tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91142293008093929682024-02-20T16:09:15.580-08:00The EduTalk: Teacher Voices Define Our ChoicesSimonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-55173984202704025222012-03-31T15:51:00.000-07:002012-03-31T17:17:28.845-07:00Flip This School<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Below is an article by Kevin Ryan that challenges the district's "official rationale of ... finances" that Ron Kristof refers to in his candid <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20120330/OPINION/120339926?p=1&tc=pg">article</a> calling the closure of Doyle Park "morally reprehensible." The Press Democrat did not accept this submission but it should be disseminated widely as it reveals the distortions in the financial "bottom line" narrative the district and Board used to justify what Kristof rightly identifies as a "political decision." If we peel away the misleading numbers about finances and so-called school achievement that were used to destroy the Doyle Park Elementary school community, we must confront the unapologetic embrace of segregation that covers itself with the fig leaf of "choice." </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">After the article you will find the statement that Kevin Ryan read to the Board this past Wednesday, 3/28; it contains bullet points that our Santa Rosa community should expect the Board to either refute or concede.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In the early hours of March 15</span><span style="font: normal normal normal 8px/normal 'Times New Roman'; letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> the Santa Rosa Board of Education voted 4 to 2 to close Doyle Park Elementary School and give the site to the Santa Rosa French-American Charter School (SRFACS), which plans to offer a French language immersion program for kindergarten through 6</span><span style="font: normal normal normal 8px/normal 'Times New Roman'; letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> grade. The vote will in effect displace the current Doyle Park students, who are mostly Latino and poor, with a whiter, more affluent student body drawn mainly from other school districts.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Board members who pushed this action through freely admitted that it had little to do with education, community or justice. It was simply a financial decision, they said. To their profound discredit, they argued this point as if it were sheer common sense that finance would override all other considerations in these hard times. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Board claims that this was a well-considered and sound financial decision. It is neither. They argue that their action will save money and even increase revenue to the district. Sadly it will not. A thorough review of the Board’s documents on the matter reveal that their self-proclaimed “tough but responsible” decision is actually a high-risk gamble. It is bad enough that the bet is made with money they don’t have. But what is unforgivable is that the wager is also built on the anguish and tears of Doyle Park students who will never benefit even if the long shot comes in. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Board members pointed to the severe budget cuts to Santa Rosa schools and the fact that Doyle Park lost $180,000 in 2010-2011 due to low enrollment. No one is disputing these facts. But closing Doyle Park Elementary and opening the new SRFACS does not save money; it costs money.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">SRFACS begins in the hole with an immediate expenditure of $52,461 for a half-year salary and benefits for a new principal. The Board also projects an $84,351 loss in the school’s first year. The loss is grossly underestimated because it is based on inflated enrollment projections. Incredibly, the Board assumes that more than 91% of those who signed a non-binding form expressing intent to attend SRFACS will actually enroll their children there. The count includes signatures from parents as far away as France, Oregon, Menlo Park and San Francisco! If actual enrollment slips a mere 3% - just 8 students- below the district’s enrollment projection for the SRFACS’s first year, it will lose more money ($126,000) than Doyle Park would have lost ($123,000) if it were allowed to remain open.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What justifies this bet? The Board boldly asserts that SRFACS will turn a profit after just one year! As most businesspeople know, it is rare for a startup to turn a profit in one year. Based on pumped up enrollment projection for 2012-2013, the district simply claims that enrollment will increase by 20% in 2013-2014. The rosy scenario rolls on with steady profits in subsequent years. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Board’s analysis of the financial future of SRFACS is an exercise in wishful thinking. It has all of the misplaced optimism of the reality TV show “Flip This House" that was popular during the real estate bubble. This time, the Board is playing “Flip This School” with already tragic harm to the current Doyle Park students and future damage to the taxpayer and our beloved public schools. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">How could Doyle Park Elementary have become a financially viable school? If the Board had allowed it to remain open next year, it would have needed about 25 new students to close the gap. One way to get there would have been a Spanish immersion program for kindergarten and 1</span><span style="font: normal normal normal 8px/normal 'Times New Roman'; letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>st</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> grade. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But some Board members were too busy dreaming of profits from a new French charter school to allow that to happen.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Kevin Ryan is an IT professional and serial entrepreneur who has lived in Santa Rosa for over 20 years. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My name is Kevin Ryan. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I was here at 1:15 in the morning on March 15</span><span style="font: normal normal normal 7.3px/normal 'Lucida Grande'; letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> when Board member Haenel, Carle, Wakefield and Jeye voted to close Doyle Park Elementary and give the site to the French American Charter School. I thought the decision was profoundly unfair because it will, in effect, displace the current Doyle Park students, who are mostly Latino and poor, with a whiter, more affluent student body drawn mainly form outside the district.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">They said that the overriding issue compelling them to close Doyle was financial. They claimed that the decision was well considered and sound. I decided to carefully review the Board’s financial analysis to see if this is true. Sadly it is not.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Here’s what I found:</span></span></div>
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<li style="font: 11.0px 'Lucida Grande'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The vote to open the French charter school was a vote to immediately spend some $52,000 for a half year’s salary for a new administrator for the school. Spend $52,000 when the district is broke.</span></span></li>
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<li style="font: 11.0px 'Lucida Grande'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">With a projected enrollment of 260 students, the charter school loses some $84,000 in its 1</span><span style="font: normal normal normal 7.3px/normal 'Lucida Grande'; letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>st</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> year. This loss is a gross underestimate because to get to an enrollment of 260, the Board assumes that an astounding 91% of all petitioners will actually send their children to the French school. </span></span></li>
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<li style="font: 11.0px 'Lucida Grande'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If actual enrollment slips by only 3%, or 8 students, the French charter school loses more money ($126,000) next year than Doyle Park ($123,000) would have lost, had it been allowed to stay open.</span></span></li>
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<li style="font: 11.0px 'Lucida Grande'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What justifies this bet on the charter school? The Board assumes that the French school will turn a profit in one year. Most businesspeople will tell you don’t bet on making a profit in only one year.</span></span></li>
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<li style="font: 11.0px 'Lucida Grande'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">How do they turn a profit? The Board’s analysis asserts that the enrollment will increase by 20% in the 2</span><span style="font: normal normal normal 7.3px/normal 'Lucida Grande'; letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>nd</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> year. The estimate is simply pulled from thin air. </span></span></li>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Board’s analysis is an exercise in wishful thinking. It is not a careful financial plan. It’s a speculative bet. People used to flip houses during the real estate bubble. Now with charter school mania, the Board is playing “Flip this School” with tragic harm to the current Doyle students and future damage to the taxpayer. It is bad enough that the Board is gambling with money they don’t have. What is unforgivable is that bet is at the expense of Doyle students who will never benefit, even if the long shot comes in.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Could Doyle have been saved? If the Board had allowed it to remain open next year, it would have needed an additional 25 students to close the financial gap. One way to get there could have been a Spanish language immersion program for kindergarten and 1</span><span style="font: normal normal normal 7.3px/normal 'Lucida Grande'; letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>st</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> grade. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But some Board members were too busy playing “Flip this School” and dreaming of the profits to allow that to happen.</span></span></div>
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<br />Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-73650958145451199762012-03-01T18:04:00.002-08:002012-03-01T18:05:23.493-08:00No Public Education, No Democracy<br />
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I teach English at Montgomery High School in Santa Rosa, California. I love my school, my amazing colleagues, and the kids who enter my classroom each year. But I hate what is happening to public education.</div>
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From the national to the local level, our public schools -- and that means our students -- are under attack. This attack takes more than one form. The cuts to vital education services are horrifying enough, but they're only half the picture. The other half is the violation of our public trust by private interests.</div>
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It's not a pretty sight, but we must look squarely at the vultures of privatization that prey on the damage to our schools, from New York to New Orleans to Wisconsin to California. Diane Ravitch, former Assistant Secretary of Education in the first Bush administration, refers to the three big education funders, Bill Gates, Eli Broad and the Walton Family, as the Billionaire Boys Club in her excellent book <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Death_and_Life_of_the_Great_American.html?id=ani6eaUFVIcC" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; color: #c68700; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink"><em style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; font-style: italic !important; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The Death and Life of the Great American School System</em></a>.</div>
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Vultures and their corporations are poised to supply the artificial heart of learning to a wounded public school system they fully intend to finish off. But they won't succeed because our communities are going to fight for our beloved schools, we teachers are going to fight for our students, and our students are going to demand the education they deserve!</div>
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Education is a human right; it is not a humiliating race for basic funding, something the Obama administration and Education Secretary Arne Duncan would do well to remember. Education is a right, and yet there is more segregation in our schools today than at any time since 1968, the year that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The corporate obsession with charter schools and high stakes tests has contributed mightily to this segregation while shamefully distracting us from the poverty and income inequality that go hand in hand with it.<br />
