Teachers Should Not Be Blamed For Society’s Problems

Teachers Should Not Be Blamed

For Society’s Problems

          Two law suits one in New York and one in California attack teachers and tenure claiming that students in inner-city schools get substandard teachers and as a result a substandard education.  These law suits approach a complicated problem in a simplistic manner.  Simply because test scores are lower in an inner-city school is not an indication that teachers are not doing their job.  Blaming all of the problems of a broken society on teachers is not fair.  Teachers who work in the trenches of our inner-city face many obstacles daily and need the support of our population, not accusations.  Taking away teacher’s tenure is taking away teacher’s opportunity to have a fair and just procedure for termination.  No one would take away a doctor’s medical license without a fair procedure because they are professionals. No one disbar an attorney without a hearing.  Likewise, teachers are professionals and deserve to be treated fairly.

          I have also taught in both inner-city schools and  upper-middle class schools in the affluent suburbs where all of the children, even the special education students, are expected to go to college.  In these neighborhoods, parents are advocates for their children.  There is no difference in the intellectual ability of the students in the lower-social economic neighborhoods, but there is a difference in the expectations of the students and the demands of the parents.  The parents in the more affluent neighborhood demand that their child receives all of the services he is entitled.  They pay for outside tutors, voice lessons, dance classes, and athletic programs.  The students in these schools are often over-worked and anxious from their parents’ demands and scheduling, but they achieve and they achieve at high levels.  Maybe the real difference between the students in upper-middle class and affluent neighborhoods and the students in inner-city schools is their parents have the luxury to spend quality time with their children, the luxury of having time to go to school and demand services and the money to pay for enhancement lessons for their students.

                Students in inner city school face other obstacles that negatively impacts their chances of performing well on tests.  Often both parents of these students are busy working two jobs to support their families or they are single-parent families.  Some of these parents do not speak English or fear deportation if they make demands on the schools.  There are a myriad of real reasons that becoming involved in their child’s education is difficult for them.  Being economically disadvantaged and culturally different creates huge obstacles for most of these students.  Their families do not have the resources to provide tutoring or voice lessons.  Some of these students work part-time or full-time jobs to help support the family.  Some of these students care for younger siblings while their parents work.  Some of these students have parents who cannot read or write and cannot help their child.  These are the parents who are embarrassed about their own lack of education and do not attend parent-teacher meetings least someone discovers.  Some of these students have families that have been involved in gangs for four generations.  These students often lack the resources that more affluent students.  They may not have a computer or the internet.  There may be few books in their homes.  Their parents lack the vocabulary to help their child build a strong vocabulary.  These students rarely travel the globe like their more affluent counterparts, so they lack a vision of the world outside their five block radius.

          Furthermore, most parents and students really appreciate the work teachers do, so I strongly suspect the parents and students in this lawsuit do not represent the views of the majority of parents.  Regardless of which school I was teaching I have always received letters, emails, and personal remarks of appreciation from both parents and my students.  I still connect on Facebook with students I taught in the 1970s.  When I retired, I had one parent who came in during my lunch period to personally thank me for teaching her two children.  I had one young man bring me a big bouquet of flowers in a beautiful vase with a touching card and two girls who created a lei of candy bars that they placed around my next with a wonderful warm Polynesian thank you.  I have known Chinese-American students who have brought me special gifts during Chinese New Year and when I lost a parent students brought me letters and cards of condolence.   At the end of every school year students hug me and whenever I meet a former students I am greeted with a warm hug and a thank you.  All of the notes I have received from parents and students over the years are stored in a large box.  The media always hypes the negative view of teachers, but most of the public appreciates the job our teachers do.

          The schools in inner cities face obstacles that are unheard of in suburban schools.  When I taught at San Bernardino High School in the 1980’s, the school had to repaint every building on campus every day before school to remove gang tagging.  After I left, I heard the school added metal detectors to keep knives and guns from entering campus.  The campus also had a staff of security guards in the halls to keep the gang activity off campus.  Whereas, when I taught at South Jordan Middle School in Utah, an upper-middle class suburban neighborhood, the school had one hall monitor for the 1,582 students, just to make certain that a student with the hall pass visiting the rest room would remember to return to class in a timely factor.  There were no gangs and only on rare occasions graffiti. The expense of protecting children from violence and gangs add considerably to costs of education in an inner-city school.  

