Teachers Fight Back

I just finished another book about schools that except for too many questionable generalizations might actually be useful.  The book is, “The Good School, How Smart Parents Get Their Kids the Education They Deserve”.  The book talks about what parents should investigate about a school and or a particular classroom before enrolling their child. It also advises parents how to check on the progress that a child might be making while in school.

The author’s suggestions will be nothing new to many middle class parents and certainly nothing new to almost all affluent parents.  Affluent parents have been investigating their neighborhood schools for years, and have often asked questions about  teachers, principals, curriculum and teaching methods that are used. The book would be most useful to groups of parents who have traditionally accepted whatever has occurred at their local school, and perhaps have felt unqualified to question school authorities about anything.

I have a problem with some of the generalizations and undocumented statements that are made in the book.  A typical one is found in the introduction, ” We all know that the quality of education served up to our children in U.S. schools ranges from outstanding to shockingly inadequate, with a great number of kids – about a fifth in middle-class communities and up to half in poor ones  – not getting the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life.”

The author often makes generalizations about underperforming schools and about what she considers ineffective teachers. She seems to think that many schools and teachers don’t want parent input and would prefer to have the parents be uninvolved in the school. I think in many cases the opposite is true. The administrators and teachers in underperforming schools desperately wish that the parents would get involved. The author sometimes seems to be hinting that there is a grand conspiracy in some schools to keep parents uninformed and to keep them from asking questions about the school and its curriculum.

I know there are some parents who are overly zealous when it comes to questioning teachers, curriculum, methods, and school administrators. I know this can be quite an irritant to teachers and administrators. I also know that if given a choice, almost all teachers would rather have involved parents than apathetic ones.

This book is worth reading for any parent who might feel inadequate or uninformed about how to make school choices for their children. Unfortunately, the parents who need to read this book are the ones who are least likely to do so.  This is a similar situation to what teachers face when it comes to parent conferences. The parents who could benefit most by showing up at parent conferences are usually the ones who never attend.

News item:  Workers who serve meals in Chicago Public Schools say the majority of kids are not eating the healthful new foods on the cafeteria menu, according to a confidential  survey released Tuesday. Oh, the humanity!  That’s shocking, kids dislike healthy foods?

The survey was filled out by 436 lunch ladies. The lunch ladies also complained that they had “no input on the recipes or food”. Some were quoted as saying, ” serving on the frontline, we have a unique perspective on these changes. We see the schoolchildren of Chicago every day. We put food on their plates and we see what gets left in the trash”.

Oh my, who do these lunch ladies think they are, teachers?  “No input”, “serving on the frontline”, “unique perspective”, “see the children daily”.  Please, lunch ladies, teachers say those things all the time and yet have little or no say in curriculum, discipline policies, teaching methods, etc. If teachers have little input in THEIR jobs, how in the world did you think you would have input in yours? No, my dear lunch ladies, every school decision must be left to the “experts”. Those are the people who have very little contact with real children, but absolutely know what works best for them. Welcome to the teachers’ world. Now, get back in the cafeteria and do your job. “Input” indeed!

The lunch ladies also had the naiveté to complain that they “rarely or never” see principals eating school lunch. Oh, ladies, please, seeing a principal in a school lunchroom is as rare as seeing a whooping crane in downtown Chicago.  Expecting them to eat the same food as the students?  I must say, you lunch ladies are making me chuckle more than I have in quite some time.

Here is what needs to be done in order to get the students to eat the healthy foods. You need to understand that today’s students must have “positive motivation” before they will do ANYTHING!  All teachers must eat their lunch with the students and establish a “points system” that would reward students for eating the healthy food. The teachers simply spend their lunch time marking down which students eat the healthy food. The more healthy food a student eats, the more points he or she earns. The points then can be redeemed for ice cream or prizes of various types.  I don’t want to hear from teachers complaining about this. You need to get out of the teacher’s lounge and into the cafeteria and do what you do best, MOTIVATE!  Remember my fellow teachers, you are living in the “whatever it takes” world of education. Now get out there and do “whatever it takes” to get students to eat healthy.