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I'm not going to lie down while corporations prey on our students. I don't want to see our nation's young people at the mercy of a Rupert Murdoch or a Michael Milken. Do you remember Michael Milken, former felon and Junk Bond King of the eighties? He is also co-founder of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K12_(company)" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; color: #c68700; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">K-12 Inc</a>., America's largest provider of online education for kindergarten through 12th grade.</div>
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An online school exists inside of a computer. Today, kids can conduct their entire social lives on a computer and get all their schooling done there, too. They never even have to leave the house. It's very compact, very efficient, but there is one missing link: the human link, the spacious beauty of the human bond.</div>
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Online or virtual schools typically have high withdrawal rates, and that's not surprising. It must be very tempting to drop out of a "school" when there is no teacher there in person to get to know you, to care, to see who you are and who you might one day become.</div>
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These online schools are marketed to English learners who need the exact opposite of isolation and benefit most from cooperative strategies in natural, not virtual, settings.</div>
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Or they are preposterously promoted as beneficial to low income students as though it were a good thing to get education at a discount, off the rack. As Diane Ravitch warns of the educational dystopia that is fast gaining on reality, "the poor will get computers and the rich will get computers and teachers."</div>
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The corporate predators also target struggling learners, kids with learning disabilities or emotional problems; in other words, the very kids who need human engagement and interaction the most. And make no mistake: all kids need it! One shudders to imagine children as young as 5 attending a virtual school. It's a 'brave new world.'</div>
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How can we allow Michael Milken, a man who wouldn't be allowed inside of a real classroom because of his felony conviction, to make a profit marketing his online curriculum to kindergartners?</div>
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Letting the business world gain control of our public schools has many sad consequences, but there is no question that it is making a few people very rich. Rupert Murdoch referred to the for-profit K-12 education industry as "a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed." We must keep Rupert Murdoch waiting desperately until the end of time.<br />
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And we can't forget the Walton Family. The Walton Family spent $157 million dollars on Ed Reform in 2010 alone and has spent $1 billion to date on pushing charter schools and busting teachers' unions. Do we really want the people behind Walmart to set the education agenda for America?</div>
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We hear so much these days about standards in education and holding teachers accountable to the standards. Ask yourself what the Walmart standard of education might be: a 'chain' school system force-feeding one standardized diet of junk learning to all those unique kids across the nation? Corporations are pushing the fast food of education, with budget cuts pumping up the size of classes to 40 plus students. How big can an online class get? Super size me.<br />
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In the current education climate it is not fashionable to examine the big picture, nor to ask too many questions about what students are learning and why we are teaching it to them. It's not recommended for the teacher and it's not prescribed for the student. Nevertheless, we teachers are not about to give up on critical thinking within or beyond the walls of the classroom.</div>
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Here is one critical piece of the big picture: The Walton Family owns more wealth than the bottom 40% of the whole U.S. while one in five kids here live in poverty.</div>
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Finland, the country whose scores in international test comparisons we've been holding up as a model, has high-performing schools in large part because they do things like provide food and free health-care for their students. They understand that a quality education emerges from a strong community and a humane society. Why can't we figure that out here in the wealthiest country in the world?</div>
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So if the Walton family really wants to improve education, maybe they should start supporting Single Payer Healthcare. Maybe they should launch a massive campaign to end child poverty. And no education reform effort would be complete without a major challenge to the corporate stranglehold on our system of government. Come to think of it, these so-called philanthropists might want to join the Occupy Movement! But we're talking about the owners of Walmart.</div>
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The 1% is hoping that if America continues to blame teachers for everything then they might forget to tax the millionaires. But we can't afford to forget the real scope of the problem. We can't forget that Occupy was a verb before it became a noun. Whatever your political identity, your party affiliation, your status in America today, please occupy your conscience. We need to vote to fund public education and other essential human services. We need to occupy our hearts, our minds, and our capacity for critical thinking. And we need to do more than rouse ourselves for intermittent election cycles: we can't go back to sleep.</div>
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People everywhere are waking up to the radical threat that corporations pose to our global economy, to our planet and to our very existence as a species. But first of all corporations are a threat to our democracy, to our self-determination. For without public education, there can be no democracy.</div>
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This is why we reject any authoritarian education mandated by an illegitimate corporate power. We must overthrow the plutocracy! We cannot afford to wait timidly for politicians powered by big money to give their lukewarm legislative blessings to our kids' fundamental human rights. We the people need to take to the streets to demand those rights, to demand the legislation that is just and fair in the wealthiest country in the world. We are the decision-makers and "we're the people - we go on." And I'm not just quoting <em style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; font-style: italic !important; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The Grapes of Wrath</em> because I'm an English teacher.</div>
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I would never have become a teacher if I didn't believe in the power of people to change the world, and especially the power of young people. Students, I know you can change the world! You can change the world! I believe in you.</div>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-56493139884437654052011-11-26T19:38:00.000-08:002011-11-27T19:42:22.541-08:00Occupy the Classroom<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><div class="MsoBodyText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 48px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">If Occupy in its infancy has some of the characteristics of a child, it makes me wonder what should be preserved and what refined and matured. I ask myself where innocence should be maintained and where boundaries become practical and necessary.<br />
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I think of the movement's struggle to forge a community out of diverse classes of people who have made their way to various sites of encampment or protest. As a teacher and union representative, I am aware that some in our association balk at the prospect of teachers standing shoulder to shoulder with the homeless, addicted and mentally ill in a joint day of protest for Occupy Santa Rosa and the Santa Rosa Teachers Association. SRTA has officially endorsed the Occupy Movement, but we have yet to make our presence felt at the site of resistance.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 48px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Several people in our community have reached out to me about organizing this day of solidarity, but the concern that we will weaken our credibility by consorting with society's outcasts continues to stall any demonstration of common ground. As a parent and teacher, this saddens me deeply. There is no question that some troubled and alienated people have gravitated to City Hall alongside the more lucid political activists. The only question is how the Occupy community is prepared to greet them.<br />
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My son is now three years old and lately I have been reading him a book that I had as a child called Jack the Bum and the Halloween Handout. The story is about a guileless New York City homeless man on Halloween who goes trick or treating after some kids good-naturedly explain to him how it's done. Predictably, Jack meets with horror and revulsion as he knocks on the doors of various apartments. My son seems to really like this book but I don't think he understands its dramatic irony. How could he? He is too young to realize how savagely class divides us.<br />
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When I was his age growing up in NYC, my mom likes to remind me of the way I ran gleefully into the arms of a "bum," a guy who looked and smelled like Jack, someone who would repulse any properly socialized adult. There is pride in her tone when she tells this story, but it is mingled with a residual alarm that most cautious parents would feel at the incongruous sight of their young, tenderhearted lambs leaping into the arms of something wild, someone whose official stamp of humanity has faded. There is caution and then there is calcified callousness.<br />
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I would like to see Occupy preserve some of the unrestrained humanity of children as it evolves from its infancy, but I recognize the challenges this presents, no more so than when I am faced with annoying, obnoxious, or even outright disturbed students in my classroom. Almost from their earliest experience of school, kids are socialized in stratification. They are placed in different tracks and not so subtly ushered into very unequal destinies.<br />
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When I teach a "low-performing" class I frequently encounter kids with mild to severe behavior problems, which is another way of saying they are having a hard time. As teachers, we are institutionally encouraged to control the behavior of these kids regardless of its cause. We learn strategies to shut down the symptoms of distress, pain, poverty, abuse and neglect. But if as teachers we want to guide our students into a shared and inclusive community, we must be as concerned with the way our students feel as the way they behave, with the cause as much as the symptom.<br />
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There are occasions when a student harasses, bothers or distracts others to the degree that the only appropriate response is to remove this student from the room. However, more common are the many times when such an extreme action is taken gratuitously as part of a systemic marginalization of "problem people." I believe it is part of a teacher's job to model how to treat each member of a shared community, how to empathize, be flexible, and show kindness even to those who annoy or aggravate us.<br />
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The other day, one of my more obnoxious students in a class full of struggling learners was acting out and trying to derail a lesson. Precisely speaking, his aim I'm sure was not to derail this particular lesson, but rather to express some dimly understood feeling that cried out for attention. Another student immediately said "you should send him to the office." I saw the exasperated kid's point, of course, leaving aside the irony that he is a rascal most days himself. In that moment I weighed the importance of removing an obstacle to other kids' learning with the dehumanizing logic that reduces a child to an obstacle.<br />
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I asked my students how many of them had been sent to the office at least once since elementary school. The majority raised their hands. I asked how many had visited the office numerous times. The hands stayed up. "How many of you have ever been suspended?" A few hands went down but at least half stayed up.<br />
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"Did all those years of detentions and punishments make you better learners, or more respectful or more caring?" Unanimously, they said no.<br />