               The teachers in the inner-city schools spent more of their own money and time to ensure their students’ success than the teachers in the suburban schools.  For example, I had a student whose parents could not afford to pay for his A.P. exams, so all of his teachers chipped in and paid for them and the principal helped the family find a legal counselor to help them stay in the country legally.  Another student who was on my debate team could not afford appropriate attire for debate meets, so the teachers pooled together and one of the teachers provided one of her husband’s old suits.  Another young lady was living with her grandmother on welfare when she became pregnant.  Members of the staff donated their children’s baby clothes, so this young lady could continue her education and care for her child.  Educators are greatest asset that these families have.  Attacking the teachers who are helping these young students overcome huge obstacles is like biting the hand that feeds you.

                Those of us who have taught in the inner-city schools have known the seventeen year old girl pregnant with her second child who misses school to care for her children working eight to ten hours a day in the fast food industry.  Those of us who have taught in the inner-city schools have known the teenage boy who is running drugs to support his siblings because his only parent is incarcerated.  We have heard him rationalize that even if he does graduate, he is unlikely to find any job and if he does find a job, it will probably be a minimum wage job in fast food.  These are problems that students in suburban schools do not face.   Because of the problems of gangs, and violence, schools in the inner-city spend a large portion of their funds keeping the gangs off campus and keeping the students safe.  These schools like the neighborhoods where they exist face a myriad of problems, but blaming all of these problems on teachers and treating these teachers like the characters in Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help, maids who are unfairly blamed and unjustly discharged, is not the answer. The problems in inner-city schools are complicated. When society solves the problems created by poverty, we will solve the problems in those schools. Low test scores in inner city schools are caused by a myriad of reasons.  Don't blame the teachers.

 

Do High School Athletic Programs Encourage Violent and Irresponsible Behavior?

Do High School Athletic Programs Encourage Violent and Irresponsible Behavior?

By Jill Jenkins

                                The newspapers and television news programs blast with stories of the Blade Runner, Oscar Pistorious, shooting and murdering his live-in girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.  Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens punches his finance, Jayna Palmer, knocking her unconscious.  Aaron Hernandez of the New England Patriots is accused of murdering two people.  Kanas City Chiefs, Jovan Belcher murders the mother of his infant child, flees to the field and commits suicide before his coach.  The list of acts of violence and irresponsible behavior by the heroes of the gridiron and track seems endless.  Is this behavior just a reflection of a violent society or are athletes taught from their childhood that they are an exclusive group of individuals who are above the rules of society?

                                Parents often encourage dishonest behavior in order to increase their child’s changes of winning, even in little league.  Take fourteen year old Jimmy Gronen who in 1973 won the Soap Box Derby.  Later it was revealed that his uncle Robert Lange, owner of the Wonderland Drive In in Boulder, Colorado had installed a magnet in the front of Jimmy’s car giving him a significant advantage from the starting gate.  Interesting, Robert Lange’s son had won the same race years earlier.   In Denver a baseball game of twelve year olds ended with three arrests for parents brawling over what they believed was a bad call.  One suburban New York mother was arrested when she sent threats because her son did not make the little league baseball team. In Florida an assistant coach, Dion Robinson  of a youth football games assaulted a referee and was arrested.   In Utah a soccer referee, Ricardo Portillo, was assaulted by teen who did not agree with one of his calls. He later died from his injuries.  Parents have assaulted little league coaches, little league coaches have assaulted referees and teenage players have assaulted and killed referees.   The verbal abuse and physical assaults only serve to teach the young players that this behavior is acceptable. 

                                When these young athletics are in high school this immoral and inappropriate behavior gets worse.  To alleviate this problem, athletic associations have created rules and guidelines to teach student athletes good sportsmanship and to ensure playing sports does not interfere with getting a quality education. In the eighties, to play on a team a student had to maintain a 2.0 GPA with no “F’s” and no “unsatisfactory” citizenship grades.  This all sounds good, but the truth is coaches and administrators put pressure on teachers to change grades or excuse athletes from tests and assignments.  When that didn’t happen, some administrators even changed some students’ grades to keep them eligible.  Since that time, the athletic association under pressure reduced the qualification for eligibility.  First, they eliminated the requirement for a 2.0 G.P.A. and the citizenship grade.  Next the requirements were relaxed allowing students to fail no more than one class. Finally, the requirements became so slack that students could fail no more than two classes.  Reducing these requirements does not help students.  Instead, it hurts them.  These are not gladiators meant to emblazon the school’s image.  These are students who are trying to get a quality education.  Student athletics are never held accountable for their behavior.  

                                Contact sports like Football, soccer, and hockey are violent sports.  The energy level and the emotional level are high not only for the players, but for the coaches, the parents and the watching students.  It is easy to see how things can easily get out of control.  Students are often encouraged to violate the rules and play as roughly as possible to ensure the team wins.  After all the coaches job is dependent on the team’s success and the expedient way to achieve that is to cheat or play increasingly roughly.  As a result there are many injuries in these sports and worse yet, the plays learn that the end justifies the means. . . win at any cost. 