Years ago, it was parents who made sure that kids ate healthy, but that’s asking too much of our modern parents. In addition, we can’t trust parents to properly motivate their children. What if a parent were to use fear as a motivator?  We must never go back to motivating children the way my generation of kids was motivated. When I was a child, and wasn’t eating my vegetables, my parents would say something like,” if you don’t stop crying and finish your vegetables, you won’t be able to sit down for a week”. Or perhaps, ” you’re going to sit at this table until you eat every last pea on your plate”. Actually, there was an occasional positive tone to the motivation, such as, “eat your spinach, don’t you want to be strong like Popeye the Sailor Man”?  Somehow, that never seemed to work with me as well as the ,”won’t be able to sit down for a week”.

It’s time to put an end to this nonsense that incompetent teachers are the cause of a so-called “crisis in education” in this country.  Let’s find out just how many incompetent teachers there are in America.  I realize not many people can agree on what constitutes an incompetent teacher, so I will propose a criteria for incompetence. A judgement of incompetence will be determined by the principals of our schools. Evaluation is a huge aspect of a principal’s job, so I will trust in the opinions of our principals. We must send a survey to all the principals in the country. The survey will have the following questions.

1.  Are you an elementary, middle school, or high school principal ?

2. How many teachers are in your school ?  How many of those teachers do you judge to be incompetent?

3. In what type of community is your school located? Affluent ? Middle class ?  Impoverished area?

4.  How many years of experience do your incompetent teachers have ?

5.  How many of your incompetent teachers are you trying to remediate, how many are you trying to get removed from the classroom?

6. What is the average length of time it takes to remove an incompetent teacher ?

7. Do you believe the “crisis in American education” is the result of incompetent teachers? Yes or no ?

Let’s get the Principals Association to back this survey.  The principals do not have to identify any teachers and the principals could remain anonymous if they so desire.

I’m confident you will see something like the following results: The amount of incompetent teachers in affluent areas would be about 5%.  Middle class areas about 10%.  Impoverished areas about 15%.

The largest number of incompetent teachers will have the least amount of experience.

The principals would rather try to remove an incompetent teacher than to try to remediate them.

The average amount of time it takes to remove an incompetent teacher is one full year.

Most principals do not believe that the crisis in education is the result of incompetent teachers.

Let’s get this survey going.  I’m confident the average amount of incompetent teachers in any given school is about 10%, just like the rate of incompetency is in any given profession.  Are the number of incompetent teachers high enough to have affected hundreds of children? Absolutely. Are the number of incompetent teachers large enough to have caused a “crisis in education” on a national scale ?Absolutely not. It’s a terrible shame that any child would have to put up with an incompetent teacher, but let’s not confuse a typical level of incompetence in a profession with a so-called “national crisis”.

A Golden Chalk Award goes out to all the volunteers in Wisconsin who are fighting to save the last hope of labor unions.  Organizers of the move to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said they filed more than one million signatures with election officials demanding a new election.  The total represents nearly half of all the votes cast in the 2010 race for governor that Walker won and nearly twice the number of signatures required.

Governor Walker and his millionaire friends were trying to strike the death knell for public worker unions like those of teachers, policemen and firefighters. Walker moved to crush unions by doing away with their collective bargaining rights and by cutting funds that went to employ such people. The last decade has seen union membership in the U.S. decline rapidly and with the recession, unions have been put on the defensive and have been under increasing pressure by powerful conservative business interests.

The situation in Wisconsin has been a sort of last stand for public employee unions as we know them.  If the Wisconsin governor had crushed the unions and faced very little opposition in doing so, it would have been a signal to other states that the time was right to put an end to unions for once and for all. The strong opposition to Governor Walker’s policies has shown that the unions are not dead yet. Even if the governor wins the recall election, the amount of opposition demonstrated so far will deter other state leaders from trying the same approach.

