Take ‘Em to Task

[Smiley and West]

		A listener from Chicago takes Smiley to task for his comments about education.

[Wilma de Soto]

@Jamie: With all due respect I grow a bit testy hearing about all the great, innovative first-year teachers.  It takes time to become a great teacher.  Knowing all the bells and whistles doesn't mean one knows how to use them effectively with one's students. I have rarely seen a first-year or even third-year teacher who knew exactly what to do without lots of help. People assume a helluva lot with this young new teacher thing while old fossils do nothing.  Some of the best teachers are those who have the most experience.  There is research to back this up as well.

I was laid off seven times in the first seven years I taught. It gave me experience of moving into different schools, different populations, age groups. It helped me grow.

As for old farts (I guess like myself with 20 plus years,) using the same lesson plans for five years in a row, it is virtually impossible to do so since they are reviewed for curriculum items, pacing schedules, literacy, and math cycles, benchmark tests and signed off by administrators weekly. If an administrator could NOT recognize that  a teacher was turning in the same lesson plans five years running and did not do something about that, at least calling the teacher to book, the administrator is at fault.  We cannot teach anything they don't sign off on.

It's another anti-teacher myth that there are teachers doing this all over the country which shows people do not know anything about the reality of teaching in schools. They go by what pundits say and ed reformers say whose agenda let me remind you again is cornering a lucrative market for private interests.

As for people not staying all hours after school there can be many reasons. They have school-aged children to take home. They might have a second job teaching adult ELL students who work during the day. In my case my web-based sites that I use in my work are blocked by firewalls at school.  You cannot access them because of the various Internet use policies at schools to protect children. People don't know and that is a BIG problem.  

I come home because I can access things easier here and do the extra technical work to prepare applications for my Notebook lessons.  I try to grade things before I leave.

If you read my previous post, with the new corporate reform everything is scripted. People who deviate from the script are considered insubordinate. They don't want us teaching children how to satisfy their curiosity, think critically, think outside the bubbles need to pass these corporate sponsored tests. They have wrested as much from the teacher as they can and blame us because we don't like it and we see what it's doing to the kids.  They are fried AND they are in danger of losing the people closet to them that they love: their teachers. 

That's the reality of school reform. You're fortunate not to have been subjected to what these children are when you went to school.

[DollarMonopoly.com]

speaking of collaboration.  watch this video of Galbraith sharing his views on the economic profession. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yOdicriZ4k

the different camps of economists don't talk to each other.  its mind boggling.  the economic profession is suffering from a major episode of group think.  the mainstream view is essentially defined by yale, harvard, MIT, princeton, stanford and chicago.  you know what? they are all wrong.  Why?  They haven't learned how to keep track of monetary operations.  I'm not kidding.  They haven't followed the money to realize  currency issuer debt = currency savings as a matter of accounting. our federal government's debt is not "debt".  its a digital account of all the currency users savings.  we don't borrow from the chinese.  the chinese save in our currency.  can you believe this?  can you believe the colossal misunderstanding that is taking place.  Look at our current political environment.  They are arguing over the national debt.  its crazy and it's happening because the economic profession is to compartmentalized to share ideas. 

[Wilma de Soto]

@DollarMonopoly: That's all very well in the technology world. If I am designing a layout to pitch to a hospital so the company can get its account I work hard on it, night and day. I make a presentation that speaks to the needs of the client and wow them with my presentation. My inflection is good, my graphics are excellent, I am to the point, extemporaneous, I make a web app that easy to navigate user-friendly that will bring in money for the client etc.  I make my boss look good. It reflects on my work and effort I have put into making this presentation and hopefully they will hire us.

It doesn't work that way with little children. I do all that and more. I present well, I prepare well, I execute well. I offer support and extra help, but I cannot make those kids go home and study. I cannot make parents take their play stations, x-box, Wii out of their bedrooms. I cannot make those kids go to bed at a reasonable hour. I ask kids all the time 6, 7, 8, 9 years old, "When did you go to bed?" Eleven is what they admit to but often it's midnight or beyond.  This is reality. I also cannot take the tests for them.  That's why there's such a cheating scandal in Atlanta now. There is NO WAY you can hold people accountable for what they don't do, but the reform movement does exactly that.

So I may be going the extra mile, my work recognized and on the web but eventually the students are going to have to put in the time and they are not.

