The Diary of a Mad Public School Teacher
Page 7
Now think about this. A recent study by the Rand Corporation, a California think tank, of student performance in forty-four states found that higher teacher salaries had “little effect” on outcomes. Similarly, “having a higher percentage of teachers with a master’s and doctorates and extensive teaching experience appears to have comparatively little effect on student achievement across states.” Stiffer teaching-licensing requirements would, for example, compound the teacher shortage by making it harder for people to switch careers into teaching.
A better approach would be for states to “scrap nearly all the hoops and hurdles that discourage good candidates from becoming teachers,” writes Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. In his book Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do, Laurence Steinberg states, “No curricular overhaul, no instructional innovation, no change in school organization, no toughening of standards, no rethinking of teacher training or compensation will succeed if students do not come to school interested in and committed to learning. In order to understand how this commitment develops, we need to look not at what goes on inside the classroom, but students’ lives outside the school’s walls. Until we do this, school reform will continue to be a disappointment and our student achievement will fail to improve.”
Personally, I think that I have been at the top of my career in teaching/education for many years—without National Board certification with two master’s degrees. I also think I am giving my students a quality science education. However, year after year, I have many students who are apathetic, indifferent, and unprepared to exert effort to achieve academically. I don’t think that obtaining National Board certification will help any of my students, while wondering why 100 percent (probably) of students give their best efforts in sports and extracurricular activities and events.
David A. Hancock
Back-to-School Terror
It’s a new school year. Are our parents and students ready? I doubt it!
Oh yes, it’s that time of year again. Time for a new academic school year—purgatory for many—to begin. Time for teachers to act as affable paragons, moms, dads, police, nurses, therapists, social workers, and nutritionists as well as teach our subject matter.
In a way, I empathize with students because they are probably thinking, Oh no! Back to the assembly-line, factory-model prison with seven or eight forty-minute periods, four-minute hall-passage traffic jams, twenty-minute Zantac lunch, rush-hurry syndrome, memorizing, proficiency-test preparation, sitting down, being quiet, lack of enough recess and physical-education time, nonsensical homework overload / overdose, and a perfunctory routine with no air conditioning on hot, humid days. The school Zeitgeist syndrome?
Nowadays, with the perceived “external, psychological, academic-stress” achievement disorders and to be human robots, Dennis the Menace would be on Ritalin and Charlie Brown on Prozac.
I hope parents did a good job of homeschooling their children, especially character-social skills, for the past eleven weeks.
An example of the “thirteen-year sentence” begins with education malpractice and education terrorism with the school supplies lists. I will use Mayfield public school kindergartens as an example, although most public and parochial schools are very similar, unfortunately.
-Three boxes of Crayola Original Markers—fat ones, basic colors
-One pair of child Fiskars school scissors with rounded ends and metal blades
-Two Expo 2-in-1 Dry Erase Markers—thin, black
-Ten two-pocket folders, no fasteners—two red, two yellow, two green, two blue, two purple
-Ten large Elmer’s All Purpose School Glue Sticks
-Ten sharpened pencils
-One fat yellow highlighter
-Two packages of baby wipes
-One family box of tissues (probably for crying)
-One container of Clorox wipes
-One bottle of Elmer’s Glue—7.625 ounces
-One large T-shirt that fits over clothing to be used while painting
-One ream of white copy paper (no way)
-One eleven-by-fourteen spiral-bound sketch pad, no lines
-Pair of tennis shoes for physical education (good idea)
-Large, nonrolling backpack to carry belongings to and from school daily (preparing your child for lumbar vertebrae surgery)
I would like to add some essentials that have been overlooked: American flag, cell phone, phone number of child’s therapist, calculator, dictionary, thesaurus (English-Spanish).
The shibboleth of “Leave no child behind” has been changed to “Leave no child a dime.” For enlightenment, read The Schools Our Children Deserve by Alfie Kohn and Why Schools Fail by Bruce Goldberg.
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
It’s That Time of Year
Oh yes, it’s that time of year again. Time for a new academic school year to begin, time for teachers to act as moms, dads, cops, nurses, therapists, social workers, nutritionists, and affable paragons—which should equal a salary of $100,000!
I’m writing this after I recalled the Staples TV commercial where Dad is smiling and overwhelmed with joy, running around getting school supplies, while Daughter and Son are standing there looking very sad and unhappy.
As a very happy retired public school teacher (thirty-five years), I empathize with Daughter and Son because they are probably thinking, Oh no! Back to the assembly-line, factory-model prison with six or seven forty-minute classes, five-minute rush-hurry hall passage, twenty-minute lunch (indigestion / Zantac time), memorizing proficiency test preparations, sit-down-be-quiet attitude, lack of physical exercise and personal autonomy, and nonsensical nonsense homework (which I never assigned). When do I get to relax from the perfunctory schedule, let alone get a drink of water and visit a restroom?