I understand people who say that labor unions became too strong and hurt American businesses’ ability to compete with the cheap labor of foreign countries. I understand why people complain about the salaries and benefits given to auto workers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians and others. I understand it, but I don’t agree with it. I can’t understand how people can criticize the salaries and benefits of unionized public employees like policemen, firemen, and teachers.  I think the public is getting a bargain when it comes to those workers. I don’t think there would be any criticism of public employee salaries and benefits if the source of their compensation came from somewhere other than taxes. These are not exorbitant salaries and benefits. These are honest, hard-working people who struggle to make ends meet and support themselves and their families. Most of these people live paycheck to paycheck and have very little in the way of savings. It’s not like public employees have bundles of cash stored away in banks in the Cayman Islands. (Oops, sorry for the Mitt Romney reference).

We will see what happens in the recall election in Wisconsin. At least the public workers didn’t go down without a fight. The ghosts of past union workers would be proud of the Wisconsin effort. The workers who were shot, beaten, fired, threatened, intimidated, and abused during the early struggles for workers’ rights would be proud. The workers who died fighting for an eight-hour day, job safety, decent working conditions, an end to child labor, a living wage, and all the other items that workers today take for granted, the ghosts of those workers would be proud.

More news has arrived today that has to do with my post from yesterday.  News item :  School officials were put on notice Tuesday that they can be sued for violating the First Amendment if they discipline students who make vulgar and malicious postings from their home computers.  The U.S. Supreme Court turned down appeals from two Pennsylvania school districts that were successfully sued by students who were suspended for creating mock profiles of their principals as sex addicts or drug users. The students contended their MySpace postings were off-limits to school authorities.

Ah, America, what a country!  I hope all students enjoy their new freedom to trash their principals. Why stop with online postings? I think students should have the right to give their opinions about teachers and principals while they are at school. I can imagine the principal walking down the hallway and students loudly verbalizing their negative opinions of him. It certainly would make for an interesting school environment.

This is America, where free speech reigns! This is America, where there is a money-making opportunity behind most stories. I have just thought of a way to make thousands of dollars off of this controversial Supreme Court ruling. I’m going to establish a web site called, TRASHYOURPRINCIPAL.ORG. I will encourage students to send in the most outrageous comments possible about their principals.  I will offer prizes to the most creative and demeaning comments that are submitted. This site will be huge. Advertisers will be begging me to throw their money my way. This should certainly augment my already lucrative, er, I mean, meager teacher pension.

On an unrelated note; the Supreme Court also turned down an appeal that sought to allow a greater use of Christian prayers at county board meetings. The justices let stand a ruling holding the Forsyth County, N.C. board violated the First Amendment’s ban on an “establishment of religion” by opening its sessions with a Christian prayer.

Ah, America, what a country. Prayer is bad, malicious and vulgar postings are good.

News item:  A middle school girl in Pennsylvania posted a photo of her principal online and described him as a “hairy sex addict” and a “pervert” who likes “hitting on students” in his office. The posting also included entries mocking the principal’s wife and children. The principal imposed a ten-day suspension on the girl. A week later, he was sued in federal court by the girl’s parents.  The lawyers for the girl said that the “fake profile” of the principal was “juvenile humor” that should be ignored. The parents lost before a federal judge who called the material “vulgar and lewd”. But last summer the parents won before the full 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The 8-6 majority said the posting “caused no substantial disruption” at the school, and the courts do not “allow schools to punish students for off campus speech.”  Doing so, the majority said, threatens “dangerously broad censorship” of students.

Quick, we need to install the “common sense” hotline that I have recommended in previous posts.  Here is how the principal should have handled this situation. He should have quickly controlled his initial outrage, (remember, teachers and school officials must NEVER allow their emotions to enter into a decision). Whenever I found that a nasty comment about me was written on the bathroom wall at school, I never took it personally. In fact, as I would tell my student-teachers, you must look upon such a thing as a badge of honor. A strict disciplinarian like me was bound to offend some student.

The principal should have called the girl and her parents into his office along with the superintendent, a school board member, the district’s attorney, and a policeman.  The school district’s lawyer should have explained the seriousness of slander, libel and any matter regarding false sexual allegations against school personnel. The lawyer, superintendent, school board member and the parents should have discussed a reasonable punishment.

Now I will explain what would have happened years ago when I was in school and before students and children had “rights” and before parents were expected to defend their children no matter how grievous there misbehavior. The principal and assistant principal would have called the girl and her parents into the office. The principal would have explained to the parents what had happened. The girl’s parents would have agreed with any punishment that the school imposed, and in addition the parents would have dealt very harshly with their darling daughter. The girl would have feared her parent’s punishment far worse than that of the school.