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"Did they even make you behave better?" Sometimes, they said, on a particular day or with a particular teacher they feared. But the good behavior didn't stick, they acknowledged. It had even gotten worse over the years. We then talked about the fact that California spends more money on prisons than on schools. An unplanned lesson began to sink in. These kids get that many in their midst are headed to the margins of society. They have been conditioned to expect it, just as they have been conditioned to reinforce its logic in their dealings with each other.<br />
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"Send him out! Send him out!" I wonder where they will all go? In a shared human community, there is nowhere but here. I hope Occupy continues to contend with the social misfits, though as the movement ages certain lines must be and will be drawn. For instance, I don't think Occupy needs to provide a platform for an anti-immigrant sentiment that I regretfully noted in a few signs during one very large protest gathering here in Santa Rosa; of course, a dialogue is always preferable to an expulsion. But we should not be afraid to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people whom society has thrown away. The Occupy community can model for the larger society what humanity looks like.</span></span></span><br />
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The film itself is vulnerable to dismissal as an incomplete and halting analysis of what ails education. People will complain that it is anecdotal and lacks statistical credibility. The dominant culture refuses to take anything seriously in education that does not present itself in "measurable" or easily digestible terms. The lived experience of teachers, students and parents in all its human complexity will have trouble fending off the reductionist juggernaut of measurable data. Although the personal stories animate sound research, the film does not focus on proof as much as stirring testimony. As a heartfelt attempt by one mother to form a coherent narrative about the policies that are endangering childhood and leading to an increasingly mechanistic society out of touch with humanity, I found it deeply affecting. Admittedly not the aesthetic achievement of "Waiting for Superman," its logic is more scrupulous but less unified than the other film's simplistic propaganda.<br />
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Upon viewing the film a second time in preparation for Wednesday night, I am struck by the cumulative impression of so many kids under the gun, scared for their futures, humiliated by their failures and in constant dread of plummeting from the artificial heights of their achievements. In my 10 years of teaching, I have come to believe that test scores and grades constitute the artificial heart of learning that threatens to replace permanently the natural rhythms of curiosity and creativity. If learning could look in the mirror, would it see a grade or number reflected back? Or would the portrait be something far more complex, fluid, dynamic and intangible? Again and again I witness my students obsess over a grade-check like addicts in need of a fix. When I was in high school we got our grades once a semester. Nowadays, in the age of computerized grade programs, students can check their grades once a day if they are so inclined, and inclined they are. With welcome exceptions, the most common question I get when students approach me is "how can I raise my grade?" "How can I find out more about what you were teaching us?" is rarely uttered.<br />
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We have created absurd conditions for student learning: rotting infrastructure, bloated class sizes, demoralized teachers, and a chronic sense of emergency permeating our schools and classrooms. Our academic culture is one of high stakes and high alert, survival of the fittest when the future itself seems poised to foreclose on our kids' survival, never mind their dreams. The high stakes tests have come to represent their ultimate value in a society of unforgiving bottom lines where poverty and futility is as likely to claim their efforts as is their college or career of choice. Who wouldn't be terrified under such circumstances? Who would have the time or ease to reflect on the big existential questions when one's very right to exist is being tested?<br />
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In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein writes about the triumph of the "free market" through the manipulation of people who are stunned by disaster. Education bears out this doctrine in direct ways as private interests swoop in to "save" us from the manufactured emergency of failing test scores while we are understandably disoriented from the shocks and blows of budget cuts. Ideologues push policy down the barrel of a union-busting demonization of teachers. Charter schools and the profitable industry of virtual learning are the private sector's panacea for education the same way the so-called free market is the panacea for economic crises. In a more metaphorical sense, I think we are seeing something in education akin to the "Test Doctrine" where students, teachers and parents have acquired a low-performing disaster mentality brought on by damning test scores, and the spaciousness of authentic learning has collapsed into the desperate drills of do or die. Knowledge has been conflated with one's self-worth to the degree that many young people feel their very humanity is on the line when they learn. Being objectified as a number in school takes a real human toll and discourages critical thinking. It's hard to think critically when you are wired to criticize yourself incessantly, when your attentions are less captivated by the wonders and puzzles of the world than by a crippling fixation on your own ego. This siege mentality makes our young people today ripe for authoritarian and economic exploitation. Fear and insecurity are the emotional building blocks of a politically subservient population that is easily dominated by unquestioned systems of power.<br />
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Ironically, while we foster an ever-present fear of individual failure in our students, we enshroud the true high stakes of learning in the jargon of test achievement and accountability. Students are adrenaline junkies riveted by the perceived horror show of their grades and test scores while the real existential threat of Climate Change and its Corporate agents demand their full engagement. After reading Naomi Klein's latest article, I am struck again by the urgent intervention between truth and power that public education can make in our society. As a teacher who wants to protect her students' common future, I know which side I am on. That is why at our union's last Rep Council Meeting, I moved for SRTA to support the growing Occupy Movement on behalf of the 99%. The vote passed 27 to 6.<br />
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There are people of all ages camped out in cities across the country and the world, but more and more I take note of the young revolutionaries of our times, the kids who are here to teach all of us what it means to be creative, critical and visionary, to stretch the shrinking parameters of a deadly status quo and to make the mind and the heart accountable to each other. I wish for all young people to awaken to their full potential to change the world. Nowhere leaves a lot of space for humanity to occupy. But first we have to leave the race.</span></span>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-80502522101123024862011-07-23T11:44:00.001-07:002011-11-27T20:04:42.286-08:00Cheating our Children<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In her syndicated </span></span><a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20110720/WIRE/110729974/1042?p=1&tc=pg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">column</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> that appeared in Wednesday’s Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Esther Cepeda accuses standardized testing critics of using the Georgia cheating scandal to “bash” tests when they should be placing the blame squarely on “flawed human natures.” Cepeda pluralizes this abstract idea to refer specifically to teachers who “made wrong choices” without surrendering the crowd-pleasing generalization: Human nature is a convenient scapegoat when we don’t want to ask the tough questions about why people make stupid or harmful decisions in the first place. Teachers certainly did make wrong choices when they falsified student tests and/or failed to report the widespread cheating in their midst. So did administrators and, according to the </span></span><a href="http://clatl.com/images/other/aps/vol3.pdf"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">investigative report</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> issued by the Georgia Governor’s office, so did 2009 Superintendent of the Year Beverly Hall and her senior staff. Apparently, human nature was showing its bad side from top to bottom.</span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Take those seemingly innocuous tests. Cepeda lets them off the hook of moral agency even though they are overloaded with simplistic choices for our kids. Tests don’t cheat any more than guns kill, right? People and their ugly natures are the real culprits, but if we accept this false dichotomy then we fail to ask who hides behind the standardized tests that have swallowed our schools. The answer, of course, is more flawed humans prioritizing bottom line profits and faux proofs over actual teaching and learning. The Governor’s report identifies “three primary conditions” that “led to widespread cheating” in Atlanta Public Schools: a “culture of fear, intimidation, and retaliation,” “unrealistic targets set by the district,” and Dr. Hall’s focus on “test results and public praise to the exclusion of integrity and ethics.” The question is not whether humans can fall prey to fear or greed. We know that they can, and we disapprove when they do. The question is whether there are human-made conditions that contribute to the morally lazy actions we decry in others, and whether we are complicit in maintaining them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Do we want to entice teachers into bad behavior with misguided rewards and punishments that make doing the right thing a gamble with personal survival rather than a social good? Do we want children in all of their complexity, rich or poor, to be reduced to bubbles for a subjectively designed exam that is no more proof of learning than a greeting card is proof of love? These are ethical choices we all need to make, but Cepeda skirts accountability for them by shrinking the exercise of free will to one question, (a) to cheat or (b) not to cheat. Meanwhile, we flawed humans face several momentous choices that go unacknowledged by testing apologists. We can choose to allow high stakes tests to be used as a lever of privatization or we can fight for authentic education befitting a democracy. We can decide that poverty, a major factor in low student achievement, is inevitable or we can call it inexcusable.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">While Esther Cepeda appears to defend poor children from the fuzzy “bigotry of low expectations,” her rhetoric leaves them easy prey for the greater, concrete evil of poverty. She implicitly accepts that being poor is an irrevocable identity and poverty a permanent state of nature. Poor kids can learn too, says her logic, so we are doing them a terrible disservice by suggesting that poverty might impede achievement. We should continue to debate the narrow and superficial measures of this achievement, but the crucial point here is that poverty is a changeable condition. When we draw the connection between poverty and education, we are showing our optimism that poverty can be challenged and our faith in the future of our children and our society. The cynical view that we can do nothing to change these stark economic inequities comes wrapped in upbeat sermons about token equality, but it is the same old tired nineteenth century Horatio Alger myth that school reformers have repackaged. They rationalize social inaction on a massive scale and then cloak this passive cowardice in pretty words about individual expectations. Imagine if American society rose to our expectation that child poverty would end and children’s most basic rights such as education would be adequately funded. Until then, let them take tests! Perhaps it’s human nature to take the path of least resistance. Some might even call it cheating.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20110817/OPINION/110819598/1350?Title=GUEST-OPINION-Who-is-really-being-cheated-on-tests-&tc=ar</span></span></div>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-53874959850208225022011-05-18T22:00:00.000-07:002011-11-27T20:06:05.072-08:00Thinking in the Trenches: Teacher as Soldier<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In their April </span></span></span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html?