                                Since schools offer the athletics time out of class to perform on the field and teachers make specific adjustments to their requirements, the athlete begins to feel special.  He interprets this to mean that the rules do not apply to him.  Since these students have been encouraged to cheat on the field, they believe the same rules apply in the classroom.  They begin to cheat to keep their grades up. Granted there is a lot of pressure on them from coaches, parents and they believe the entire school, so they do the expedient thing, they cheat.

                                Regardless, I have known parents, some even coaches, who have held their student athletic to a higher standard.  These are the parents who won’t have to worry about a call from the police because their son has been incarcerated.  These parents taught their child the consequences of immoral behavior while still in school.  I have had parents contact me and ask to set up a conference with their son, both parents and me (the teacher), because they found evidence that their son had cheated.  These conferences have not been easy.  There have been serious discussions, consequences, and tears (not just from the student, also the parents and yes even the teacher, me).  These parents have demanded their child be held accountable and this has been a learning experience for their child.  My hat goes off to these parents, because they chose to do the right thing, not the expedient thing.

                                In a world where attorney generals are charged with fraud, police officers are charged with murder, and football stars charged with domestic violence, it is difficult for parents to teach their children that one should always do the right thing, not the expedient thing.  We should all hold students accountable:  teachers, administrators, parents, and athletic associations.  Honor is more important than winning.  As Socrates once said, “I would prefer even to fail with honor than to win by cheating.”  Sports programs can increase violent and irresponsible behavior, or they can teach good sportsmanship and character building skills like being a good team player.  It is all how we choose to approach them. 

Why Should Teachers Motivate Students To Do Well on Their Common Core Tests?

Why Should Teachers Motivate Students To Do Well on Their Common Core Tests?

            As a teacher you have covered every learning goal on the new Common Core; you have modeled argumentative and informative writing; you have reviewed M.L.A. documentation and given your students apple opportunities to practice.  What more can you do to prepare them for the dreaded Common Core Tests?  

            There will be those few renegade students who even though they have mastered all the learning goals will purposely do poorly on their Common Core Tests.  Why would they do that? Don’t they care how this will look on their permanent records?  Actually they don’t.  They know they will not have to repeat the grade based on their test score.  They know the test will not affect their grade in your class.  This is their moment to take control, to show you that you are not the boss of them, to act completely independently, to show you that they are really in charge.  What their test score does affect is their teacher and their school.  As their teacher you may have become their arch-enemy, their nemesis, and this is their change to take revenge. Maybe you called their mother or maybe they are angry because you didn’t let them sit next to their best friend.  You will never know.  As a school, they may be angry because their parents made them attend this school instead of the one where their friends attend.  My dear husband was sent to a Catholic School for his eighth grade. He wanted to be with his friends in public school.  To communicate his anger to his parents and to prove to his parents that he didn’t want to be there, he failed every class.  Your student may be making a point to his parents.  To middle school students achieving a high score on the Common Core Tests is not a priority.

            Why should a teacher care how her students perform on the Common Core Tests?  Parents might tell you that they do not care how the school performs on these tests; they are only concerned about how their children perform.  Nevertheless, these parents have a choice and when it comes to selecting a school, they all look at the test scores and select a high performing school.  Public schools are competing for students with charter schools.  Charter schools can create sophisticated advertising on television and radio to lure parents to their schools making them a very visual alternative for parents.  Public schools only have those test scores.  Charter schools spend a considerable amount of money making their campus look attractive.  They become an attractive alternative for many parents.  When a public school loses a large number of students to a charter school, the district is forced to reduce its staff.  Since in most school districts seniority may not be the only factor in determining which teacher will lose his jobs, your job could be lost.  If you are a novice teacher, it is even more likely you will lose your job.  If your test scores are not as high as other teacher’s scores, even though you taught the core curriculum, your job is still in jeopardy.

            So how do you ensure that all of your students do their best on the Common Core Tests? Use a tactic that coaches have used in athletics for decades.  From the beginning of the school year, establish a “team’ or “community” feeling in your classroom.  The students need to be told repeatedly the famous words from The Three Musketeers, “It’s all for one and one for all.” When you are using peer editing tell them, “Friends don’t let friends turn in bad papers.” When they work in small groups, remind them to “use the circle of help” to solve a problem before they ask you.  Finally create a little friendly competition with another school.  I use a friend who teaches in a school with a similar student-body and of course she uses my school.  We tell our classes that they need to score higher than the other school so I can tell their teacher, Marcia at Fort Herriman Middle School, “In your face, South Jordan Middle School is better than you.”  The students laugh, but they take the challenge seriously. Both schools benefit from this friendly competition and it serves to unite the school into team.  Most of them take their test seriously and their scores are higher. 

