Teachers Fight Back

The following is taken from an article in Newsweek magazine:

ALARM BELLS IN BANGALORE

“A bag is full of 20 bananas and no other fruit.  Rajeev draws a fruit from the bag. What is the probability that he will draw a banana?”  In a study that has sent shudders through newspaper-reading India, researchers found that 30 percent of the country’s engineers were unable to answer that – and other- elementary mathematical problems.  A total of 55,000 students in 250 engineering colleges took part in the survey.

Wow, and you thought we had some problems?  It’s so refreshing to see some criticism directed towards an example from another country’s education system and not the U.S. for once. I hope none of my readers are living in a high-rise constructed by engineers from India. I’m afraid you might have a 30 percent chance of having the building collapse on this day.

I think this would be a good question on a test for some of our state legislators. I would rephrase it to suit the following. “A bag is full of 5 billion dollars that belongs to the teacher’s pension fund. None of the money belongs to you. If you as a state legislator pull 2 billion dollars out of the bag, how much of that money will belong to you?  I think you will find a larger number than 30 percent will answer that question incorrectly.

Just received an urgent e.mail from the Illinois Retired Teachers Association.  It was entitled, “It Is Time To Act”.  The e.mail went on to say that the General Assembly may soon be considering legislation that changes the promise for active and retired teachers. The Assembly was expected to vote on the bill the same day that it’s proposed. According to news reports, the Assembly could be acting as soon as tomorrow.

“It is time to act” ?  Really ?  Oh, why not wait until the legislation is actually proposed ?  What’s the hurry?  Time to act indeed!  No, IRTA, the time to act was many years ago and every year since the Assembly started stealing funds from the Teachers’ Pension Fund. The time to act was when you saw several years ago that certain political groups were targeting teachers and teacher pensions. The time to act was when the reformers, politicians and the press started making teachers scapegoats for the State’s financial difficulties. The time to act was when the Governor, Speaker of the House and the Mayor of Chicago met months ago to plot the attack on teacher pensions. The time to act was a few years ago when we saw public opinion beginning to agree with the plotters that teacher pensions were “lucrative” and out of control.

Sorry, IRTA, the time for action has come and gone. Now it’s time to sit back and ponder just how much more retired teachers are going to be paying for health insurance. How our cost of living increases are going to disappear. How current teachers are going to be asked to retire later and to contribute more towards their pensions.

An e.mail campaign and phone calls to legislators aren’t going to do the trick this time. You lost the public opinion battle a long time ago. The public is hell-bent on attacking those “lucrative” public employee pensions, and the legislators sense this and feel that they now have a mandate for change. They might not even wait until November to act.

IRTA, your call to action is a few years too late.  Maybe it’s not too late for me to request my IRTA dues to be refunded.  Maybe my refunded dues can help offset some of the costs when my health insurance premiums double and my cost of living increases disappear. I’m sorry to say this, but I’m ashamed to be an IRTA member. You’re pathetic.

The Chicago Tribune Co. won bankruptcy court approval to pay 425 managers incentive bonuses totaling $15 million to $45 million.  Hey,Tribune, you’re in bankruptcy, don’t you think you should be a little more conservative with your money? I wonder what these managers have for a pension program, not that they need one with that kind of money.

Some of these managers are probably the people who have orchestrated the unrelenting campaign of blaming teacher pensions for bankrupting the State of Illinois. Those “lucrative” pensions, like my $26,000 a year one, sure pale in comparison to what a Tribune manager gets.

Isn’t it interesting how people who are financially set for life have made it their campaign to reign in the money and insurance benefits of people who worked hard and contributed to their pension throughout their career ? Chicago Tribune, you win the “Ultimate Hypocrisy Award” of 2012 !

The Illinois Senate voted 32-20 to require that students in kindergarten through fifth grade get at least 20 minutes of recess. Schools also would be permitted to require recess for sixth through eighth grades. The bill also seeks to block teachers from holding children out of recess as punishment.

Isn’t it great that Illinois legislators have the time and expertise to decide what’s best for school children? Did anyone consult teachers about this idea? I doubt it. I’m in favor of the recess, as I’m sure most teachers would be. (I think most teachers know the importance of a break for kids). We didn’t have junior high recess where I taught, but I occasionally gave my students a break to get up and move around, relax, etc.

What I don’t like about this is the idea that once again, educational decisions are made by EVERYONE BUT THE TEACHERS!  We also see in this that everyone knows best when it comes to disciplining students, except for the teachers. I don’t want to be told how and when I can discipline my students. I know the best forms of discipline for my students. THEY ARE MY STUDENTS, WHO KNOWS THEM BETTER THAN THE TEACHER? In this day and age the teacher probably knows them better than their parents. I’m the professional, let me decide how to discipline them. I doubt most teachers would withhold recess as a punishment, BUT TRUST THEM ENOUGH TO MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION!