_r=1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">op-ed</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> in The New York Times, "The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries," Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari compare teachers to troops and ask why we blame educators for the failures of education policy, but not soldiers for the defeats or setbacks in war. Assuming education comes down to a war on ignorance, they argue that we should support the teachers on the ground fighting on behalf of our nation’s kids, just as we support the noble efforts of our troops on behalf of our country. When battles are lost, we may bolster our resources, adjust our strategies, or redefine our goals, but we don’t scapegoat the men and women in uniform. The hypocrisy in our culture’s response to teachers and troops seems clear. Where we grant that soldiers need more resources to confront tough conditions, we expect underpaid and overworked teachers to transcend all obstacles and limitations to student achievement. We idealize the sacrifices of troops but demonize “ineffectual” teachers who fail to produce “results,” regardless of their immeasurable passion, dedication or devotion to students. It’s an enlightening analogy, if not entirely for the reasons the authors make explicit.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Our culture’s view of soldiers is complex and contradictory. If the soldier as heroic symbol is almost universally revered in our national imagination, the flesh and blood humans who fight in wars are often treated as disposable once they return to civilian life as veterans. To the degree that we admire the image of the brave warrior, an image that transcends the corporeal and moral limitations of mortal men and acquires mythological status, we can trace our admiration to a source. We might be impressed by a soldier’s courage, his strength and perseverance, or her willingness to be martyred for a cause. We might value the loyalty and camaraderie between soldiers fighting for a common goal. Even the word “soldier” has enough positive connotations that it can be used to define devotion to purposes as divergent as war and peace. However, there is one aspect of being a “good soldier” that our society has celebrated perhaps more than any other, and that is the unblinking acceptance of authority. Although the Nuremberg Trials set a precedent for challenging "Superior Orders" as a defense for war crimes, soldiers are still largely expected to adhere to the hierarchical chain of command. It is in this arena of absolute, unquestioning duty that the comparison of soldier and teacher breaks down.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Imagine for a moment that teachers in America were given not only the same respect, but also the same symbolic treatment as soldiers. With No Child Left Behind, President Bush launched what amounted to a war on low student achievement, or at least this was his official target. Imagine this had been an actual war. After initial campaign misgivings, President Obama enthusiastically continued this war, and when the public asked too many questions about charter schools and standardized testing, a ubiquitous bumper sticker won them over: </span></span><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Support the Teachers</span></span></i></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. We must support the reform agenda pushed by the Federal Government and its corporate backers in spite of all the research and statistical evidence that it is misguided. Why? The teachers need us to get behind them. They’re out there teaching those test questions every day, plugging away at the standards like a shooting target, so the least we can do is valorize their hard work. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> If this reasoning sounds familiar, then what is odd about the substitution of teacher for troop in the message? Where troops are expected to follow orders without challenging the rationale of their leaders, teachers should ideally ask questions and engage in critical thinking and skeptical inquiry. Teachers have an indispensable role as intellectuals in our democracy. We can no more relinquish this role than we can abdicate the responsibility to nurture creativity and critical thinking in our students, but we will be punished for teaching students how to think; in a hierarchical, authoritarian society, intellectuals are reviled. The attacks on teachers are a troubling sign that our democracy is slipping away.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It is important to note that soldiers have not infrequently been intellectuals and artists. According to Kenneth Slawenski’s </span></span><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/02/salinger-201102"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">new biography</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> of J.D. Salinger, the antiauthoritarian Holden Caulfield took shape amid the trenches of World War II, literally, with bombshells exploding around Salinger’s typewriter. Before that, World War I soldiers like Wilfred Owen wrote poems condemning the glorification of war. In spite of the cynical way that the government used “the troops” as a tool to garner support for an immoral war as recently as the invasion of Iraq, there are those soldiers who saw the forest for the trees and objected to their mission. There will always be those soldiers, but too often they are dismissed as disloyal or insane.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Meanwhile, the soldier, the steadfast, unselfish soldier whose ultimate sacrifice becomes the circular justification for war remains a potent symbol for patriotism. In patriotism’s perverted logic, the war </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">must</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> be just because people are giving their lives in its name, and it is unjust for people to give their lives to an unworthy cause. As to the clause after the comma: indeed. That is why we must defeat unworthy causes and end all unjust wars, on behalf of soldiers, civilians, and humanity.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"></span></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> And how must we respond to the metaphorical war on authentic, democratic education? If not teachers, then who are the troops in this war? The answer, of course, is students, the young and innocent who follow orders that we teachers, in the chain of command, are meant to give them, the kids who do as they are told in the ever-dimming hope of attaining success and a decent quality of life. It is in the name of students that the reformers attack teachers or anyone with intelligent criticisms of their policies. The implication is that we must not care about our kids if we're not on board with their notion of reform. "Support our kids" can easily degenerate into a mindless slogan to instill obedience in educators. Moreover, the bloated rhetoric about student achievement disguises an indifference to the complexity and autonomy of real kids; they are not mere receptacles of our knowledge nor are they instruments of our best-laid plans. They are free to make of their education what they will, and we must not deceive them on this journey. To paraphrase Owen, “my friend, you [should] not tell with such high zest, to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old lie, dulce et decorum est,” to sacrifice one’s real education for a passing CAHSEE score and the promise of a low wage job or a violent death in a foreign country; in other words, “pro patria mori.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></span>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-58359142701543719252011-05-02T00:25:00.000-07:002011-11-27T20:07:23.529-08:00Motives Matter<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In English class we devote considerable attention to motives. We ask about character motivation and we may also wonder how characterization reveals an author's design or purpose. We may inquire into our own reasons for responding to the text as we do, exploring as we read our social conditioning or personal experience. Motives can be confessed or concealed, implied or announced, clear or convoluted; perhaps they are not even conscious. </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In education we sometimes forget to question our motives, though at minimum we pay lip service to objectives and goals. Our intention is to teach the standards within a certain timeframe, but </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">why</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">? Are we merely following the rules of our profession, reflexively </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">doing our job</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> in the conventional language of duty? Or do we embrace the standards and the prescribed pace of our instruction on their own merits? These questions awaken older ones: Why did we become teachers in the first place? Did we have a passion for a particular discipline, or an empathetic ease with a specific age group? Did we consider our role as teachers in an institutional setting or the classroom in relation to the larger society? </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Let's agree that we want to prepare our students to function well in our society. What does that even mean? Does functioning well mean accepting the current status quo, being well paid or content, not asking questions with no satisfying answers? On the contrary, perhaps high-functioning people ask many questions and assume the psychic burden of all their provisional answers. If that is true, we don’t just need to reflect on our own motives as educators, but we need to encourage students to reflect on theirs. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Teachers hate this question, but why are we doing this?” Many of us have heard this comment or one similar to it in relation to a lesson. Most of us will admit to feeling on occasion a spasm of annoyance when it is asked. “Why are you being contrary, kid? Why are you asking me to dredge up a reason tailor-made for your unique sensibility when I already know, or </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">think</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> I know, why </span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">you</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> are doing this?” We sigh at the energy it takes to explain our unexamined assumptions. Can’t our students take it on faith that we know what we’re doing, that our authority deserves their respect and deference? </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">These days, few are taking </span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">our</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> authority and expertise on faith, and ironically this is one of the reasons we expect students to adhere blindly to our most prefabricated lesson plans, those we implement rather than create. The more we surrender our agency as teachers to the czars of privatization, the more we expect our students to do the same. As we carry out orders that belie our claim to autonomy, we settle for the simulacrum of authority in their enforcement. We don't make the rules, but we do impose them on our students, and when they resist we perceive it as an affront to our dignity. But what if my students, however confused and disorganized in their rebellion, are right to resist, and what if their resistance is less an insult and more a test of my conscience?</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Beyond honest debates about practice, pedagogy and policy, we might think long and hard about the </span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">motives</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> of some of the </span></span><a href="http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781"><span style="color: #0031e0; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">biggest backers</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> of the education reform crusade. Intelligent and well-meaning people can of course disagree about the best way to assess learning, or the most effective way to provide equal access to a decent education. One hotly debated topic in public educational circles these days is whether and to what extent to offer incentives for good performance on standardized tests. Some teachers and schools have determined that grade enhancements are in order when struggling students improve on high stakes exams, or as I see this practice, intrinsic motivation twice removed. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">On the other end of the spectrum, from capable students we suspect are tanking their results, many do not hesitate to withhold college recommendations. Their lack of effort is bringing down the whole ship, the reasoning goes, the school's reputation not to mention individual teacher reputations, so why reward their ingratitude? Besides, shouldn't laziness or perverse obstructionism disqualify these students from getting an extra boost into a good college or job? Why aid their unjustified aspirations and loose these students on an unsuspecting work world?</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Anyway, they may not be the end all and be all, but some of these exams are useful measures of what our students are learning. They may be mandated by federal or state policies, imposed on us from above, but what's so wrong with that in principle? If students are sabotaging the results, aren't they in effect sabotaging their education? </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Even some who are fiercely critical of standardized tests and their material consequences may believe that our best defense is simply to pass them with flying colors, using incentives or any legal means at our disposal. If we have made this pragmatic calculation, perhaps we should invite students to define their own conscious motives instead of enticing them to "buy in" to the testing program. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We can debate these important questions assuming the good intentions of all parties; perhaps this is a prerequisite to nonpartisanship and diplomacy. Or we can acknowledge the ambiguity of motives. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">While plotting Othello's downfall, Iago pretends to be his loyal friend. He later notes that the "parallel course" of his advice to Cassio would indeed be good and helpful were it uttered in a completely different context. "When devils will the blackest sins put on, </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">They do suggest at first with heavenly shows." </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">If the purpose of the standardized testing movement is to educate students better, then however much we may question the strategy or call for a more balanced approach to learning, we are more likely to respect it as the current law of the land. By this logic, if students refuse to follow testing protocol, they are rejecting the best efforts of our national elite to give them a solid education. In short, they are acting stupid, and if we need to offer incentives to make them act smarter, so be it. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">However, if by contrast these exams are tools of the Corporate Establishment to </span></span><a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_the_united_states_is_destroying_her_education_system_20110410/"><span style="color: #0031e0; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">dismantle public education</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">, then we have got to ask why in the world we are advancing our own destruction. If this testing culture is by design a way to justify the takeover of public education by private interests, then as its enforcers we are blindly acting out a tragedy of epic proportions, and we are not merely doing violence to our own interests, but more poignantly to the interests of our students whom we have a sacred duty to protect. As we learn from </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Othello</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">, motives are more instructive than outward behavior and appearances. Sadly, honest people are often the last to recognize the duplicity of others, a fact upon which Iago relies. Othello's ignorance, however, does not absolve him of responsibility.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/16-4"><span style="color: #0035f4; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/16-4</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781"><span style="color: #0035f4; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span></div><a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_the_united_states_is_destroying_her_education_system_20110410/"><span style="color: #0035f4; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_the_united_states_is_destroying_her_education_system_20110410/</span></span></span></a>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-11192354960779587372011-03-29T00:15:00.000-07:002011-11-27T20:08:52.537-08:00The Politics of Teaching<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">When is teaching political? Many of us will answer simply,"never." After all, shouldn't there be an enforced separation in our classrooms between the lofty goals of education and the muck of politics? Don't we need to protect the "objective" sphere of pure learning from partisan manipulations of information and the biased agendas of political parties? When it comes to factual distortions and omissions, of course. But are teachers ever really operating outside of the political universe, even when they aspire to transcend it? And is such an aspiration noble or dangerous in today's world? When we insulate students from political controversy, are we truly serving them or their future? Must teachers avoid thorny social, political and moral questions in order to serve students digestible lessons? Is academic knowledge designed to go down smoothly without excess emotions like doubt, fear, confusion, anger, or even love? In short, can we truly teach without touching down on the real world in all of its contested fragility? </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Leaving aside a prolonged acknowledgement of this question's different degree of relevance depending on the subject matters we teach, I believe we all must confront the matter of politics in education, now more than ever. One reason is outlined in </span></span><a href="http://rethinkingschools.org/archive/25_03/edit253.shtml"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">this article</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> from </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Rethinking Schools</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">. In spite of the way we separate and demarcate types of knowledge, our disciplines are interrelated and commonly implicated in the world's major challenges. Grades and test scores are puny symbols for the true human stakes of learning, and so much in our world hangs in the balance between ignorance and knowledge. While the Climate Crisis may seem outside the parameters of a high school English course, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Frankenstein </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">is not. Mary Shelley's warning about the monstrousness of technology that is out of sync with nature is a theme our students will confront writ large, and it is crucial that we prepare their consciousness for this challenge from every academic angle. Politics is an arena too often ceded to "specialists" and "special interests," to people who have the mind or stomach for it, but in truth, we are all political actors on a political stage. This brings me to my second reason for believing that teachers must confront politics.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We are political scapegoats. Our collective image is being used to further an agenda of austerity and privatization, not just in the realm of education but in the society as a whole. Private interests and profits are superseding the interests of children, workers, and people everywhere who want a sustainable life. Teachers are on the frontline of the resistance to this corporate takeover of our public resources. This is not a self-centered observation of complacent victimhood, but a troubling recognition that we must confront as a profession if we are to save public education. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">However, much of the public sees the members of our profession in a selfish light. Misinformation is rife about pensions, teacher tenure and the supposed epidemic of bad or "ineffective" teaching. The mantra that teachers must be held accountable to student test results sounds to too many ears like a battle cry on behalf of children, particularly poor and minority children, against institutional neglect; in fact, the steady drumbeat of testing and reprisals for low performance reinforces an education apartheid that has already taken root in our country. Disadvantaged populations are churned out to low wage job slots from testing factories, while children of privileged parents emerge from well-rounded private educations. This inequity is untenable in a democracy, a fact of which antidemocratic forces are well aware. I could go on and on, or you could just read Diane Ravitch's </span></span><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-20/president-obama-and-the-no-child-left-behind-act/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">latest</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What do we do when the fight for our salaries and our working conditions is pitted against the needs of our students, as though the more we stood up for ourselves, the less we cared about our kids? Jim Judd's </span></span><a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20110327/OPINION/110329641?Title=GUEST-OPINION-Making-students-the-focus"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">editorial</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> in </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Press Democrat </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">suggests that we teachers need to get over ourselves and our frail egos, and get down to the business of educating our kids. So if tying our pay to student test scores works to improve their learning, we need to do it. If firing principals and teachers when schools "fail" is the answer to meeting our students' needs, then what's stopping us? Teachers. What else! Disregarding ample evidence to the contrary, Judd presumes that both of the above measures </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">do</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> work. He then enshrouds this presumption in an especially clever form of scapegoating when he implies that </span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">we</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> are the problem for </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">noticing</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> that we are being scapegoated. That's right. We are now being scapegoated for </span></span><a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20110312/OPINION/110319850&tc=ix"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">objecting</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> to being scapegoated as Jessica Jones and Michael Aparicio do in their Guest Opinion at which Judd takes aim. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We cannot fight this kind of assault by pretending to be above the fray, or telling ourselves that politics is beside the point of education. When oligarchical power plays threaten the foundation of democracy in public education, politics is hardly beside the point, in or out of the classroom. The accelerating pressure to replace substantive lessons with testing soundbites is a political maneuver, and we must meet it head on with a clear articulation of our own values. I value authentic learning and democracy, and I refuse to throw my students and our nation's children under the bus of budget cuts, school closures, and mind-numbing testing curricula divorced from personal, and yes, political engagement. We need to define teacher and student interests together. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It is instructive that the nurses at Kaiser Hospital in Santa Rosa just negotiated a salary </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">increase</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> amid a recession. They succeeded where we did not because the CNA knows that nurses are there to protect patient care, and that reduced funds translates to compromised care. We have an analogous situation in public education, but we must embrace more fully our role to </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">protect our students</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> from budget cuts. Until we can articulate the real damage to kids of slashed funding and imbecile policy choices, we will be marginalized as selfish people. Although that damage is intellectual, social, moral and spiritual, we must express it in concrete political terms. Public education is a right, and we will fight for it in the classrooms, in negotiations, and out in the streets.</span></span>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-48772237180021733542011-03-23T12:01:00.000-07:002011-11-27T20:08:10.680-08:00Who We Are<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We are educators in the Santa Rosa City Schools District who are concerned about widespread budget cuts amid the mounting pressures to transform the democratic province of public education into a mouthpiece for corporations. Most of us teach at the high school level but we have been joined by University Professors, librarians, and elementary school teachers from different parts of the country. We wanted a place to discuss the crossroads in education that confronts our public schools here, and all across the nation. </span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We chose a public place to have this dialogue because we believe it is urgent that the public gain a nuanced view of public education from teachers on the ground. We do not have the corporate funds to launch a public relations campaign that delivers the truth about our nation's schools to the public; all we have are our own voices. We hope to use those voices to amplify student, parent, citizen and resident voices everywhere as we demand the collective right to an authentic education, one that affords real opportunities to participate in a genuine democracy. In the spirit of democracy, we welcome diverse perspectives and seek a robust and respectful dialogue.</span></span></span>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-83946779748040367572011-03-23T10:58:00.000-07:002011-04-03T19:39:15.687-07:00Recommended Actions<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Please inform us here of any upcoming campaigns, conferences, vigils or demonstrations that pertain to the fight for public education.