slept during the class on the Principles of Government. While I loved the fact that no one disrupted the class at any time, I must admit I, who lived for studious conversation, got quite frustrated. But the greater problems were the ninth graders who were two to three grade levels below on every measure you could care to talk about.
Now, the fourteen year olds presenting the highest challenges were placed in a program called "Discovery". Discovery was an attempt to combine Communication Arts with each of the other subjects. So, my responsibility for two of the classes of ninth graders was in this program. As it turned out Discovery didn't even looked good on paper as the folks who put it together really hadn't a clue how to integrate subjects. Still, we teachers were responsible for making it work. More, and this is the point here, we were told by the supervisor of the program that we had only one semester to turn our kids around from abject academic failures to blooming academic successes, and if we didn't the Principal would terminate the program! There was not a peep from any of the program teachers for they were powerless to alter the program in ways which might have made sense, and each teacher knew they were powerless to alter the academic trajectory of their students in such a time frame, especially when these youngsters would remain within a schooling structure which created the problems in the first place. We were powerless to do anything except say, "Yes, ma'am." and soldier on.
As we all knew would happen, our program children remained failing their classes and the Program ended shortly thereafter.
At some point, it is hoped, our good citizens will get beyond their fixation on teacher bashing and take a real good look at the policies and the policymakers who are the folks ordering teachers to do their bidding for the sake of the easy sound-bite that test scores are up and therefore they should remain in office!
To see a funny, but tragic and realistic, animation demonstrating the teacher as order taker click on http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/school-turnaroundsreform/ha-funny-scary-education-conversation.html?wprss=answer-sheet
Leo... I hear ya on teachers having no power. As my mom always used to say, "the teachers should run the schools" and "kids will tell you what they need". In a conventional American instructional school it is those teachers and those students that are the real heart of any school or other learning environment.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of your anecdote, do you think if you and your fellow program teachers were given the opportunity to craft the Super Senior program based on your collected wisdom, maybe even having the students participate in that crafting, that you could have had a better outcome?
Though I am a big supporter of unions and workers organizing themselves, I have been disappointed that teacher's unions have not pushed harder to take more control over their learning venues in exchange for more responsibility for outcomes. Of course, if your teaching is evaluated based on standardized test scores, that is no real robust evaluation at all.
So I acknowledge your continuing effort to work with our youth and try to provide them with an enriched learning environment and am sad to hear that at times you are forced to be more jailer than learning facilitator.