DollarMonopoly.com said:

in the technology world if you perform and get results your can pretty much do anything and keep your job. why?  you make the boss look good.  why fire your best contributor?  now if your an average performer your usually safe but there is some risk of being laid off for larger reasons - mergers, realignments.  Then there are the non-performers. Everyone knows who they are.  They show up late, don't add much, try to fly under the radar without being noticed, but eventually time catches up to them.

firing non-performers is the only way to run a healthy system.  if you don't , it can lead to serious moral issues. if you have cancer in your body you don't keep it around.  you try to cut it out.  i guess what i'm trying to say is that tenure protects cancer.  say what?  wait that doesn't sound right.  whatever, you you know what i'm trying to say.

 

[Wilma de Soto]

@DollarMonopoly: I agree with you about the state of the economy. These are the people who nearly brought us to the brink of disaster in their area of supposed expertise. I REALLY don't want them running roughshod over an area they really know nothing about.

[DollarMonopoly.com]

wilma - i know your in a difficult spot.  what your doing i couldn't do.  lets face it.  the inner cities are largely dysfunctional.  Why? No jobs. If i guy can't get a decent job it's easy for him to go AWOL.  So how is this gonna play out.  Why did Illinois vote to become a free state.  Poor white farmers didn't want to compete with slaves.  The white middle class is starting to feel the pain the black community has endured for years.  Now we are all falling into the same boat because of structural economic forces.  Ultimately when the collective pain becomes to great their will be a change.  The painfully irony of this entire situation is that all our economic problems are from mismanagement.  Not political mismangement.  Operational mismanagement.  The economic profession is advising policy makers to optimize the wrong goal, ie balance the budget, when they should be telling them to optimize the deficit.  Government as the currency issuer can operationally maintain optimal fiscal deficits indefinitely because government debt is a digital resource, a digital account of currency users savings.

hows that shoe fit.  did i just blow your mind? strange world we live in.

[JamieLMyer]

Your administrators are better than the ones I have had in the past...lucky you.  I didn't say the first year teachers were fabulous across the board, I am not that naive.  I am saying they had the desire and determination to do what was needed to do in order to allow their children to be successful.  I wish I knew then what I know now.  As for the old timers that are great, we should be using them more...modeling lessons, what does a good learning plan look like, how do you effectively collaborate, and oh my gosh, share, share, share...I agree with you on the firewalls, the students teach me how to work around them...I agree with you a lot more than you think.  I have had an incredibly rough two years trying to get teachers to do what they needed to do in order to accommodate their students--same administrator for 13 years--and I will leave it at that.  When I stated out the door at 3:50--I wasn't only talking about physically...I should have articulated my thoughts better.  Effective utilization of time might have been a better avenue of approach.  Ms. de Soto, you have my utmost respect, and you can cut me off at the knees anytime you want, I am tough and respect experience and honest opinions.  

Wilma de Soto said:

@Jamie: With all due respect I grow a bit testy hearing about all the great, innovative first-year teachers.  It takes time to become a great teacher.  Knowing all the bells and whistles doesn't mean one knows how to use them effectively with one's students. I have rarely seen a first-year or even third-year teacher who knew exactly what to do without lots of help. People assume a helluva lot with this young new teacher thing while old fossils do nothing.  Some of the best teachers are those who have the most experience.  There is research to back this up as well.

I was laid off seven times in the first seven years I taught. It gave me experience of moving into different schools, different populations, age groups. It helped me grow.

As for old farts (I guess like myself with 20 plus years,) using the same lesson plans for five years in a row, it is virtually impossible to do so since they are reviewed for curriculum items, pacing schedules, literacy, and math cycles, benchmark tests and signed off by administrators weekly. If an administrator could NOT recognize that  a teacher was turning in the same lesson plans five years running and did not do something about that, at least calling the teacher to book, the administrator is at fault.  We cannot teach anything they don't sign off on.

It's another anti-teacher myth that there are teachers doing this all over the country which shows people do not know anything about the reality of teaching in schools. They go by what pundits say and ed reformers say whose agenda let me remind you again is cornering a lucrative market for private interests.

As for people not staying all hours after school there can be many reasons. They have school-aged children to take home. They might have a second job teaching adult ELL students who work during the day. In my case my web-based sites that I use in my work are blocked by firewalls at school.  You cannot access them because of the various Internet use policies at schools to protect children. People don't know and that is a BIG problem.  

I come home because I can access things easier here and do the extra technical work to prepare applications for my Notebook lessons.  I try to grade things before I leave.