It’s a paradoxical paradox when we encourage them from birth to two years of age to walk and talk, then all of a sudden, to sit down and be quiet. Humans are not like Skinner’s pigeons or Pavlov’s dogs. What if Pavlov used a cat?
I hope parents did a good job of homeschooling their children in educational experiences / activities as well as attitude-character and social-interpersonal skills for the past eleven weeks. However, it’s been my observation and opinion that over 75 percent of parents would earn a D or F on their report card.
A person said to me recently that “schools are prisons, Saddam spider holes in some cases, and day care centers / warehouses staffed with overpaid babysitters.”
This reminded me of a cartoon that said, “Mom, Dad, we are not learning anything in school because we are taking tests.”
I suppose it all depends on one’s point of view / perception. The college professor said, “What are they doing in the high schools of this nation? This student can’t even think.” The high school teacher said, “What can you expect? Those middle school teachers just aren’t doing their job.” The middle school teacher said, “Good grief, those elementary teachers didn’t teach this child anything.” The elementary teacher said, “What did that kindergarten teacher do? This child isn’t prepared for school.” The kindergarten teacher said, “This child is impossible. What must his/her parents be like?” And the mother said, “Don’t blame me. Have you seen his father’s side of the family?”
In all seriousness, let’s put the responsibility of personal deportment and academic achievement where it belongs—on our children, with parents’ and teachers’ leadership and guidance in a safe environment—and hope for the best.
Let us recall the wit and wisdom from the literary legend, Mark Twain.
“Education is what you must acquire without any interference from your schooling.”
“Out of the public schools grows the greatness of a nation.”
“In the first place God made idiots. That was for pr
actice. Then he made school boards.”
David A. Hancock
Chester
Minority Achievement Must Be Studied Locally
To the editor:
In reference to the black/white achievement gap in schools, the Harvard Education Letter has published numerous articles on this subject.
Pedro A. Noguera taught at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Education, and was the leader of the Diversity Project at nearby Berkeley High School. He is now professor of communities and schools at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and has learned some valuable insights: differences in achievement originate outside of school.
They originate in inequities in homes, in socioeconomic status, etc. Nothing new here; schools exacerbate those disparities because they consistently give less to the students who need more and more to the students who have more.
Kids will tell you that when they encounter a good teacher who can inspire them, they become motivated. I have found this to be absolutely true during my thirty-four years of public school teaching experience.
Black students feel less connected to school and believe they have more negative relationships with their peers and their white counterparts.
There’s a perception that if you do the same thing, you’ll get a worse punishment if you’re black.
I have personally observed the following: Black students achieve more academically with both white teachers and black teachers, depending on the teacher’s attitude, personality, and behavior. Black students exhibit oppositional defiant disorder with coercive black and white teachers, white students with white and black teachers.
Some teachers’ expectations for black students are lower than they are for white students, while lower-performing schools tend to be staffed by teachers who have less experience, fewer advanced degrees, and higher absenteeism. Districts may need to conduct homegrown research on student attitudes, teacher attitude / satisfaction, class size, tracking, etc., before we understand how to change student learning.
It’s true that some black students choose to be D students (usually a lack of effort, not ability, motivation, and negative attitude) and project/exhibit their anger toward high-achieving black students and say, “Are you trying to be white, ‘N’?” However, more commonly, low-achieving, antiacademic black students simply segregate themselves from their high-achieving peers, both black and white.
Refer to AfricanAmericanImages.com for further information.
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
Answers Aren’t So Good
Questions, questions, questions.
Politician: If schools of education are so good, why are public and charter schools so bad?
Educator: If medical schools are so good, why is there obesity, disease, cancer, diabetes?
If law schools are so good, why is there crime and injustice?
If schools of economics are so good, why is there poverty, greed, and an unstable stock market?
If history departments are so good, why is there war? And why do we learn from history that we never learn anything from history? Or is history just one damn thing after another?
If religious and theology departments are so good, why is there hate and evil?
If political science departments are so good, why are there venal, narcissistic, megalomaniac politicians? Why do they call politics a science?
If schools of dentistry are so good, why is there periodontal disease?
If science departments are so good, why is there global warming and pollution?
Politician: I guess Gertrude Stein was right when she said, “There ain’t no answer, there ain’t going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.”
