LABOR DAY WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Students at Hawthorne Scholastic Academic on Chicago's North Side picked up supplies to use at home in the waning days of summer vacation. Remote classes for Chicago Public Schools students begin today. Manuel Martinez / WBEZ

CPS parent

“I seriously want to cry. … There is NO WAY he can be online all day like this. It isn’t possible.” A teacher responded: “Believe me, teachers are crying too.” -- WBEZ

Diane Ravitch

 I am a proud anti-fascist. Are you? -- Blog

Robert Reich

No other developed nation has nearly the inequities found in the US, even though all have been exposed to the same forces of globalization and technological change. -- Guardian

Donald Trump

...says his appointed Pentagon brass "want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy." -- WH Press Conference 

Columnist Eugene Robinson

 Trump’s message to Whites is unmistakable: Be afraid. Those people — you know who I mean — are trying to take over your country. I will stop them. All of this is nothing less than undisguised white supremacy. -- Washington Post

Senior administration official

“The president means no disrespect to our troops; it’s just that the way he speaks, he can sound like an asshole sometimes." -- Daily Beast

WEEKEND QUOTABLES: The search for truth

Dana Milbank on the death of a border patrol agent

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it. -- Washington Post 

Porter’s ex-wife, Jennifer Willoughby

"Truth exists" whether Trump "accepts it or not". -- CNN

Tad O’Malley, conservative conspiracy theorist in the X-Files

“Truth is fluid and alterable.” -- The Verge

 Gary Younge

...before radical history can be embraced by the establishment it must be washed clean of whatever ideology made it effective. Radical change is most likely to come from below, be fiercely resisted by entrenched interests from above and achieved through confrontation. -- Guardian

On FOX Chicago, reporter Mike Flannery asks former Chicago top cop Garry McCarthy about the LaQuan McDonald shooting death and officer Jason Van Dyke's culpability. McCarthy, a Trump supporter and pal of neo-fascist Rudy Giuliani, is making noises about running for mayor.

Here's an excerpt of that interview. 

Mike Flannery: Many Chicagoans look at that (video of Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald) and they see a murder. Do you?

Garry McCarthy: Um. He's gonna have a hard time, Jason Van Dyke, explaining why he did what he did. That's the bottom line. He gets his due process just like anybody else. But it's gonna be really difficult to make a case. There are cases -

Flannery: Do you see a murder?

McCarthy: You know (long pause)

Flannery: Why are you reluctant to say that?

'Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them.'
- Judy Blume, who celebrates a landmark birthday today. Happy birthday!#MondayMotivation pic.twitter.com/6QkZ2YERcL

— Waterstones (@Waterstones) February 12, 2018

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Samantha Eyler-Driscoll

Senior Editor at the Stigler Center and its publication ProMarket, and one of six members of the ProMarket editorial board, I have opposed since its inception the proposal by my colleague Luigi Zingales to provide a platform to Steve Bannon at the Stigler Center, as well as the use of ProMarket to promote the provision of that platform, on grounds that it normalizes white nationalism and implicates us in the concrete violence wrought on American lives every day by that ideology. -- Resignation statement

Donald Trump

"I wouldn't say I'm a feminist..." -- Interview with Piers Morgan 

Janelle Monae

 “We are also daughters, wives, mothers, sisters and human beings. We come in peace, but we mean business.” -- Grammys

Tiffany Kidd, Ballou H.S. math teacher

“I feel like we’re now in a culture where we’re forced to fail students, where we used to be able to provide solutions.There’s been anger and frustration.” -- Washington Post

Chicago State board member Nicholas Gowen 

...said he was taken aback by Vallas’ resignation. “Quite frankly, I’m a little floored,” Gowen said. “If he desires to run for mayor, then of course he can’t keep this position, but that should have been made clear early on if that was his desire. I find it hard to believe this was a lark.” --  Tribune

Recess is the fourth R https://t.co/4176f7JKJ6

— John Merrow (@John_Merrow) January 29, 2018

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

R.I.P. Erica Garner

Erica Garner 

"I'm in This Fight Forever" -- The Root

Lenny Steinhorn, historian at American University 

"1968 was the perfect storm that crystallized the differences in society." -- U.S. News 

