Teacher Pay = Public Mindset Issue

All of the talk regarding teacher pay is really getting me down a little, not because of the standard issues (like all of the rancorous discourse) but because it emphasizes a mindset of so many people (that doesn't go away and that some of those people wouldn't admit publicly) and a flawed discourse. That became clear during a conversation I had at work. The conversation went something like this...


Customer: Bemoaning teachers and perceived problems with "schools these days" (even though his kids were long grown and he had no idea what's going on in schools)


Me: I'm in school to be a teacher. It is unfair to blame teachers for the current economic situation. Most people go into teaching because we really want to do it, not for economic benefits.  We have to get a graduate degree and our ability to recover that extra expense is a lot lower than most fields that require graduate degrees (i.e. law, medicine, etc.). 


Customer: I didn't know teachers need graduate degrees.


Me: Yes, that's an Oregon requirement. Do you think doctors and lawyers get paid too much?


Customer: They were entitled to get whatever they can...they put all that time and money into getting the extra schooling and they should get whatever a company is willing to pay them. 


Me: Is my graduate degree a lower level than another graduate degree?


Customer: No, any extra schooling is important.


Me: If that's the case, why should I get that degree and then be looked down on for wanting to make a decent living (one that has so much less potential than the others)?


Customer: I just don't think it's fair that you get to try and take more and more of my money.


Me: Oh, I see. (Being extra nice, changing the subject, backing away slowly and trying to prevent my head from exploding in a delirious cloud of profane epithets)


Here's what I came away with...there's such a different perspective on teachers' salaries, but it is a false perspective and it all revolves around a dislike of the idea of taxes. When someone goes to see a doctor, lawyer, etc., they understand that they are paying a fee for the service. However, when the fire department comes, their kids go to school or they drive on a road, they feel entitled to those public "services", but when the tax bill comes they don't look at it as fees paid for services. Instead they look at it as though someone is trying to steal their money. How do we change that attitude and/or how do we change the dialogue we have when discussing these issues? Maybe we should just dispense with the tax code and charge the fair market value for everything the average person uses?!

Student Involvement

As I read the article Students walk out in protest over teacher layoffs it reconfirmed my belief that students (especially at the high school level) should be involved in their own educational process (and gave me hope that at least some want to be involved). 


Some students in the Katy Texas school district protested staffing cuts at their schools. One student even suggested that they need their teachers more than smart boards in the classroom. Governor Perry's response to these protesting students was...


"There are better ways to send your message than walking out of the classroom," he said. "The fact of the matter is, I feel quite confident that the Texas Legislature will fund our schools appropriately. At the end of the day, being in the classroom is a lot more important to them than protesting, particularly during school hours. If they want to come here on Saturdays and Sundays or after school, have at it."


It's ironic that teenagers get accused of having attitude problems. Gov. Perry's comments remind me what's wrong with some leadership when it comes to schools, particularly high schools...attitude. Instead of seeing these students as passionate about their school and a possible resource, his take-away of this situation is that the students' actions are inappropriate and a waste of time. If they would have "sent their message in a better way," would he have taken notice? Probably not! These students are begging for the chance to be involved, and they are pushed away and put down by the leadership of the state. 


At the most, these students are 3 1/2 years away from being on their own, faced with a variety of situations just like this. There is absolutely no reason that they should not be involved in the process of their education (since soon they will be asked to be involved in the process of figuring out their own way). Research has proven that the more perspectives we take into account, the clearer picture we get about the subject. Instead of doing education to students, why are they not involved in the process? My guess is that people like Gov. Perry think it would be too hard to figure out a way to make that happen...great example/model for those students!

Food Fight

An Ed Week article recently (online at least) discussed the issue of the new school food policy revamping, which is such a picture of how screwy our society is when it comes to food.