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Tomorrow, April 4th is the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in Memphis. He was there to support workers' collective bargaining rights. In honor of him, Cesar Chavez and working families everywhere, there are events across the country on Monday, April 4th. As of now, the closest event to Santa Rosa is in Novato. Follow this <a href="http://local.we-r-1.org/weareone/events/search?zip=&commit=GO&state=CA">link</a> to learn more.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then, this Friday at SRJC there will be a panel to discuss the Education Crisis affecting California.</span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><div style="font: 14.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Panelists To address “Our Education Crisis” April 8</span></span></div><div style="font: 9.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">To help promote informed discussions at SRJC and across Sonoma County about the college’s current education challenges and the predicament of the larger education crisis that affects all California community colleges, universities, and the state’s K-12 education system, a panel discussion is scheduled on the Santa Rosa Campus on April 8 regarding “Our Education Crisis.”</span></span></div><div style="font: 9.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Held from 2:00 - 4:00 PM in Newman Auditorium on the Santa Rosa Campus, the panel is the first of a three-part series that are organized by Michael Aparicio and co-sponsored by the Associated Students. The well-informed panel will include:</span></span></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 10px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">California Senator N</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">oreen Evans, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">California Assembly Member </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Jared Huffmann, California</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"> Assembly Member </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Michael Allen, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Santa Rosa School Board Member Larry Haenel,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">California Teacher's Association </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Sandra lowe, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">SRJC Vice-PresIdent of Student Services, Ricardo</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"> Navarrette</span></span></div><div style="font: 9.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Following the panel discussion, panelists will participate in a 45 to 60 minute audience discussion. For more information, contact Michael Aparicio, Philosophy Department, at </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">maparicio@santarosa.edu.</span></span></div></span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/event_info/the-march/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The March: Save our Schools March and National Call to Action</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> is a powerful event planned for July 28-30 in Washington, D.C. and Nationwide.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This National Call to Action says Americans everywhere should demand</span><br />
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<ul style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 14px; list-style-image: url(http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/wp-content/themes/BuilderChild-Foundation-Tropic/images/list.png); list-style-position: inside; list-style-type: initial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Equitable funding for all public school communities</span></span></span></li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">End to high stakes testing for student, teacher, and school evaluation</span></span></span></li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Curriculum developed for and by local school communities</span></span></span></li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Teacher and community leadership in forming public education policies</span></span></span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-75227817572707647902011-03-17T18:06:00.000-07:002011-03-17T18:06:55.599-07:00Contract NegotiationsWe are in the process of negotiating the contract for next year, and have an opportunity here to discuss our priorities. We have already approved the calendar that specifies 2 to 6 furlough days on given dates, so that is off the table. What remaining concerns do we want to see addressed, and in what order? Your thoughts?Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-84468352627339711772011-03-16T07:43:00.000-07:002011-03-17T16:10:33.493-07:00This Is Not a Test. This is Not Only a Test.Several people have asked me to post something about the standardized testing movement. While I appreciate the need for discrete topics, it is difficult to know where one ends and another begins. The mounting corporate control of education, the slashing of teacher salaries and undermining of unions, the Orwellian language of <i>accountabilit</i>y and <i>choice</i> and the call for merit pay all dovetail in the high stakes test; and yet, as the site where all these disturbing trends converge, standardized tests ironically tend to pry related ideas apart in a manner that makes it difficult to bring them back together. The myopic focus on testing fragments knowledge and atomizes individual teachers and learners until we are all trapped in solitary cells of information, unable to connect meaningfully to our thoughts, feelings, or to each other. <br />
<div><br />
</div><div>I have been intending to write something about standardization for the past couple days, but became distracted and depressed by the tragic events in Japan. I can't get my mind off the devastation and terrifying radiation unleashed by the earthquake and tsunamis. I feel strongly that we, along with the rest of the world, need to rethink our dependence on nuclear power. There is a real potential for such an accident to occur here, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell <a href="http://sierraclub.typepad.com/carlpope/">says</a> that "we ought not to make American and domestic policy based upon an event that happened in Japan." This, to me, is a staggering form of compartmentalization, i.e., gross stupidity, ever more likely to encumber our population as we churn out disconnected skills instead of engaged human beings who think and feel, whose hearts are not amputated from their minds.</div><div><br />
</div><div>As long as we drill, baby, drill our students to memorize information and adopt skills in isolation from their real world contexts and consequences, we cannot be surprised when those individuals fail to react to moral, spiritual, and material crises. The CAHSEE exam must avoid <a href="http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/scoringprocess.asp#Q12">"sensitive topics"</a> such as religion, war, politics and poverty, to name just a few. While we don't want to disadvantage any student by crafting test questions in a culturally biased way, our fixation on these tests as the true measure of learning is bound to infantilize our society to the point that we can't think about or discuss anything of consequence. </div><div><br />
</div><div>How are we going to preserve our democracy unless we teach our kids to greet controversy with healthy dialogue? How can we inspire students to seek knowledge and cultivate wisdom unless we embrace our role as intellectuals? We are teaching and thinking in a political universe with real world consequences, not a testing arcade in which players rack up points. As schools and teachers continue to be judged and ranked by their performance on tests, more and more educators will accept the devil's bargain of rewarding and/or punishing students based on solely on their high stakes test scores. In short, we will be tempted to do to the students what we feel is being done to us. If our teacher performance is going to be scrutinized on the basis of these arbitrary measures, then we want the students to "buy in" to the urgency of effort and results. We can tell ourselves this is for their own good, but I suspect there is a selfishness at the core of all this behaviorist conditioning. We will inflict even those values we reject on our students out of desperation, frustration, and misplaced resentment. If we don't have the guts to rebel against the corporate sabotage of our profession, I fear we may wield a coercive power over our students in compensation. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Let's not lend legitimacy to the tyranny of the test. By incentivizing learning with grades, scores and competitive games, we are trivializing what is truly at stake when we choose to think or not to think: to be or not to be. Isn't that the question?</div>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-34777384430867486712011-03-10T11:30:00.000-08:002011-03-10T18:40:57.501-08:00Of Calendar Votes and General Strikes<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We in the Santa Rosa Teacher's Union recently agreed to salary cuts in the form of a tentative calendar which would distribute several furlough days throughout the 2011-12 school year. The negotiating team approved two furlough days in the increasingly unlikely event that Jerry Brown's tax extension passes, and 6 furlough days if it doesn't. I was thinking of entitling this post </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Calendar Vote: The Aftermath</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> but that seemed entirely too grim and divisive; and no doubt it would have led to the childish amusement of renaming the first post </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Calendar Vote: The Final Countdown. </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Can I help it if these are ominous times? I don't mean to suggest that anyone who voted for the </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">budget crime days</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> did the wrong thing. In these times, it's hard to know what's right. All irony aside, I believe the 2 to 1 majority that succumbed to the </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Great</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> B</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">udget Appeasement</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">of 2011</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <b>was</b> trying to save jobs. (Ok, some, but not all, irony aside.) That is how the union leadership presented its case for the negotiation, as a conciliatory gesture of mature sacrifice to ward off a greater evil, and so it was on that basis that educators gave their approval. 2 to 1. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Except at Montgomery, where I hear it was a 2 to 1 majority </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">against</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> the new calendar. Are we Vikings on something called Charlie Sheen, or do we have a point about staking out a strong position and refusing to yield prematurely? I do not wish to sow seeds of rancor between teachers over a vote that is now a fait accompli. Teachers must stick together, and in all seriousness I respect the rationale of others who made a different calculation on the recent vote. However, I wish we had stuck together with our librarians who perform an essential service to students and our schools. They, and we, lost those valuable positions, and the losses in this state are only slated to escalate. We are heading for a financial bloodbath and I fear, at best, that the calendar vote was our last bandaid before the wounds are opened for good. At worst, it was a signal to our enemies that we are willing to bleed slowly in the shadows until they deliver the coup de grace. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To appease means </span></span><a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/appeasement"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">"to buy off an aggressor with concessions usually at the sacrifice of principles."</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> As I see it, the big conundrum in our district is whether we are at the mercy of an actual aggressor or simply an act of </span></span><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner03082011.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Economy</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">. Michael Brenner, a Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, dares to probe into the obscure workings of this god and reports back to us in his recent </span></span><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner03082011.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Counterpunch</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> article. It turns out there are mere mortals behind the curtain of our fearsome Economy, but mortals can be pretty scary in their own right, especially those who are bent on abusing power and engorging themselves with resources that should rightly belong to the earth and all of its dwellers.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">With so much urgency surrounding the passage of Jerry Brown's tax extensions on income, sales and vehicle registration, and his push to get it on the ballot for June, consider the following undisputed</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></i><a href="http://www.tax-rates.org/California/income-tax"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">tax rates</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">CA Income Tax Brackets<br />