 Chicago Mayor Richard Daley at '68 Convention

 When Senator Abraham Ribicoff, of Connecticut, was giving a speech, the mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, shouted at him, “Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch, you lousy motherfucker, go home.” -- New Yorker, "Lessons from the Election of 1968"

Arthur Goldstein @teacherarthurG

Every kid can learn, but every kid can learn differently at different times. Some kids need more time than others. Some have learning disabilities. Some don't know English. A full 10% of our kids are homeless, and as long as we continue to ignore that, we won't be serving them no matter how often we give them the meaningless label of "college ready." -- NYC Educator 

Kenzo Shibata (DSA) 

We really do need to envision what organized labor looks like and it's not always going to look like money taken out of your paycheck to pay for representing you at the negotiating table. States and different locals are approaching it differently. But people have to feel like they're together, part of a union...Changing that mindset is going to be key to their survival. -- Hitting Left 

In 1969, you have founding of the Gay Liberation Front, the AIM occupation of Alcatraz, and the formation of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, in 1970 you have the Women's Strike for Equality and the student strike against the Vietnam war. The groundwork for this is 1968

— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) January 1, 2018

Erica Garner. A warrior in the long tradition of black women who see someone they loved ripped away from them and even in their mourning somehow love us enough to stand, to speak, to fight for something better. In your honor, in your name, we can never give up.

— wikipedia brown (@eveewing) December 30, 2017

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

“I’m here because I oppose how education in Germany is structured, that they’re training us to be workers and not thinkers.” -- Hendro Myrow, 18, a student in Hamburg.

Sydney Chaffee, 2017 National Teacher of the Year

Let’s work to ensure that education represents liberation. Let’s keep our ears and hearts open to our students’ brilliance, even when it makes us uncomfortable. Let’s envision education as a time machine that helps our students travel to worlds we have only imagined — ones that are built on ideals of justice and equity and collaboration. -- National Education Association 

47th Ward Ald. Ameya Pawar, candidate for governor in IL

Ald. Ameya Pawar

"You have to have a progressive income tax. We owe what we owe [to state pensioners] and if I'm elected, we will make good on that promise...We can't allow the pension system to go belly-up and by extension, to allow the city to go belly-up. I have always voted to protect pensions. I don't know that everyone in the race can say that." -- Interview on Hitting Left with the Klonsky Bros. 

Rahm Emanuel's big lie

“What’s very, very important for the people in Chicago, all of the taxpayers and all of the employees and employers, all four of our pensions — police pensions, fire pensions, laborers pension and municipal employees pension — you have a secure retirement now.” -- Chicago Tribune 

French President Emmanuel Macron as G20 ends

“Our world has never been so divided.” -- Washington Post 

Pope Francis warns G20 about 'dangerous alliances'

 "The G20 worries me, it hits migrants in countries in half of the world and it hits them even more as time goes by." He said the greatest danger concerned immigration, with "the poor, the weak, the excluded and the marginalised" juxtaposed with "those who... fear the invasion of migrants". -- Reuters

Sen. Rob Portman's code word for Jews?

 “We aren’t going to allow a handful of Socialists, many of whom are from New York, to disrupt our ability to serve the needs of the Ohio constituents who contact us in need of vital services every day,” -- Washington Post  

Jeff's first day back at school after the election debacle

My friend Jeff Spitz teaches documentary story, research, production, outreach and social activism at Columbia College in Chicago. Here he describes his first day back at school after the election.

So my students picked me up as I knew they would.

The energy level was low and everyone was down at first as we met for the Chicago course.

I have an unusual group with only two white female students -- both of whom are super liberal, friendly and adventurous.  The other students are an African-American woman from the South Side, an African-American guy from Oak Park, a Mexican American guy from Park Ridge, an Iranian guy from Orange County, CA and a Muslim woman, also from SoCal. These are some of the best kids I have ever had as a group. They really have bonded.

You should have heard the comments from the south-side woman. She was so painfully upset that a rapist woman-hater and racist got elected president. She was truly in shock and scared that so many white people living in this country could want such a person in the White House. She started it off by saying she loves everyone in the class and sees us all as family. But she was angry at all the people on social media who made jokes about voting for Trump just to get a reaction. She didn’t like that and now she is furious at all those people.