Educator: Science seems to have a possible answer. In science, it’s dangerous to lie. If discovered, the liar is cast out of the group as a faker, fraud, quack, and charlatan. In religion, politics, and psychiatry, it’s dangerous to tell the truth. If discovered, the truth teller is cast out of the group as a heretic and traitor. The problems we face will not be solved by the minds that created them. You can get all As and still flunk life. As Mark Twain said, “I never let schooling interfere with my education.”
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
Kids Who Choose Not to Learn May Have Right Idea
To the editor:
What terms or phrases come to mind when we think and ponder education reform / restructuring? In my 30 years of classroom teaching experience, here are some possibilities: stonewalling, filibustering, phony facades, incantations, pompous ostentations, consternations, debacles, nihilism, arcane jargon, harangues, diatribes, demagoguery, gibberish and conjurations are just a few that come to mind which translates to “When all is said and done –– more was said than done.”
We still have the assembly-line factory model organizational structure (hurry-rush 50 minute periods; five minute break; seven times a day) until we feel like one of B.F. Skinner’s pigeons. No wonder a great majority of students don’t equate school with learning; they equate it with stress or purgatory. Some schools have changed to block-scheduling, which seems to have helped this psychological dilemma. A colleague of mine said one of his education professors (you know, the ivory tower docent academic theorists) said that education will always be a century behind the times: “if we continue to do the same things in the same way and expect different results, then we are indeed insane.”
David T. Kearns, chairman and CEO of Xerox Corporation, said, “Public education in this country is in crisis. America’s public schools graduate 700,000 functionally illiterate students every year and 700,000 more drop out; four out of five adults in a recent survey couldn’t summarize the main point of a newspaper article, or read a bus schedule, or figure their change from a restaurant bill.” In his book I Won’t Learn from You, Kohl goes on to say, “Such not-learning is often and disastrously mistaken for failure to learn or the inability to learn.”
“Learning how to not-learn is an intellectual and social challenge. Sometimes you have to work very hard at it. It consists of an active, often ingenious, willful rejection of even the most compassionate and well-designed teaching. It subverts attempts at remediation as much as it rejects learning in the first place. It was through insight into my own not-learning that I began to understand the inner world of students who chose to not-learn what I wanted to teach. Through the years, I’ve come to side with them in their refusal to be molded by a hostile society and have come to look upon not-learning as positive and healthy in many situations. I came to understand that children in school act in ways that are shaped by the institution; therefore, it is essential never to judge a child by his or her school behavior.”
One final piece of information as reported in The American Teacher confirms the relative disadvantage of US teachers. American teachers’ workloads are the highest of any OECD (23 member) countries. The number of teaching hours per year is 958 at the primary level, 964 at lower secondary and 942 for upper secondary. The overall means for teachers in the OECD nations at the three levels is 791 hours, 700 hours and 630 hours, respectively. This proves the ultimate paradox of more is less and less is more.
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
Hancock teaches science at Heights High School.
Teacher Says Many of His Students Learn and Excel
To the editor:
I must respond to Frank. E. Wrenick’s letter (The Sun Press, Feb. 18, “Nonteaching Teacher is Wasting CH-UH Tax Money”). First, I did not write the headline “Kids Who Choose Not to Learn May Have Right Idea.” Second, I quoted Herbert Kohl from his book, I Won’t Learn from You. There should have been quotation marks around the paragraph that Wrenick is referring to as my personal opinion (“Learning how to not-learn is an intellectual and social challenge …”). Student apathy and indi
fference is at an all-time high by my observations (and many others).
I do promote unguided inquiry and indirect teaching. I manage, counsel, guide, and instruct/teach my students in that order generally. I invite Wrenick to visit our nature / natural history museum classroom anytime. I do not think I am doing a disservice to my students (ask them) or to the citizens of Cleveland Heights and University Heights. I simply manage students without coercion.
I feel very fortunate in receiving many, many letters and cards from former students and parents thanking and praising me for being a positive role model and educational leader. In my thirty years of teaching, I have done my best to practice the words of William Arthur Ward: “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” I am doing what I am paid to do—manage, counsel, guide, and teach (inspire).
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
Leave No Child Behind
The positive connection and correlation between funding and excellence in education is often debated.
However, as reported in the Review of Education Research in “The Effect of School Resources on Student Learning and Achievement,” a group of researchers from the University of Chicago who analyzed thirty-two studies on this issue concluded that higher per-pupil expenditures; parent involvement and support; more educated and experienced teachers, administrators, and support staff as well as smaller classes, all directly a result of higher funding, are strongly related to improved student learning.
As a resident of Chester since 1972 and with two daughters, 1992 and 1996 West G. graduates, who received an excellent education, I will vote yes for our renewal levy—renewing support and confidence with our school system and the education services provided for our children.