Those in charge are concerned with costs and how/if they will be able to get kids to eat more fruits and vegetables. On one hand, I completely get this. Schools have no money, and kids are generally not known for wanting to eat their produce. However, in the bigger picture, what is the true cost of poor nutrition and what children's health worth? How do we measure a school's costs for the ramifications of things like obesity and lack of proper nutrition. We also know that many students are unlikely to get these things from home. Don't we want them to at least have one (if not two) healthy meals in the day? Finally, it's actually not that hard to incorporate fruits and vegetables into the things kids already like, as long as they are in an unrecognizable format. In fact, my friend's kids outwardly despise vegetables, but have they ever noticed that the brownies I make them (which they love!) have pureed spinach, carrots and whole wheat flour in them...nope because they're brownies with little chocolate chips inside!


This is not just about schools. It's about our entire nation and about us as individuals. We value what is cheap and easy right now, without caring about the ramifications later. We would rather not think about the costs on our healthcare, our society and ourselves. Maybe there would be more money for schools if we could get ourselves healthier and spend less on chronic health issues. (What if our better health kept medical costs from rising so high?...fewer fights over union members' compensation packages maybe?) It's about time we look at the real costs of our actions, take some personal responsibility and do a better job modeling for our kids. If we do, everyone wins!

Industrialized Model

As I've been doing the work for my Classroom Management plan, I've been thinking quite a lot about how we go about school. In addition, there has been a lot of talk by some education policy makers about "getting back to the basics" regarding the classroom. Especially in the high school realm, I don't think we ever have left the basics, and those basics seem to be a factory for furnishing workers to industries. Here's what's been swirling around in my mind about most high schools...

• They live and die by the bell, same as the old model of a factory.
• People want "standards"...the products that schools manufacture (students) should be measurably the same.
• Business leaders are weighing in HEAVILY on what they want from students leaving schools. 
• Those business leaders say they want creativity and teamwork, but then many absolutely do not support school models that steer away from the old model: lecture-style, heavily-tested, standards-driven classroom. (To me that seems like they give good sound bites but really want workers who will do what they're told.)
• Most high schools are run lecture-style with little input from students, and some people scoff at/question any other possible models.

We've had the same model and have been on the same path as long as we've been educating students in this country. When you have learned to be successful in that world (even if it's in spite of that world), it's really difficult to envision another model, and so I was glad to see Ed Week's Commentary section take on the subject. I do understand that we are all going to be workers in our lives, but is school's main goal to train those workers or to educate each student to the best of our abilities so that those students can actively make the decisions about where they want to go next? If it's about educating each child, why do we spend so much more effort on assessing the group using the business world's standards than we do on educating each child? If I worry about what the business world wants when I'm working with my students, it seems like I'll be cheating them out of an authentic education.

Civil War Through Photographs

Since today is the sesquicentennial of the beginning of the Civil War and I'm going to be a Social Studies teacher, I feel obligated to create a blog post. The Civil War began at the dawn of the photographic age. At the time, neither side really contemplated the idea of military censorship of photojournalism. Thus, all people (including civilians) were given a glimpse of soldiers, battle scenes and the ravages of war. The public was shocked by the brutality they saw, and shattered were their previous romanticized images of the nobility of war. The number of casualties in the Civil War always shocks me. 620,000 died which was almost 2% of the total U.S. population...if the same percentage died today, it would be about 6,067,600. Astonishing!


Currently The Library of Congress has more than 400 of these images on display in an exhibit called The Last Full Measure (which you can also see online by following this link). While they are mostly photographs of individual soldiers, looking at their faces is quite powerful. The most astounding detail is how young some of them were. I've heard that the Union army had 100,000 soldiers who were 15 or younger...prime age for students in a lot of our classes. The uniforms was the other detail that stuck out, some in "street" clothes. We forget that this was still the day when our military force basically cobbled together groups of militias, most members having little military experience. That's a far cry from the "fighting unit" of today.


Anyway, I thought we should all remind ourselves of the struggles we have been through in our nation as a little perspective on the struggles we face today.  

Community Involvement

With all of the heated arguments swirling around teachers lately, I have thought a lot about the aggressive, vitriolic reaction of some people (namely those who might start with "Schools these days..."). I wonder why they feel that way? The other day, I had an idea...actually it was more of a series of questions. 