When Sam from Park Ridge spoke he surprised us all by saying that even though he grew up and went to high school in the burbs, his parents were immigrants. He wore a shirt today with bold letters on the front saying "Fuck Trump.”  The statement was on his chest above an American flag. He’s a former high school football player.

Then Sean from Orange County who is dark and funny and super insightful said he grew up getting shit from white kids because of his skin color.  He said he remembers feeling like he wished he was never born because of that treatment.  He feels that this election has given every racist white license to treat him that same way now and to feel good about it.  He can’t believe he has to face more of the same crap now as a college student.  He said it started for him after 911.

He is a big dude and his comments put me in tears.

The Muslim student talked about her little sisters who are growing up with her mom in Rome and how her mom had called her and cried over the phone. "They are so sad for their daughter in America", she said. She grew up in SoCal with her father who also called from San Clemente to share his feelings with his daughter.  She said he was shocked and very worried for his daughter in Chicago.

My Chinese exchange student was also shocked that Trump could even be considered a candidate for president of the US. She said Chinese friends on WeChat were filling her screen with comments about his lack of qualifications.  And questions about how Americans could allow such a person to run for such a high office.

A female student explained that she grew up in an all-white community northwest of Chicago and that she appreciates how her parents raised her to accept everyone. Being white and did not make her racist. Now she worries that she will be tainted as a racist because she is white and that she can’t really say anything because she will be considered "privileged." She worries that she will be lumped with the white racists who are now emboldened to say horrible things and act like it’s cool because their racist candidate is the winner.

So this is what Trump winning is all about for my students today.  A racist, hateful and ignorant America. It is messing up a lot of young people’s minds. The kids know that Hillary won the popular vote. It doesn’t matter one bit.  They are frightened for their siblings, for their parents and most of all for their own futures.

We have to reassure our students that winning is something else entirely. We have to re-frame what has happened and give all the people who've been marginalized a voice moving forward.

We have to take the best of what Obama represented when he was a candidate and wrap ourselves in that while fighting everything that Trump tries to do in our name. Finally, we have to teach resistance to racism, sexism and all the other divisive “isms" that this fascist used to "win"this election.

Now for my second class of the day….

Baseball and schooling still both a players' game

Cubs Jason Heyward went 0-5 but may have been the MVP

The amazing Cubs could never have won 103 regular season games or even gotten to the playoffs and World Series without a manager like Joe Maddon, who encouraged his players to do what they do best. He kept his young team loose and confident all year. His starting pitchers knew when they were scheduled to pitch and what was expected of them and his closer, the great Alroldis Chapman, brought over from the Yankees, was mentally ready to come in to demolish three opposing hitters with his 100+mph fastball, in the 9th inning of any close game.

Then, for some some reason, which shall remain a mystery, all that changed during the last three games of the Series. Suddenly, under pressure of his team being down 3-1, Maddon morphed into an uber-manager, over-thinking and taking the game away from his players. It was as if he panicked and lost confidence in the very players who helped get the team to where it was.

I won't rehash all the details here. But I watched Chapman leave the dugout in tears last night after giving up a game-tying home run when his overworked arm just couldn't deliver any more. I heard ace starter Jon Lester say, no mas to any more relief pitching after he was misused and wild-pitched home 2 Cleveland runs in the 5th.

Maddon's pitching changes and over-managing over the last three games were both puzzling and disheartening, even to his own players. I'm not saying anything here that every sports writer, TV commentator and fan hasn't said a hundred times over the past three days. Of course this all makes for great between-pitch chatter and after all, isn't that what's wonderful about the pace and cerebral quality of a baseball game.

Then, after the In***ns tied the game in the 8th and had all the momentum working for them, a miracle happened. The Cleveland sky opened up and the rains came down so hard that the game was stopped while the ground crew rolled out the tarp and TV viewers (including lots of teachers who had to wake up early and teach this morning) all groaned.

Thankfully, the rain delay only lasted 17 minutes. But it was enough time for the Cubs players, led by right-fielder Jason Heyward, to hold a "players only" meeting without Maddon and his coaches. With little time for complaining or criticizing, the players picked each other up and pulled the team together. They realized that the game was on their shoulders now, regardless of what their managers/coaches/execs did or didn't do.