The Wisconsin recall election is now set for June 5th. The candidates will be the current governor, Scott the union busting, teacher bashing, public worker slashing, pension destroying, firemen and policemen insulting, collective bargaining destroying Republican, verses Tom Barrett the mayor of Milwaukee.

I’ve never seen a state so fired up for an election as this one. Nearly 1 in 5 of the state’s voters say they have attended a demonstration or rally over the past 16 months.  One in 5 said that they had contributed money. Half had said they had tried to persuade others to vote their way.

This should be an exciting contest to watch as the polls currently have this race as a dead heat.  Many people say that if the current governor wins, it will be a severe blow to the labor movement. I disagree. The mere fact that the governor has to face a recall election should be viewed as a major victory for organized labor.

Wisconsin is the only state in the union to have lost jobs over the past year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released last month. About half the losses came from cuts in government employment. We’ll see what effect that has on the election.

I can’t wait to see what happens on June 5th. This is going to be interesting.

I hate to say this, but Illinois teachers need to accept some of the blame for the current pension crisis.  Did we do everything possible over the years to combat the underfunding of our pension here in Illinois?  Did we see this crisis coming and start demanding years ago that the legislature stop stealing our funds? Did we hold rallies, protests, letter writing campaigns, and threaten to take action when the first few millions were stolen by the state?  I hate to say this, but I don’t think we did. I think we failed right along with our union leaders, lobbyists and legislative allies.  We should have voiced our outrage long before the millions became billions. We should have threatened state-wide strikes and done whatever it took to demand an end to the stealing of our pension funds. The question now is, what are we going to do now that the crisis is out of control? We probably have until November to do everything we can to fight for our pensions and insurance benefits. Will we make our outrage heard this time so the damage isn’t too severe?  I sure hope so.

Our failure to confront the pension problem early on, is very similar to how teachers failed to stop the trend of more and more responsibility being heaped on teachers, while the responsibilities of students and parents were lessened. The fact that a teacher’s job today has become way more difficult than in past years didn’t just happen over night.  We allowed small amounts of our independence to be eroded over the years. We did very little to combat the growing movements that made teachers solely responsible for a student’s success. Many of us allowed ourselves to be brainwashed by reformers into thinking that somehow we weren’t doing enough to ensure a student’s success. We gradually accepted sole responsibility for a student’s behavior and allowed students and parents to abdicate any responsibility for self-control. Many of us did nothing to combat the injustices of No child Left Behind. We grumbled and complained among ourselves, but never took any dramatic actions to do away with the program until many years of frustration had accumulated.

Teachers are a patient lot. We are internally programmed to idly accept most anything that comes our way, especially if someone cloaks it in the guise of being for ‘the good of the children”. We are not rabble rousers, revolutionaries, militant unionists, or people who worry about ourselves first and everyone else later. We are the kind of people that traveling salesmen dream about meeting on their routes. When told that we must accept something that is very distasteful to us, we tend to sit back and say, “oh well, I guess that’s just the way it has to be”.  The general public is so familiar with the docile nature of teachers, that when something happens like the protests in Madison, Wisconsin, the public is very surprised and is often offended that teachers would act like that. I truly believe we are victims of our own unselfish disposition. I’ve heard many people criticize teachers who seek better benefits or increased salary. These people often say, “you knew teachers were underpaid when you chose your profession, and you teachers always say that you aren’t in it for the money, so what’s your problem?”

It almost seems like we are in a no win situation when it comes to public perception. If we act “unteacher like”, we are severely criticized, and if we act like our perceived docile selves, we are taken advantage of. Perhaps we need to start a “New Age of Teacher Selfishness”. We need to think only of our own selfish best interest. How many of you are willing to adopt that attitude ? That’s what I thought. We’re in trouble. Brace yourself for the changes coming in November.

Wow!  I can’t believe all the great things that happened this week during Teacher Appreciation Week. Check out the following:

The Chicago Tribune had an editorial that issued an official apology to all teachers for the newspaper’s negative articles over the past few years.  The paper promised to write nothing but positive articles about teachers from now on.

The Illinois legislature passed a bill that ordered all tax revenue for the entire week to be directed to reducing what the state owes the teacher’s pension fund.

The legislature also mandated that all Illinois school districts allow teachers to establish their school curriculum, design the discipline policies, and to have major input into their evaluation systems.