Tax Bracket (yearly earnings) Tax Rate (%)<br />
$0+ 1%<br />
$7,168+ 2%<br />
$16,994+ 4%<br />
$26,821+ 6%<br />
$37,233+ 8%<br />
$47,055+ 10%<br />
$1,000,000+ 11%<br />
<br />
That's one giant step from 47k to 999k. You heard right. If you make 50k you pay the same rate as the guy behind the gates with six cars, three homes and a yacht. This seems unfair, aggressively so, and I want to know why reversing that injustice isn't on the table to save our schools, our healthcare, our fundamental human rights. Do we really think the 999k yachtsman is creating tons of jobs? Can we check? I'm mindful of the danger of using overheated rhetoric in these times. Words like "enemy" should not be applied lightly and liberally to anyone with whom we disagree. But when I read about the implications of Brown's </span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/03/05/nothing-brave-about-jerry-browns-budget-approach-in-california/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">spending cuts</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> that he and the Democrats in the legislature are </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">pushing </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">alongside the call for more tax revenue, I can't help but feel that there is an enemy among us, and I know that enemy by the name of Greed and Cowardice. Okay, two enemies. </span></span><br />
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</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Leave it to an English teacher to use personification to avoid blaming people. I'm not comfortable assigning individual blame. I'm too self-deprecating and steeped in my own flaws to point the finger at another. But I gotta tell you, there are some very, very, </span></span><a href="http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/politics/scott-walker-20-minute-prank-call-feb-23-2011"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">greedy people</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> in our midst who have absolutely no compunction about hurting the neediest among us. With apologies to Jon Stewart (who earns my highest esteem for his hilarious takedown of Wall Street ideology,) Stephen Colbert, and their Rally For Sanity, evil </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">does</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> exist. You know it, I know it, and J.K. Rowling knows it. Sure, sure, liberals don't want to sound like Bush when he made his axis of evil speech. I get it! But sometimes, sanity lies in calling your enemy by its true name. </span></span><br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Furlough day</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> sounds </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">way</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> too comfortable, like a glass of red wine or a warm, expensive coat. It comes from the </span></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1567452703"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Dutch </span></span></span></a><i><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1567452703"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">verlof</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">, </span></span></span></a></i><a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/furlough"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">or, permission</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">. Really? Not too well paid to begin with, we are being granted </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">permission</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> to lose our much needed earnings, and we are even </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">invited</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> to lose them at sporadic times during the year so that we cannot easily recoup our losses at a time like, say, the start of summer? Our students are </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">allowed</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> to lose important learning time when too many of the days that remain are hijacked by meaningless tests? And these same tests cost <i>money</i> that is <i>not </i>going into the retention of actual <i>human beings </i>who have a <i>real</i> relationship with our kids, unlike a multiple choice exam which can't listen or talk or care? Seriously? People, we need a new name for these FDs, and fast.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Another thing we need to do is consider whether Jerry Brown has essentially hemmed himself into the position of </span></span><a href="http://m.neontommy.com/news/2011/03/will-jerry-brown-attack-unions"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">selling out our union</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> in order to pass the tax extension we are being told is our only hope. (I'm still wistful over the potential to tax a yachtsman, or a hundred.) He didn't even </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">have</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> to put this tax extension to the voters. It's almost like he doesn't want the final decision on his shoulders. He could have MADE THE CASE for why extending the tax hikes for five years is vital to the well-being of our state and its people, and he could have tried to get this passed the straightforward way. Did anyone hear him make a passionate case for this? I guess it's hard to make a passionate case for a budget that already has something like $14 billion in cuts stinking it up. And please don't tell me that austerity here is about taking the high road, the mature and practical road, or I will reintroduce you to the yachtsman. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Just go for it, Governor Brown! Let's tell him! You don't </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">have</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> to make all these sleazy deals and cuts. You can fight for what's right. Remember Bobby Kennedy? Yes, I realize it was the times, and yes, Jerry Brown is about as much like Bobby Kennedy as a furlough day is like a vacation, but come ON. Show a little passion, a little verve, a little moral gravitas. These times are as electric as the sixties, and our elected officials need to start acting like it.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Admittedly, for the tax extensions themselves, (as opposed to an agreement to put them on the ballot), to go through the legislature, Brown </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">still</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> would have needed a two thirds vote, and yes, the Republican lawmakers would </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">still</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> have refused to budge. But when you stake out a strong and principled (feigned or not) position, negotiations tend to go in your favor. Just ask our State Republicans who are sitting pretty on an awful lot of leverage. The path to hell is paved with too many concessions. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">If you build it, they will come. It applies to the leaders who need to craft the moral appeal, as well as to the people; we need to make them remember there </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">is</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> still a moral imperative, and we </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">will </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">toss them out of office if they can't dig it. Remember, Wisconsin teachers didn't start fighting the good fight because their union leadership gave them the go ahead. Teachers and their students had finally had enough, and they took to the streets. How is the public going to see us for who we are if we can't make our case directly? Negotiations behind closed doors have their place, but it may be time to open a few windows and let in the light. We all could decide it feels good to step outside.</span></span>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-42375182087259902202011-03-09T23:13:00.000-08:002011-03-10T07:38:33.789-08:00Storming the Rhetoric: Give us Your Slogans!Let's invent the language that will get the public talking.<br />
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I'll start.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">If we can't afford our schools, how can we afford the rich? Reform the tax rates of California!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Every cut is a crime against children.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Democracy is non-negotiable! Stop the privatization of our schools!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Education is a right, not a race. (Got that from Cornel West)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Lost Earning = Lost Learning </span><br />
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</span>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-30352797376638929792011-03-06T15:38:00.000-08:002011-03-09T21:45:55.857-08:00When Crumbling Infrastructures Attack<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I have a personal story about the crumbling infrastructure in our public school system. We all do. Mine involves shock, bloodshed, and the haunting look in a student's eyes that became, for me, an unforgettable metaphor: You can't keep the outside from crashing in.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The lunch bell rang on a Wednesday. I remember the day of the week because a group of colleagues were meeting in the library at 12:30 to share ideas about </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Teach Like a Champion </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">and I had it on my calendar to attend. That was not to be. I was on an intellectual high after an especially good discussion with the kids about </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">1984</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">. Not every day is this way, but there are times in that class when I'm fielding so many provocative questions that one more would make my head explode. In a good way. The buoyant (not a word one expects to associate with </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">1984)</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> energy in the class lingered after most of the students had dispersed, and as I hurried around the room putting things in order, I made mental note of various new avenues for future lessons now opened by our discussion. In short, the sun was shining, I was in a positive mood, and as we are often told these days, positive thinking is all we need to move mountains. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Brave New World</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">, the novel my students read after </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">1984</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">, grinds that proposition to dust. But I digress, not unlike Holden Caulfield. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Holden needs no introduction as the stream of consciousness narrator of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Catcher in the Rye</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">, the novel we are now reading. He is alienated and angry at the world's phonies, and many students find meaning in his existential crisis. He may be </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">unreliable</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">, as you will read in the spark note style skywriting everywhere visible on google, but at least he is searching for authenticity in a world besieged by hypocrisy and lies. In the midst of his emotional crisis and subjective appraisal of his environment, we can sense his humanity. His point of view is limited, but he </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">struggles</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> to know reality in a deeper way where so many others will conform to what is on the surface; that searching quality, however frenetic, may be why Holden is so popular with so many students who hunger for the truth, no matter how grim. But again I digress.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">There are some prominent phonies setting education policy alright, people who want you to buy all that bull about "choice" and accountability, but by accountability what they really mean is </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">selective</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> accountability. I mean when do you see the Wall Street Bankers holding themselves accountable? Never, that's when. It kills me. But I'm talking about infrastructure here, not people, and what I learned on that sunny Wednesday is that my classroom windows are phony. That's right. Phony! </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Troubled adolescent that he is, Holden's voice nails it for me these days. Every day I work with teenagers who are capable of cutting through the crap when a large portion of the rest of the society is conforming its way into moral, ecological and spiritual oblivion. And I wish I could protect that questioning spark in them while at the same time protecting their feelings, but you can't always do both. If it's a contest between happiness, (or more rightly comfort), and truth, then I'll side with truth. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Here is the truth: Our windows may give the impression of protecting us from the cold, the wind and the rain, but it is a false impression. Sure, there are those days when my windows are tightly shut against the elements, the heater works for more than 5 minutes without coughing up a noise that would distract a meditating monk, let alone a hormonal teenager, and all is calm in my own private learning environment. But then there are other days, like that afternoon I went to let in a little air after my class had ended, and was startled by the glass shattering at the mere pressure of my hand pushing outward on the window handle. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Lest there be confusion, I'm referring to the kind of window handle that is designed for the very purpose of pushing outward on it to let air into a room. As a teacher who believes in constant self-improvement, I am sorry to say I was not innovative in opening this window. It was a lazy, automatic gesture and yet, I did exercise a certain degree of force for a woman of my slight size and stature. Full disclosure: I felt some resistance and for approximately 10 seconds pushed outward on the handle as hard as I could. Many of my windows are stuck, so I was used to this strenuous pushing. I did not push or even touch the glass, thankfully, or my hand might have gone right through. I simply tried to open a window on a warm day and when I did, the glass shattered and gave me several puncture wounds, two on my right forearm and one on my right knee. There was blood. And there were students in the room.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Did I forget to mention the students? The class had ended, but a few students stayed to hang out in my room; they had the misfortune of seeing me, their stunned teacher, getting paler as the pools of blood came into focus. I struggled to keep up with the reality of this unreal moment. "Has this really happened," I thought. "Are you okay?" one of my students asked with real empathy and alarm? I looked in her eyes and, in that instant, I had to be okay. I had no idea how serious my injury was when she asked me because I was in shock. (Only later was I relieved to find out that my wounds were not serious.) I knew only that I had to be okay because she had to be okay. I wanted to create a screen between my wounds and this girl, to protect her from the figurative missile that had just landed in the room. That is what teachers are supposed to do. We nurture and protect our students while they are in our charge. But I couldn't protect her from the flying shards of glass that day, and it haunted me.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The window that broke was promptly replaced by the district. The people there handled the accident smoothly and properly. Everybody at my site did everything right, from the beloved friend and colleague who escorted me to the office to the kind, reassuring nurse who bandaged me up for a trip to the emergency room. From my caring, calm and efficient Principal to the concerned students at the scene, to the teachers who made sure to check in with those student witnesses, everybody did everything right. In fact, nobody I know did anything wrong. And yet the glass still shatters when it shouldn't, and in earthquake country that COULD lead to avoidable injury or even death. I'm not saying it WILL. I wouldn't want to make a mountain out of a mole hill. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I do wonder how much it would cost to replace the windows in a school with safer glass. Is there a rich foundation that wants to pump that kind of money into a very good public school? It seems that brand of largesse is reserved for charter schools which, if they </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">choose</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">, can throw their struggling learners out the proverbial window. Is there a Race to the Top competition for safety in schools our state can enter? Should we train our students to compete on tests that will decide whether their classrooms are physically safe learning environments, among other things? Oh wait, in a sense we already do. Our kids deserve better, and it's not the teachers who are to blame. If we really want to protect our young people from poverty, or drugs, or racism, or homophobia, or any social ill, then we better start letting them in on the full picture that has only begun to come into focus in Holden's blurred vision.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Mine is only one insignificant story about the crumbling infrastructure in public education. We all have them, and I wouldn't want to turn a mole hill into a mountain. I'd have to be Superman to move a mountain. But that's only if I had to do it alone.</span>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-34460421940456661842011-03-03T23:22:00.000-08:002011-03-06T00:31:45.895-08:00Reclaiming AccountabilityWhat goals do we have as educators that might replace the arbitrary measurements imposed on us from outside sources? Conversely, which current measurements do we support and wish to bolster with our own self-assessments and self-reflection?Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-13745171363549247182011-03-03T20:32:00.000-08:002011-03-03T22:51:58.203-08:00Fighting For Our Schools: Winning StrategiesThis is the space to discuss strategies to improve working and learning conditions in our schools. What negotiating tactics are most effective? When are concessions productive and when do they weaken our cause? How do we get more money into education? How do we reach the public and let them know what we see on the ground? How do we reframe the issues so that teachers are at the vanguard of a real reform movement? Add your questions and comments!Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-13517709250086072322011-03-03T08:00:00.000-08:002011-03-23T12:24:11.762-07:00Does This Blog Matter? It's Up to You.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Someone in Malaysia has viewed the blog. And Canada. It has been viewed 800 times since the calendar vote. Ok, so the person in Malaysia might have </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">accidentally</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> stumbled into </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Edutalk while fumbling for the url to Edutalk. The 800 views is actually just a couple of you guys going wild. (It's not me - my settings don't allow the stats to track me.)</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> And anyway, what does one person in Malaysia or Canada have to do with Santa Rosa City Schools? </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Maybe it's just me getting worked up over a measly 350 views the day of the calendar vote, and all the great comments that have dwindled since then. No big deal, right? We've held steady at 100 views every day, but again, it could be a core group of people going on there 30 times a day. So what if it is? Doesn't that say something about the energy radiating from that core? Over time, it could be infectious. That's how I have to think because this is my contribution, right now, at this moment, to the revolution. Accidentally on purpose, we may unleash a fervor that can't be stuffed back down.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It's like being in a classroom. You teach your heart out whether or not you can measure the difference it makes. Yep, I said "measure." On rough days it feels like there is no point. Nobody is listening. Nobody gets it. Nobody cares. But then you go to lunch and have a laugh with colleagues and an inspiring conversation or two. The students make you smile with endearing antics, or razor sharp insights. Maybe a few crowd around your desk right before the bell to clarify a point that was made in class. But it's always something, and for me it's been 10 years of somethings that have kept me going.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Now I'm trying to make a difference outside of the classroom, but it's the same energy moving me. And I'm trying to move the energy, just like we do in the classrooms when everything feels dead. Donna had the idea for this blog and I started it because of the calendar vote. We went to that lunch meeting and many of us thought our union was playing dead. No, we didn't change the vote, but we did change some minds with that blog. I know because I heard from those people directly.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ok, maybe I shouldn't extrapolate from just a few to masses of people, but isn't that what teachers do, in a sense? We magnify the small teaching moments into life-changing paradigm shifts. New ideas lead to new life. It happens ALL the time, and that's the magic of this profession.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I'm asking the magicians among us to have a little faith and start helping me create a ripple effect that will, in Michael Moore's words, "arouse[d] a sleeping giant" right here in Santa Rosa. Obviously, the blog is not going to do that on its own. The times are. You know it, and I know it. We are living through a radical moment. Anything is possible right now, and now is the time to act. You can't tell me you have never heard of a meme. Ideas are not hemmed in by geography or numbers. They can travel very far, very fast even if shepherded by one person. Luckily, we have more than one person in this fight. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Imagine if every single person in our district who had these thoughts fleetingly on a given day posted, "followed" or shared the blog with others. Imagine. We could jolt this city into awareness of the budgetary crime being committed against its kids. How else do we have a prayer of passing Brown's tax extension? We need to be pressuring our legislators </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">yesterday</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">, marching through the streets and campuses </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">yesterday </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">to fend off the coming economic disaster that is expected to take place in 2012-13. But we only have today. Luckily, memes can make up for a lot of lost time. Imagine change at light speed and shake off the incremental blues. Imagine.</span></span>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9114229300809392968.post-81185412209407096282011-03-02T15:23:00.000-08:002011-03-02T15:23:56.333-08:00Calendar VoteYesterday afternoon we SRTA members at Montgomery High School had a visit from President Andy Brennan. The sentiment in the room was strongly opposed to the new Calendar negotiated by SRTA with the district. People made excellent points and raised serious concerns about accepting additional furlough days with no quid pro quo; the district is under no legal obligation to minimize layoffs even if these salary cuts go through. Moreover, the district has put no offer on the table, such as reduced extra duty time, to warrant acceptance of these cuts. Since so many of us in the room, and at the town hall meeting at SRHS this past Monday, have substantial misgivings about the rushed nature of this vote and the calendar itself, we implored Mr. Brennan to set up a blog in which a district-wide dialogue could take place before the last day of voting. This request is obviously time-sensitive, but the newly created President's Blog on the SRTA website is closed for comments pending technical teacher expertise to block out spammers, a concern expressed by our President on the site.<div><br />
</div><div>Many of us in the English Department at Montgomery feel that this discussion needs to start right now. The last day of voting is tomorrow, and we believe it is imperative that we have a vigorous dialogue among as many members as possible. The low turnout at the recent town hall meeting might suggest that not all of our members have taken the opportunity to participate in a public forum regarding this momentous decision. To paraphrase one speaker at that meeting, this is a critical moment in our school district's trajectory. Decisions made now may haunt both students and educators in the future, and none of them should be entered into without dialogue and communication among members. In that spirit, would all of you receiving this link please forward it as widely as possible to SRTA members. Use Facebook or personal email addresses to spread the word about this forum. Although it was started by people raising objections to the calendar, we invite diverse points of view and encourage as many responses as possible. Some of us may have valuable information and wisdom that we need to share with others. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Thank you,</div><div>Simone Harris</div><div>Montgomery High School</div>Simonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05677752132307090129noreply@blogger.com41