This from USA Today:

There were no coaches, no front-office types. Just the players, all 25 of them crammed into a tiny room with bright, white walls, low ceilings and row upon row of gleaming weights... With his teammates surrounding him, Heyward began to speak. He’s a quiet man, Heyward, preferring to let the other veterans be the vocal leaders in the clubhouse. So when he does speak, his words have a gravity that commands full attention.

Looking around the room, Heyward said that every single one of them had played a part in bringing the Cubs to this point. Whether it was soon-to-be NL MVP Kris Bryant, rookie Albert Almora or veteran backup catcher Miguel Montero, Heyward reminded them, the Cubs had gotten this far as a team.

They had everything they needed to win, Heyward said, so long as they believed in each other and played for one another.

“He spoke up and said this is about your teammates,” David Ross said. “He just said, `We’re the best team in baseball for a reason. Continue to play our game, support one another. These are your brothers here, fight for your brothers, lift them up, continue to stay positive. We’ve been doing this all year so continue to be us.’

The rest, as they say -- well, you know the rest -- with the Cubs winning the game with 9th-inning heroics. The team's first World Series victory in 108 years. There's nothing like a victory to paper over the mistakes of management. Unlike players' errors, they're never recorded in the box score. Heyward, who went hitless last night, could have well been the team's MVP.

Lessons for educators...Good schools are about teaching and learning. Principals, department heads, corporate boards (for charter schools) may have their roles to play but it's teachers and students that are the heart and soul of any school.

And unlike professional sports, education when done right, isn't about winners and losers based on somebody else's metrics. No race to the top.

Baseball and schooling are still both the players' game.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Wesley Mann

Sankofa co-director Raoul Roach (son of Max Roach), Harry Belafonte and Gina Belafonte at the Many Rivers to Cross festival in Fairburn, Ga. 

 Harry Belafonte

“America has a cancer that’s at work, and it’s slowly distributing itself through the national body. There’s a million reasons to mobilize, but [now] Donald Trump has stepped into the space. It isn’t Trump the man, [it’s] the number of people who approve of him, who embrace him.” -- Billboard

Author Paul Mason

If we do not break this cycle, you can easily see capitalism being replaced by a stagnant neo-feudalism. -- Postcapitalism and the city

Michael Zilles, President Newton, MA Teachers Association

...once this cruel experiment in market competition has played itself out, we are left with chronically underfunded public schools, school closures, disrupted lives, and an ever more unbreakable pattern of segregation, inequality, and poverty. To avoid that risk, any reasonable person would vote “no” on Question 2. -- Boston Globe

Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chair Dave Archambault II

"We need the federal government to step in and start protecting us from the state officials." -- Democracy Now

 Bill McKibben

 "The shocking images of the National Guard destroying tepees and sweat lodges and arresting elders this week remind us that the battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline is part of the longest-running drama in American history -- the United States Army versus Native Americans." -- New York Times

Lesson Plans

Nice piece of writing by Chicago high school teacher and Louder Than a Bomb poetry coach, Dave Stieber at Huffington, "Lessons Learned in Englewood: 8 Years of Reflections From a CPS Teacher". Worth sharing with my students and fellow educators.

Dave Stieber's I Teach website is here.

THE POINT OF PRODUCTION... I did some classroom walk-throughs and observations (not evaluations) with a middle school principal yesterday. Watched him interact and give good, welcomed feedback to teachers. He's trying to help build a professional community based on trust and collaboration.

The classroom, for him, is where most good discussions of school improvement and teaching/learning start. But few principals I see are prepared or have the time or inclination to be instructional leaders, coaches, connoisseurs of good teaching, and many of the new ones, coming out of the power philanthropists' training programs, have little teaching experience themselves. They're increasingly sent in to become building managers and ramrods. Walk-throughs and observations, little more than gotchas, trying to affirm the dominant narrative about "bad teachers" being the problem. 

Thanks for that narrative, Arne Duncan.

ANOTHER REASON I'M A FAN of Karen Lewis. She's carrying on the legacy of our first black mayor, Harold Washington.. Chicago Reporter's Curtis Black writes:

The New Era Windows Cooperative was the perfect setting for Karen Lewis to deliver her core message to an enthusiastic group of supporters: What Chicago needs is “a restoration of participatory democracy.”