            In a perfect world, teachers should not have to worry about how their students perform on a single test.  In a perfect world teachers should not have to worry about students transferring to charter schools.  We don’t live in a perfect world.  We live in a real world where test scores matter and a drop in enrollment does negatively impact teachers. Always remember the words of Vidal Sassoon, “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.”

Looking for Treasures in the Tall Grass

Looking for Treasures in the Tall Grass

                Time Magazine’s recent edition revealed the victims of Malaysian Airline Flight 17 strewn across the field in the Ukraine like discarded rag-dolls.  One still strapped in his seat, lies in the tall grass rotting in the hot summer sun.  Another woman sprawled across a shanty floor next to a bed where she fell through the roof.  No one would deny the tragedy: the loss of brilliant minds fighting the AIDS virus, the loss of infants and children and entire families.  No one would deny the loss of the futures of all of all of these people..  Yet, the loss of opportunities and futures for many children living in the inner cities of the United States goes unnoticed.

                I have taught in inner city schools where I have heard other faculty members say, “Ninety percent of these students will never to college and of those who go, maybe five percent will last longer than one year, so why bother offering an academic curriculum of any substance?"   I have heard these same faculty members claim that by third grade, schools can identify students who will be imprisoned for felonies. I attended a school just like this.  Although the teachers may not have communicated their apprehension for the students overtly, the message was received. It sickens me to hear teachers label students as failures.  Teachers need to act as student advocates.  Teachers need to be looking for treasures even in the tall grass.

                I have also taught in upper-middle class schools in the affluent suburbs where all of the children, even the special education students, are expected to go to college.  In these neighborhoods, parents are advocates for their children.  There is no difference in the intellectual ability of the students in the lower-social economic neighborhoods, but there is a difference in the expectations of the students and the demands of the parents.  The parents in the more affluent neighborhood demand that their child receives all of the services he is entitled to.  They pay for outside tutors, voice lessons, dance classes, and athletic programs.  The students in these schools are often over-worked and anxious from their parents’ demands and scheduling, but they achieve and they achieve at high levels.

                Children become what they are expected to become.  The students in the inner-cities need advocates too.  Often both parents of these students are busy working two jobs to support their families or they are single-parent families.  Some of these parents do not speak English or fear deportation if they make demands on the schools.  There are a myriad of real reasons that becoming involved in their child’s education is difficult for them.  Being economically disadvantaged and culturally different creates huge obstacles for most of these students.  Their families do not have the resources to provide tutoring or voice lessons.  Some of these students work part-time or full-time jobs to help support the family.  Some of these students care for younger siblings while their parents work.  Some of these students have parents who cannot read or write and cannot help their child.  These are the parents who are embarrassed about their own lack of education and do not attend parent-teacher meetings least someone discovers.  Some of these students have families that have been involved in gangs for four generations, but it is the teacher’s obligations to find the treasures even in the tall grass.  Look hard for them.  Help these students discover their treasures.  Teach them to be ready for college and show them how to get there.  For me, it was my high school counselor, Dee Anderson who showed me how to apply for scholarships and colleges.  He took the time to walk me through the procedures and when I hesitated (because it is difficult to be the first in your family) he did not give up on me.  Students who live in the tall grass need an educator to be their advocate.

                These students will surprise you.  When I was teaching in California at an alternative high school, I had a 300 pound fourth-generation gang member who could paint the most delicate watercolor landscapes.  I had another student whose parents could not afford to pay for his A.P. exams, so all of his teachers chipped in and paid for them and the principal helped them find a legal counselor to help the family stay in the country legally.  Educators are greatest asset these families have.  Give them hope for the future.

                Those of us who have taught in  the inner-city schools have known the seventeen year old girl pregnant with her second child who misses school to care for her children working eight to ten hours a day in the fast food industry.  Those of us who have taught in the inner-city schools have known the teenage boy who is running drugs to support his siblings because his only parent is incarcerated.  We have heard him rationalize that even if he does graduate, he is unlikely to find any job and if he does find a job, it will probably be a minimum wage job in fast food.  Could he really feed is family on that?  Our children are rotting in the tall grass too and no one seems concerned.  As a country we cannot afford to waste the futures of these children.  As a teacher, you can make a difference.  Be an advocate for a child wasting in the tall grass.