If you read my previous post, with the new corporate reform everything is scripted. People who deviate from the script are considered insubordinate. They don't want us teaching children how to satisfy their curiosity, think critically, think outside the bubbles need to pass these corporate sponsored tests. They have wrested as much from the teacher as they can and blame us because we don't like it and we see what it's doing to the kids.  They are fried AND they are in danger of losing the people closet to them that they love: their teachers. 

That's the reality of school reform. You're fortunate not to have been subjected to what these children are when you went to school.

[Wilma de Soto]

@DollarMonopoly: I agree the white middle class (reading new working-class) is feeling the pain the black community has felt.  They don't understand about the ruling class calling the shots here. It doesn't matter what you are if you're not one of them. The ruling class now lead my Charles and David Koch whose grandfather founded the John birch Society is on a mission to own everything and get rid of all the elements the Birchers were against: people of color, gays, liberal, government schools and all public institutions in general.  They meet twice a year with high-rollers, Supreme Court Justices, politicians and cover their tracks with seemingly innocuous things like school reform, (for poor inner-city children only), end to collective bargaining which help to create the American middle-class.  It's a class war and a race war.

@JamieLMyer: Many experienced teachers model lessons or course, but it does take time to become a great teacher and some never will because they simply don't have it. Sorry.  All the training in the world cannot make one able to convey what one knows to others. That's an art.

I paid my dues getting laid off and shuffled around for years as a young teacher. People have to pay their dues. It's not going to be palm leaves and rose petals strewn just because you finished college and ideas. Ninety-nine percent of teaching is learning and young teachers have even more to learn.  I have helped bail out a few when the kids overwhelmed them, but I could not explain why they responded to me and not to her. It was just me; same kids, same room but me. It's intangible thing kids pick up on and rating people based on standardized tests like so many products manufactured or sold will never prove who is an effective or ineffective teacher.

Think of it this way.  Your a cop in the inner-city. Some politician has a bright idea on how to fix the crime rate. Granted, he's never been a cop but what does that matter.  Politician sets an arbitrary goal of say 2014 and all violent crime, robberies etc. should be 100% percent eradicated. Any policeman who did not eradicate 100% of crime on his beat will be fired and his precinct taken over and run by private corporations who do not have to follow the standards of policing. ALL cops will be held accountable for this goal because the inner cities are out of control.  Does that make sense?

[Wilma de Soto]

Here's an interesting Letter to the Editor written by a VERY courageous principal in Texas; home of the so-called "Texas Miracle" that begat NCLB and RTTT:

http://www.texasisd.com/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=32&num=111241

Wilma de Soto said:

@DollarMonopoly: I agree the white middle class (reading new working-class) is feeling the pain the black community has felt.  They don't understand about the ruling class calling the shots here. It doesn't matter what you are if you're not one of them. The ruling class now lead my Charles and David Koch whose grandfather founded the John birch Society is on a mission to own everything and get rid of all the elements the Birchers were against: people of color, gays, liberal, government schools and all public institutions in general.  They meet twice a year with high-rollers, Supreme Court Justices, politicians and cover their tracks with seemingly innocuous things like school reform, (for poor inner-city children only), end to collective bargaining which help to create the American middle-class.  It's a class war and a race war.

@JamieLMyer: Many experienced teachers model lessons or course, but it does take time to become a great teacher and some never will because they simply don't have it. Sorry.  All the training in the world cannot make one able to convey what one knows to others. That's an art.

I paid my dues getting laid off and shuffled around for years as a young teacher. People have to pay their dues. It's not going to be palm leaves and rose petals strewn just because you finished college and ideas. Ninety-nine percent of teaching is learning and young teachers have even more to learn.  I have helped bail out a few when the kids overwhelmed them, but I could not explain why they responded to me and not to her. It was just me; same kids, same room but me. It's intangible thing kids pick up on and rating people based on standardized tests like so many products manufactured or sold will never prove who is an effective or ineffective teacher.

Think of it this way.  Your a cop in the inner-city. Some politician has a bright idea on how to fix the crime rate. Granted, he's never been a cop but what does that matter.  Politician sets an arbitrary goal of say 2014 and all violent crime, robberies etc. should be 100% percent eradicated. Any policeman who did not eradicate 100% of crime on his beat will be fired and his precinct taken over and run by private corporations who do not have to follow the standards of policing. ALL cops will be held accountable for this goal because the inner cities are out of control.  Does that make sense?