The United States was one of the first countries in the world to establish a legal system that promoted the concept of “innocent until proven guilty”.  Almost every country had a legal system that assumed an accused person was guilty until they proved they were  innocent. Innocent people rotted in jail all over the world because it was very difficult for them to prove their innocence while incarcerated.

Years ago, even in the United States, children never really were part of “innocent until proven guilty”.  If a child misbehaved while at the house of a neighbor, the neighbor punished the child and the child was then punished again by his parents when he reached home. If a child was punished at school, they had an even worse fate awaiting them when they returned home. Children didn’t have ”rights”, they were CHILDREN, a sort of subspecies who would have to wait until adulthood to obtain legal protections and rights. People ASSUMED children would misbehave and adults had swift and immediate remedies for misbehavior. There was no appeals system, no attempt to prove innocence, it was an adult world. When I grew up, the most common phrase regarding children was, “children are to be seen and not heard”.

In the 1960′s, psychologists, pediatricians, school reformers, and a whole permissive generation of young adults decided that children should have just as many rights as adults. Since then, the permissive attitudes have strengthened, and today children seemingly have MORE rights than adults.

The modern parent and all the reformers that promoted rights for children seem to have forgotten one important aspect about rights. There is an old axiom, “with rights, comes responsibilities.” If children are to have as many rights as adults, then they must also be as responsible as adults. Common sense should tell us that’s not going to happen. They are children!

I had been teaching many years before I ran into an example of a student being placed on the same level as an adult authority figure. I had sent a very belligerent student to the office because of continued classroom disruptions. (One of only a few students I ever sent to the office in my career).  When I went to the office, I found the student chatting with the principal in an amiable fashion as if they were old golfing buddies rehashing what happened on the ninth hole. I explained to the principal how the student had misbehaved. The principal then began his defense of the student with the following words,” but Jose says that you—-”, and then repeated the outright lies that the student must have told the principal as to why he was innocently accused.  When I heard those words,”but Jose says that you—”, I wanted to strangle the principal until his eyeballs popped out! However, always being under control, I simply refuted the student’s story and calmly walked out of the office, knowing my retirement was only a year away and strangling the principal might have put my pension in jeopardy.

Good luck principals, teachers and school officials everywhere. In many cases you have allowed the inmates to run the asylum. Please remember, the students have rights, and watch out if you dare trample any of those rights, there’s a judge waiting somewhere that will straighten you out. Thank goodness the last of the disciplinarian dinosaurs like me are retired.  That principal in Pennsylvania needs to retire. A ten-day suspension for a little slander and libel ? Maybe thirty years ago that would have been acceptable, not today! Then again, thirty years ago the parents would have handled the most severe disciplining of the child, no suspension would have been necessary.

Happy MLK Day to all the teachers and everyone else who reads this blog.  A Golden Chalk Award to all teachers who have done so much to fight for racial equality in this country. Teachers and  teacher unions have played a huge role in the civil rights movement in this country.

I can honestly say that I have never met a teacher who has not gone out of their  way to make sure all students are treated equally no matter what race, religion, ethnicity or other traits they might have.   Teachers are given a sacred trust and a big part of that trust is to ensure equality in their classroom. I can’t imagine anyone being a teacher and harboring prejudice towards any child.

When I had just started teaching back in the early 1970′s, I had an interesting experience at one of my first parent teacher conferences. I was teaching at a school on the near west side of Chicago in a changing neighborhood. There were racial tensions as a few black and hispanic families started to move into the previously all white neighborhood. We were one of the first schools in the area to teach African-American history as part of our social studies program. At the parent teacher conference, a white parent took a textbook on African-American history and threw it down on my desk and said, “why are you teaching this shit to my kid?” Fortunately, the principal was just outside my room and had been keeping an eye on me as it was my first parent conference. The principal called the man out of the room and dealt with the situation. I sat there rather amazed at the whole incident and thought to myself, “wow, these parent conferences must really be something”. I was lucky enough to never have a parent confrontation like that for the remainder of my career.