“When you have participatory democracy, people can determine what’s best for their communities, as opposed to waiting for years for some development from on high that may or may not be meaningful” in addressing issues faced by residents, the teachers union president and prospective mayoral candidate told a gathering sponsored by the McKinley Park Progressive Association this week.

Karen's rap got Black to remark:

 It sounds like she would restore something like the community hearings on the city budget that Mayor Harold Washington instituted in 1983. Mayor Richard M. Daley continued those hearings, though their number was reduced sharply and they became rather perfunctory. Mayor Rahm Emanuel canceled them after his first year in office.

Remarkable isn't it, that 30 years later, Harold's name is still invoked by all sides as the model of good government.

A ray of hope in Chicago

While the mayor and his City Council minions argue over which IG should investigate their own bad behavior, it's pretty clear now that there will be two viable, progressive opponents running against Rahm and his machine in next year's election -- CTU President Karen Lewis and the council's Progressive Caucus leader Bob Fioretti.

The Ward Room's Erin Carlson writes:

Should both Lewis and Fioretti challenge Emanuel, there's a chance the political progressives—who appeal to different segments of anti-Rahm voters—could together draw down the incumbent Democrat's percentage of the vote.

I hope she's right.

REFRESHING... Mayoral politics aside, it's important to know that out in the schools, teachers are still focused on teaching their kids. For most, it's not about Common Core, Charlotte Danielson, or which battery of tests is being imposed on them this year. Don't miss Chicago science teacher Phil Cantor's excellent piece in today's S-T on the work he and his colleagues are doing at North Grand High School (not a charter nor a selective-enrollment school). Phil and fellow teachers are focused on the social-emotional side of learning as opposed to current CPS testing madness.

When teachers get to know students’ lives, it’s easier to understand where a student’s bad mood or overreaction to a social slight might come from. When a teacher finds out a child is homeless and sleeps on a different couch each week, that teacher is more likely to take a problem-solving approach to student tardiness than a punitive one.

By scheduling weekly team meetings to compare how our students are doing emotionally we’ve been able to shift our school culture to be more holistic and more successful, even as standardized tests and impersonal data play a larger role in how schools are measured. 

There's hope.

Mighty Girl/Timeline photos

Happy 60th birthday to Ruby Bridges, As a six-year-old, Ruby became the first African American child to desegregate an all-white elementary school in the South. When the 1st grader walked to William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans on November 14, 1960 surrounded by a team of U.S. Marshals, she was met by a vicious mob shouting and throwing objects at her. #Courage

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Zephyr Teachout

“The failure of the Dream Act and the failure of Fair Elections are all traceable to the fact that we don't have a Democratic Senate, and we don't have a Democratic Senate because Governor Cuomo has not acted like he's wanted one.” -- Capital

Kate Frood

London Headteacher Kate Frood

"What's special about my generation of heads is that we were class teachers the 1980s, when it was about child-centred learning. I don't mean all play, play, play and painting; I mean we learned our trade when what mattered was the child. This was before the national curriculum came in 1989, then testing." -- The Guardian

Crain's 

The charter school bond market is back, and even a Securities and Exchange Commission action against Chicago-based UNO Charter School Network Inc. this month for defrauding bondholders is unlikely to slow that growth. Charter schools nationally raised $1.3 billion in bond offerings last year, the most since they were first issued in 1998. Investors eager for higher yields are fueling the market, which is dominated by junk bonds.  Bond market likes charter school scores

Rep. Raúl Grijalva 

 “With the release of this memo, the American people have a glimpse into decisions made in our name where lives hang in the balance. The fact that American lives are on the line too should give all of us pause. It’s time to end the secrecy surrounding our drone policies, and I applaud the administration’s move to release this memo. It’s a far cry from outright transparency, but it is a good first step.” -- Progressive Caucus Leaders Applaud Release of Drones Memo

Making learning authentic

With attacks mounting on colleges of education, including from Sec. of Ed Arne Duncan, I'm happy to read the occasional story about good young teachers who learned their skills in good teacher training programs. Yesterday's piece in DNAinfo gives us a snapshot of 5th-grade teacher Heather Reed at Chicago's Pritzker Elementary, teaching the way it's supposed to be done. Ms. Reed comes out of DePaul's teacher ed program.