[DollarMonopoly.com]

i don't agree.  i think it's a strange combination of groupthink, ignorance, mismanagement, and ideology. the truth is rich people get richer when the economy does well. our current situation is benefitting none of the elites.  they want business as usual. they don't want to incur "hardships" to galvanize the masses to actually rise up politically and do something.

Wilma de Soto said:

@DollarMonopoly: I agree the white middle class (reading new working-class) is feeling the pain the black community has felt.  They don't understand about the ruling class calling the shots here. It doesn't matter what you are if you're not one of them. The ruling class now lead my Charles and David Koch whose grandfather founded the John birch Society is on a mission to own everything and get rid of all the elements the Birchers were against: people of color, gays, liberal, government schools and all public institutions in general.  They meet twice a year with high-rollers, Supreme Court Justices, politicians and cover their tracks with seemingly innocuous things like school reform, (for poor inner-city children only), end to collective bargaining which help to create the American middle-class.  It's a class war and a race war.

@JamieLMyer: Many experienced teachers model lessons or course, but it does take time to become a great teacher and some never will because they simply don't have it. Sorry.  All the training in the world cannot make one able to convey what one knows to others. That's an art.

I paid my dues getting laid off and shuffled around for years as a young teacher. People have to pay their dues. It's not going to be palm leaves and rose petals strewn just because you finished college and ideas. Ninety-nine percent of teaching is learning and young teachers have even more to learn.  I have helped bail out a few when the kids overwhelmed them, but I could not explain why they responded to me and not to her. It was just me; same kids, same room but me. It's intangible thing kids pick up on and rating people based on standardized tests like so many products manufactured or sold will never prove who is an effective or ineffective teacher.

Think of it this way.  Your a cop in the inner-city. Some politician has a bright idea on how to fix the crime rate. Granted, he's never been a cop but what does that matter.  Politician sets an arbitrary goal of say 2014 and all violent crime, robberies etc. should be 100% percent eradicated. Any policeman who did not eradicate 100% of crime on his beat will be fired and his precinct taken over and run by private corporations who do not have to follow the standards of policing. ALL cops will be held accountable for this goal because the inner cities are out of control.  Does that make sense?

[JamieLMyer]

I hear you and I follow your ideas and beliefs completely.  I am just not on board with all of them and you are not on board with all of mine.  That's OK.  Change doesn't come from thinking the same way.  It comes from people with different ideas coming together to address the issues and devise ways to fix that which is broken. Imagine the possibilities, Ms. de Soto, you and I sitting in a room, with all our experience, education, differences and love for our children...whatever our differences our similarities would allow for us to find answers to at least begin the journey...don't discount me because my experience may be different from yours or maybe the same as yours...my being white definitely allows for some big time differences...but it doesn't change my belief that all children can learn and deserve respect and an opportunity to an education that will allow them to follow their dreams, in fact not only follow them, but achieve them, as well.  I was blessed to get a new boss last year...we are really trying to make a difference.  Keep your fingers crossed for us, we need all the prayers, hope and belief in us for daring to try something different--aye ya...here we go!

[DollarMonopoly.com]

see thats why i like the private sector.  top down decision making vs consensus building.  you may disagree with each other but you have to work with each other.  in the private sector if you own a company you can make the decisions.  if you think you have a better way of doing things or making things you can do it.  let the marketplace decide.

 

ladies are we having a pow-wow?  this has turned into a considerable lengthy thread.

 

BTW - did you hear that paul moody intervew.  that dude is straight off the chart

 

 

JamieLMyer said:

I hear you and I follow your ideas and beliefs completely.  I am just not on board with all of them and you are not on board with all of mine.  That's OK.  Change doesn't come from thinking the same way.  It comes from people with different ideas coming together to address the issues and devise ways to fix that which is broken. Imagine the possibilities, Ms. de Soto, you and I sitting in a room, with all our experience, education, differences and love for our children...whatever our differences our similarities would allow for us to find answers to at least begin the journey...don't discount me because my experience may be different from yours or maybe the same as yours...my being white definitely allows for some big time differences...but it doesn't change my belief that all children can learn and deserve respect and an opportunity to an education that will allow them to follow their dreams, in fact not only follow them, but achieve them, as well.  I was blessed to get a new boss last year...we are really trying to make a difference.  Keep your fingers crossed for us, we need all the prayers, hope and belief in us for daring to try something different--aye ya...here we go!

[Wilma de Soto]

@Dollar Monopoly: You are forgetting if the market decides against you, get taxpayers to bail you out or send troops overseas to defend your private oil interests. The market thing is never as cut and dried as people purport.