New York City teachers rated “highly effective” for two years in a row would get a $20,000 raise under a proposal by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  Bloomberg in his annual State of the City address focused heavily on education, challenging the United Federation of Teachers to accept his approach to weeding out teachers deemed “less effective”. The starting salary for a New York City teacher is $45,530.

Here we go again.  Money as a motivator of teachers. Who wouldn’t want an extra $20,000? If I was a “less effective” teacher, I sure would want to be a “highly effective” one.  What constitutes an effective or an ineffective teacher?  Is that based on test scores?  I would have a problem with that. Is it based on observations? Is based on a combination of test scores and observations? Is it a matter of taking more education courses?

I believe most teachers fall into one of three categories. Teachers are either incompetent, average, or excellent. There are varying degrees of those categories as well. Teachers are no different from any other profession when it comes to rankings. In any given profession, most people are going to be average.

Some people just don’t have the personality and emotional make up to be a teacher. The incompetent teachers that I have seen during my career were people who couldn’t have been an effective teacher no matter how much coaching, mentoring, or assistance they were given. These people either quit or were let go by the school district.

There are endless reasons why average teachers are average and never advance to be excellent. Most average teachers I knew would not have been motivated by money. Most of the average teachers remained average and did an effective job, but maybe not a highly effective one.

The excellent teachers that I knew seemed to have certain traits that could not come from outside sources. There was something about them that made them excellent and it was difficult to quantify. They were not motivated by money and just had a certain spark that others did not.

People can try to motivate teachers all they want with money, but in the end it is just natural that the majority of teachers will be average. There is certainly nothing wrong with average.

I would compare  teachers to people who are in artistic careers.  Some people in acting will just never be more than average no matter the amount of work or effort that they put into it.  Some painters will never rise above average. They just don’t have what it takes to be an exceptional artist. Writers are certainly not judged by the amount of time they work or the effort they put in.

Of course there are exceptions to the above examples. I know there are incompetent people in every profession who went on to be exceptional, as well as average ones who did the same. I just rarely saw it in teaching and I can’t imagine any amount of money would change that.

Artists and teachers can’t be motivated the way people are in the world of business. Why is that so difficult for people to understand? I could see that money might HELP teachers who are “whatever it takes” teachers. If those teachers made enough money so they could hire people to clean their house, or hire a nanny for their kids, or hire servants to fix their meals and do everything to free them for extra time with their students. The “whatever it takes” teachers who would tutor after school and on weekends, and make home visits at night,etc., they could certainly use the extra money. If we want “whatever it takes” teachers, we need to pay them a very generous salary.

I’ve been reading the book, “Class Warfare, Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools”.  I think that I’m supposed to draw the following conclusions: 1. Most inner city teachers are either incompetent, lazy, jaded, or a combination of all three. 2. Teacher unions are evil organizations whose main job is to protect incompetent teachers and maintain the status quo no matter how much it hurts the students. 3. Teachers routinely give up on inner city students and are holding back their progress. 4. All poverty-stricken inner city kids could be Harvard law school graduates if they just would have had an inspiring teacher. 5.  The Democratic party has been in a giant conspiracy with teacher unions for years and has thwarted every attempt at school reform. 6.  We need young, single, energetic, brilliant, teachers who are willing to do “whatever it takes” to make sure the students of our impoverished areas succeed no matter what the obstacles.

The book has interesting stories of several brilliant Teach for America teachers who at first failed as teachers in their first few years, but by being relentless, creative, and completely unselfish with their time, they turned into the greatest teachers imaginable and all their students became Rhodes scholars, or so it would seem. Here is an interesting passage about one of the teachers,– “Levin’s success was the result, it turns out, not only of his determination to connect with his kids, even if he had to visit them and their parents at home each night,—-”.

The narratives describe how these brilliant young teachers did “whatever it took” to ensure the success of their students. I have written about this very concept before by mentioning that every inner city teacher needs to be a Jaime Escalante.