Now in her eighth year of teaching at Pritzker School, Reed said her approach to teaching "relies heavily on making learning authentic to my students" because "if a topic doesn't matter to them, or they can't find something interesting in it, they're not very likely to understand or remember it."

Quotables

Billionaire Rauner

Bruce Rauner

“Capitalism is the greatest poverty-fighting machine in the history of mankind, and I’m proud of the role I’ve played in it,” says Rauner who reported his last year net income at $53 million. -- Sun-Times

Alderman Harry Osterman

"We don't need a charter school. we don't need another high school in Edgewater. We have one." -- DNAinfo

Jitu Brown (KOCO)

"That is not a choice. This [closing of Dyett H.S.] is displacement by force. This historic neighborhood, we feel, is being gutted." -- DNAinfo

Diane Ravitch

 It seems to me that we are thinking about children, teachers, and schools the same way we think about sports teams. In every league, there are winners and losers. But if we think about education as a culture that is very different from that of a competitive sports league, then the picture and the questions change. -- Huffington

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Diane Ravitch

The embargo seems as antique as the now ancient slogans.The sooner the embargo is lifted, the sooner there will be normal relations between our countries. -- My vacation in Cuba

Wendy Lecker, Connecticut Adocate

It is time for both parents and taxpayers to wake up. Millions upon millions of our hard-earned tax dollars will be wasted on a useless teacher evaluation system.  -- Connecticut's teacher evaluation plan - even worse than we thought

 David Bernstein, non-profit exec

Rhee’s approach to education reform makes no more sense in functional schools than it does in dysfunctional ones. -- The Answer Sheet

Marian Brady

Unwilling to trust teacher judgment, we’ve handed their responsibilities to machines incapable of making judgment calls. -- The Real Paradigm Shift in Education

Deb Meier  

Then–above and beyond–we need to assess as a society the deprivations that poverty itself inflicts–in country of great wealth we have the most astounding percentage of children in deep poverty. -- Ready To Learn

Cruising the blogs

When it csomes to ed bloggers, some of my favorites can be found on NEPC's aptly-named Best of the Ed Blogs, including the likes of Ravitch, Ferlazzo, Thomas, Cuban, etal... In this post, Stanford prof, Larry Cuban wrestles with the progressive/traditional teaching duality when one of his students innocently describes him as a "traditional" teacher. He is and isn't.

******

After reading Anthony Cody's favorable review of Lois Weiner's new book, "The Future of Our Schools, Teachers Unions and Social Justice", I ordered a copy from Haymarket Books for possible use in my winter quarter course.

“Education is growth" ― John Dewey 

Another EdWeek (Teacher) blogger, Elena Aguilar offers advice to fellow teacher-coaches in her "Art of Coaching Teachers" blog. I'm a little put off (biased?) by the title and the patronizing tone it projects. It's not that I'm anti-coach. I am a high school basketball coach (among other things) and also direct the Small Schools Workshop where lots of "coaching" of willing teachers and principals has taken place over the years. I appreciate the teacher-as-coach metaphor and what it connotes in the way of democratic teaching/learning. And as a coach, and a teacher, I appreciate being coached by others in my field who are willing to share their experience and knowledge with me.

So why do I feel that old chill run up my spine when I read Aguilar's response to a San Diego math coach complaining that she is seeing "no growth" in the teachers he/she is working with. This all too common response on the part of professional-developers says more about them than it does about the teachers they are trying (unsuccessfully) to coach.

 The coach has no business making such an evaluation. No growth is really a death pronouncement. Isn't it? What kind of teacher would ever deem one of their students to be "no growth."  It sounds like this coach means, I can't get these teachers to do what I want them to do. Big difference from no-growth. This coach needs to go.

But even Aguilar's response to her fellow coaching artist, smacks of the same patronizing tone towards teaching professionals. Maybe it's the way she refers to them as "your teachers" as in,

"Dear Stumped, I know how hard it can be to feel like your teachers aren't making growth ..." 

Yes, that's it.

What's at stake?

I am reprinting David  Sieber's Op-Ed on Gapers Block just because I think it is so good. David is a CPS teacher, and is currently completing a Masters degree in Urban Education Policy Studies.