• I wonder what kind of an experience some of those people had when they were in school? They might say that school was different when they went there, and they turned out just fine. If so, I'd ask them to consider whether they turned out fine because of or in spite of their experience. I wonder if some are so rancorous because there experience wasn't that great?
• I wonder how long it has been since they were inside a classroom? Have they spent any time seeing what's going on? 

The last question leads me to the common conundrum about people. If you ask them how schools are doing, they often tell you what terrible things are happening. However, if you ask them if they like their child's teacher, they often love that person and think s/he's doing well.

Would the current climate change if we could galvanize people to volunteer and help out the schools in their communities (especially those who don't have kids or whose kids are grown)? In my opinion, it might, and everyone would win. 

• Schools (incl. administration, custodians, counselors, etc.) would have more help (maybe need a little less money)
• Students would have more help and might be able to receive more one-on-one help/attention
• Students would have more exposure to the adults in their community and adults would have more exposure to the kids in their community
• Teachers would have more help with their classroom and with their prep work
• Volunteers would feel good about helping and could see the issues, commitment, and hard work from all parties

It's always easier to complain when you are not too close to an issue. I don't know how to go about galvanizing a large group of people, but I want to take this idea into my room and see if it makes a difference there.

Punishment for Good Teachers (and Students)

From a couple of different places I have heard a specific tidbit about the recent plan Bill Gates proposed for reforming education. (In the interest of full disclosure, I have not read the plan. So, I do not know the context surrounding this comment.) The suggestion is to give good teachers more students so that the teachers who need help can have lower class sizes. Those good teachers would get a monetary compensation for taking on those students.


I have mixed feelings about this suggestion. On one hand, it is possible that those good teachers:

• Would be agreeable if it's a temporary situation
• Might not mind if it allows a colleague to get help 
• May like the extra pay 
• Are up to the challenge

However, it seems more like a punishment of those teachers and their students because:

• A temporary situation for a teacher is not the same thing to a student. The student only has a finite number of terms in his/her education. Each one is as important as the last.
• More students in the classroom put strains on infrastructure, student-to-student interactions, management issues, etc.
• Most good teachers ask students for work that is harder and requires more time to grade
• Students get less(maybe no)individual time with the teacher
• Teacher must put in extra work just to learn all names (let alone learn anything about each student)
• Most teachers are not in the profession for the money (I don't know if some non-educators actually realize or believe this.)

Sometimes when trying to address one issue (like that of how to help lower performing teachers), it is easy to think of an idea that sounds good for that purpose and easier to loose sight of other perspectives. In addition, it can also be difficult to think of the unintended consequences. 

Preventing Cheating

A recent Ed Week article discussed cheating, its ramifications on students and a study done on the subject. The gist of the article is that cheaters overinflate their academic ability and potentially set themselves up for a feedback loop of poorer and poorer performance. After a student cheats, s/he ends up telling her/himself that the grade received was earned. Then on subsequent tests, the cheater thinks s/he will do better because of the last grade received (the one received through cheating) but ends up doing much worse than predicted thus adding more pressure to cheat next time. Thus a cycle is born.

The researchers looked at causes for cheating, which include the usual suspects: disinterest in material, feeling the teacher is unfair, pressure to get good grades or to get into a good college, etc. (This is no real news - we've been talking about this for years.) From my perspective this study signifies that students are not connected to what they're studying and feel like they are powerless. Cheating may be one of the only ways they feel they can control the outcome. 

The meaning we derive from this research has so much potential. To me, it means that we ought to have classrooms where students have a voice about what they study, why they do it and how it's done. Apparently, I see things a little differently. The most disturbing part of this article was not about the cheaters, but it came when I read this:

"Ms. Chance and Mr. Fremer said teachers and administrators should try to reduce opportunities for students to cheat, but should also help them establish classwide and schoolwide codes for academic integrity, and then reinforce the importance of that code before every assignment."

A group does all of this research and finds out the real destructive potential on the individual student, and they advise teachers to reduce opportunities for cheating and to develop more codes to put upon students?! That seems like a cop out and like such a waste of potential. Maybe they just wanted to focus on the research and not what to do with it (but felt they needed to say something on the subject). I guess it's up to everyone else to utilize this information in the best ways possible.