Here is a shocking admission from me; I never did “whatever it took” to ensure the success of my students.  No, I had a second job to go to when I taught.  I had a family of my own to take care of. I had responsibility for my parents and other relatives that needed caring for. I had many after school extracurricular activities to take care of.  I never visited the homes of my students, their parents, or anyone else.  I never spent endless hours tutoring my students after school or on weekends. I only planned all my lessons well, tried to be creative, engaged my students, was enthusiastic, and was diligent about home reports. I was just an average teacher who put in an average amount of time and I could have done way more to do, “whatever it takes”.

I think this book is excellent at defining what the “whatever it takes teacher” needs to be like. That teacher needs to be  unmarried and preferably not in any relationship that takes up time.  They need to put their students first above all else, even their family. They need to be under thirty and be indefatigable when it comes to the work at school. They need to use their “free time” to continue to address the needs of their students. They need to be incredibly creative and come up with ideas that will allow them to engage even the most incorrigible students.

The “whatever it takes” teacher needs to be like many  small business owners. Most small business owners put in endless hours of work, and their work is often their life.  Their work is what brings them joy and satisfaction. Everything else in their life is secondary to their work.

I had “whatever it takes” teachers while I was in elementary school. There were fifty-five  kids in my eighth grade class and the “whatever it takes” teacher made sure almost all of us were successful. That “whatever it takes” teacher was unmarried, seemingly had no relatives, spent most waking hours working on school related work, never took a lunch break, belonged to no union, rarely if ever even went to the washroom, supervised our recess, never had a break, was never sick or ever missed a single day, saw all our parents on a regular basis and could have whipped any inner city school class into shape in no time. Yes, she was a nun. That is exactly the type of vocational person we need in our inner city schools.

There really is only one question to ask any prospective inner city teacher. Are you willing to do “whatever it takes” to make sure your students succeed?  If you can’t agree to that, then please don’t apply to these schools, because you are just going to turn out to be one of those incompetent teachers who has a life outside of the classroom. We don’t need average teachers in our inner city schools, we need people willing to make their job a vocation. There’s a world of difference between a job and a vocation. Just ask Sister Celeste, she’d be happy to tell you what a vocation is all about. She’s ninety-four years old and still going strong in the convent retirement home if you want to talk to her. In fact, she might not be able to handle a class of fifty-five today, but she could probably give a class of twenty a run for their money!

In the last nine and a half years there has only been thirty-seven teacher strikes in the state of Illinois.  That’s four strikes a year during that time period.  We are in a  period of unprecedented peace and harmony when it comes to school board and teacher union negotiations.

I hereby award a prestigious Golden Chalk Award to all school boards who rewarded their teachers with salary and benefits that were at least adequate or better, and showed an understanding of how important and difficult the job of teaching is.

Another Golden Chalk Award goes to school board members and teacher negotiating teams who implemented some very creative settlements that avoided what otherwise would have been very bitter battles.

Another award goes to parents and students who supported their teachers during some very difficult negotiations and whose support led to many school board concessions.

An award to school board members, teachers, and community leaders who worked very hard to get tax increase referendums passed and thereby solved the problems that come with underfunded schools.

A special Golden Chalk Award to teachers who refused to allow their school districts to use the current financial crisis as an excuse to break contracts and to demand that teachers give back hard-earned salary and benefits.

There are many people working very hard to break teacher unions, and one of their tactics is to try to convince the public that teacher unions constantly use strikes as a weapon that bankrupts school districts and causes large amount of lost class time for students.  That certainly has not been the case here in Illinois during the last decade.  The teacher unions here in Illinois are hardly the militant crusaders that anti union organizations have painted them to be. Most school boards are also made up of community members who try to do what is best for the schools, the students, the community, and the hard-working teachers.

Readers of this blog will probably note that this post has been one of the most positive, docile, mellow and syrupy ones that I’ve ever written when it comes to school negotiations. Have I gone soft? Don’t worry, one of my next blogs will be advocating a teacher “sit in” at the state capitol until legislators agree to stop blaming teachers and public employees for the state’s dire financial situation. The “sit in” will continue until legislators also agree to fully fund the teacher pension system and stop conspiring to lower agreed upon compensation. If the “sit in” doesn’t work, every teacher in Illinois should go on strike until the legislature meets our demands. Oops, did I say, strike?  So much for the syrupy post and the peaceful decade.