Op-Ed Fri Sep 07 2012
What's At Stake for Chicago Public Educators?

By David Stieber

You have undoubtedly heard the news reports, radio attack ads, CPS representatives, the "CEO" of Chicago Public Schools, and the Mayor saying how teachers are walking out on the students if we strike. Parents, students, residents of this city, as a teacher let me tell you, comments like that rip teachers to our core. As cliché as it sounds teaching is a calling. It's not as if one day we just said, "I guess I'll just be a teacher." It takes skill and dedication to stand in front of 30 (sometimes more) young people in a classroom and truly care and be able to teach every one of them. It is not possible to just be mediocre when it comes to teaching students. A young person is the first to let you know if you aren't doing a good job at teaching the lesson, not getting graded work passed back quickly enough, heck, they will even let you know if you look bad that day.

Teachers just can't punch in, start thinking about kids then punch out and stop. Teachers are always trying to improve our lesson plans, grade, figure out ways to reach the students who are withdrawn, quiet, confrontational or disrupting class. We just can't shut our students out of our lives when the bell rings.

Unless you are a teacher you have no idea the pain, frustration and intrinsic anger we feel when some paid radio ad claims, that "teachers are walking out on students." Some days after teaching, I honestly wish I could walk out on my students and never come back. But no matter how frustrating our day may have been, it is the kids that always bring us back. Teachers spend our lunch periods, before and after school helping, coaching, and listening to our students.

After days of teaching, we spend nights in grad school, trying to make ourselves better teachers. We raise children and think about how we want our own child to be like __(insert name here)__ who we taught a few years back.

There is nothing about our careers, our schools, and our students that we take lightly.
So please understand, teachers are trying to teach you that our careers and professions are under attack. Please understand we are trying to teach you about how your child's education is under attack.

You may find this dramatic, but education is at a crossroads in our country and our neighborhood, our city is right at the intersection of these crossroads. There is an attempt to make schooling privatized, charter-ized, and more inequitable than it already is. There is an attempt to get rid of experienced teachers who have built relationships with families, who truly know how to teach and replace them with less expensive, inexperienced teachers who likely will only be at the school for two years.

There is an attempt to teach through testing, to make your child so bored in school from over-standardized testing that students aren't excited for school anymore. There is an attempt to further cut librarians, counselors, nurses, PE, World Language, Art and now classroom teachers, in order to "save" money. A budget is a political document, not a financial one, it's about priorities. Some priorities obviously need to be re-evaluated.

Teachers in no way shape or form want to strike, we want to be working with and educating your children. The CTU, which represents and is elected by 26,000 educators across this city has had over 50 negotiation meetings with CPS since November 2011. In all of that time "CEO" Brizard has attended zero of those meetings, which means there was no one from CPS at the bargaining table with any educational experience.

So I ask, how do you bargain on what is best for students with people who have never taught students?

At stake is way more than pay. At stake for us is doing what is right for our community, our city, and yes our students, because as teachers it is always about the kids. ~*~

Research you can use

Experience matters 

Before districts go replacing veteran teachers with 5-week wonders from TFA, they should consider this.

Research has been consistent in finding positive correlations between years of teaching experience and higher student achievement. Teachers with more than five years in the classroom seem to be the most effective. Conversely, inexperience is shown to have a strong negative effect on student performance.

• Experienced teachers produce higher student test scores. A comprehensive analysis by Greenwald, Hedges, and Laine (1996) examined data from 60 studies and found a positive relationship between years of teacher experience and student test scores. Similarly, the UTD Texas Schools Project data showed that students of experienced teachers attained significantly higher levels of achievement than did students of new teachers (those with one to three years of experience) (Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain 2005).

• Schools with more inexperienced teachers have higher drop-out rates. In a related finding, an analysis of math achievement and dropout rates in a sample of California high schools (Fetler 2001) found that schools whose dropout rates were in the highest 10 percent had 50 percent more new teachers than did schools in the lowest 10 percent. -- The Center For Public Education
  

Two provocative articles for my students

 Waselenchuk’s judgment of the court’s geometry would make even Euclid wonder.

I'm giving my Philosophy of Ed students two provocative articles from the New York Times to consider. They have just finished reading John Dewey's Experience and Education and the articles exemplify the fundamental connection between experience and learning.

The first is, "A Field Trip to a Strange New Place: Second Grade Visits the Parking Garage" by Michael Winerip.

Experiences that are routine in middle-class homes are not for P.S. 142 children. When Dao Krings, a second-grade teacher, asked her students recently how many had never been inside a car, several, including Tyler Rodriguez, raised their hands. “I’ve been inside a bus,” Tyler said. “Does that count?”

When a new shipment of books arrives, Rhonda Levy, the principal, frets. Reading with comprehension assumes a shared prior knowledge, and cars are not the only gap at P.S. 142. Many of the children have never been to a zoo or to New Jersey. Some think the emergency room of New York Downtown Hospital is the doctor’s office.

 The second, "Self-Taught Racquetball Player Is in a Class by Himself" by John Otis.

 To understand how Kane Waselenchuk became the dominant player in the history of racquetball, one must embrace the teachings of the Bulgarian psychotherapist Georgi Lozanov... “He developed a way of teaching called Suggestopedia,” Jim Winterton, the coach, said about Lozanov. “In layman’s terms, it says that everybody has the capacity to be a genius, but the traditional education system screws us up. Children play using all their senses and learn all they know before school, and once they get there, it slows dramatically.”

Teaching and learning in a strange land

One of the by-products of the accountability movement and high-tech data management tools--like on-line grade-books--is the elevation of filling in boxes over actual learning. -- Teacher in a Strange Land

I really liked this reflective piece by Nancy Flanagan, "Who's responsible for this, anyway?" I think I'll use it in my Phil. of Ed. course this quarter. Nancy is a retired veteran teacher who blogs regularly for EdWeek. She was also one of the main organizers of the SOS March in D.C. last summer and was recently elected to the new SOS National Steering Committee.

Nancy stands poles apart from the test-crazy, corporate types who now dominate the field of  school reform. Michael Wiuerip shines a spotlight on these creeps in this NYT piece, about Pearson, the London-based publishing conglomerate that has become a giant in the multi-billion-dollar testing industry. Pearson uses its tax-exempt foundation to buy-off willing district administrators in exchange for contracts and a buy-in to the testing madness. 

Strange land indeed.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Alfie Kohn

"Whoever Said There's No Such Thing As a Stupid Question Never Looked Carefully at a Standardized Test" -- Huffington Post

Nancy Pelosi

Republicans are "using the budget deficit as an excuse to destroy the public space, medicare, medicaid, social security, food safety, clean air, clean water, you name it, public safety, public education... it fits very comfortably in their anti-public space attitude." -- Up w/ Chris Hayes MSNBC

Karen Lewis

“It’s a nightmare. You expect this stuff out of Republicans.” -- NYT, "Chicago’s Mayor Challenges Teachers Union"

Mike Klonsky

"What you're seeing is that, under mayoral control, a two-tiered school system is under development [in Chicago]: one for the elite, middle-class kids and another system for the poor; one filled with enrichment programs and things like that and the other has a test-and-punishment curriculum." -- Huffington Chicago Editor Joseph Erbentraut

LONG WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Joe Biden at the NEA RA

"There is an organized effort to place blame for budget shortfalls on educators and other public workers. It is one of the biggest scams in modern American history." -- Education votes

Teacher Ken

“Teachers are being targeted,” said Ken Bernstein, a Prince George’s County teacher who is helping to coordinate the march. “And they are finally coming out of their classrooms and getting interested” in organizing a political response.  -- Washington Post

Brother Fred

Fred Klonsky, a Chicago-area teacher and delegate to the convention, said the Obama administration should take note of the 72% vote. “For an incumbent Democratic president to receive less than 75% of the delegate vote at an NEA convention ought to cause some concern for the administration,” he said. -- WSJ

Joanne Barkan

"With the zealots’ mix of certainty and fervor, ed reformers have made this a wretched time to be a public school teacher." -- "The Grand Coalition Against Teachers"

 More seat time?

"Just extending a school day doesn’t mean, by itself, that you’re going to have high-performing schools. It’s not going to be simple.”  -- Noemi Donoso, new CPS chief education officer