The Parent Teacher Associations throughout the state issued guidelines for parents that emphasized the important role that a parent plays in a child’s education. The parents were given a checklist of responsibilities and encouraged to do everything in their power to help their child in school. Unless the responsibilities were met, a parent would not be allowed to complain about their child’s progress.

The Association of School Board Attorneys issued guidelines that compels all administrators and boards to assume an accused teacher is innocent until proven guilty, and not the other way around.

The Illinois Policy Institute issued a statement admitting that their real agenda is to break teacher unions and to lower all teacher benefits rather than to be concerned about the financial future of the state. They admitted that the legislature was to blame for the underfunded teacher pension, and not lucrative teacher pensions.

Education reformers from several state universities issued a joint statement admitting that the responsibilities of teachers have increased tenfold over the last decade, and that students and parents would now be targeted to help remove some of the burden from teachers. The statement urged all reformers to restore the time-honored tradition that students and their parents were as much responsible for a student’s achievement as are the teachers.

The —- oh, wait a minute, I just woke up from a nap.  No, don’t tell me I was dreaming all of what I have written here. Yes, it was all a lovely dream, apparently triggered by Teacher Appreciation Week.  I’m so sorry if all you teachers thought the above actions were true. Oh well, have a nice week anyhow.

How many more examples do we need before educators learn to stay away from all forms of social media ? You Tube and Facebook are quickly becoming the graveyard of educators.

Now a high school principal in Missouri is out because she pretended to be a student while on Facebook. Hello, what was she thinking ?  This is getting crazy.

Every school district in America needs to have a staff development day that deals with social media. Every district needs to have a lawyer explain the pitfalls of social media to the staff and administration. The districts then need to set up rules for their employees as regards the social media.

I would suggest one simple rule would be sufficient, and that would be, DON’T USE ANY SOCIAL MEDIA WHATSOEVER ! I know I’m going to get some harsh responses from teachers who feel that their rights will be violated by such a rule. I agree, it is a violation, so go ahead and use social media if you want to, but you will have been warned. The districts could simply “advise” the staff not to use it, and then leave it up to the individual.

I’m sure many of you are thinking that those educators who got in trouble were up to no good and deserved their fate. I’m sure you feel that everything you do on social media sites would never be something that might cause trouble. To people who feel that way, I would warn you that sometimes even the most innocent comments and postings can be open to misinterpretation.

I can remember when I started teaching in the inner city of Chicago, I occasionally drove a student home from school so the student could escape being harassed by gang members. Wow, what was I thinking ?  Twenty years later I advised all my student teachers to never even be alone with a student in the classroom. Never touch them in any manner, joke with them, give them anything, communicate with them on a personal level, comment about their appearance, or engage in any behavior that could be remotely construed as unprofessional. I know they hated that advice, and I hated the fact that I felt compelled to give it, but I just wanted to make sure that I made them aware of all possible legal pitfalls.

It’s a whole different world today than when I started teaching. Today, teachers need to think like a lawyer. Always ask yourself, is there any way what I’m about to do could possibly get me into trouble?  I know it’s sad and pathetic advice, but I also think it’s necessary. Now, get back to teaching, and be careful out there !

The following story was taken from Dawn Turner Trice’s column in the Tribune.

One day in the early 1960s, when Marilyn Johnson was a first-grader at a Chicago Catholic school, her teacher announced that she would call the “good readers” to the front of the class.

One by one, students left their seats and stood proudly by the chalkboard.  When the nun finished calling names, only Johnson and a little boy remained at their desks.

“I ran home and told my mother, and she went out and bought a bunch of flash cards,” said Johnson, 57.  “And I went from the nun telling my mother that I was going to be ‘slow’, to reading everything that wasn’t moving, including the Kellogg’s cereal box.”

Johnson is now a Cook County Circuit Court judge.

I can’t imagine a teacher today that would leave only two students to be seated while all others were rewarded. Today that borders on child abuse. What about the two unfortunate children’s embarrassment? What about their damaged self- esteem? The parent of any child today who came home from school and reported such an embarrassment would be on the phone to that school and teacher in a heartbeat. That teacher would be in for a world of trouble.

It wasn’t just Catholic school teachers who used such methods years ago, it was public school teachers as well. Incidences like the one above were common practice in schools back then.

I mention this story to point out once again how difficult a job teachers today have compared to years ago. Years ago when a student failed at anything, it was the job of the student and the parent to find a way to improve. Teachers did what they could, but they were in no way the sole responsibility for a child’s success. Today if a child fails at something, it’s the teacher’s failure, not the student and or parent. Teachers today have so many more responsibilities than those who taught 30 or 40 years ago. Teachers today must be incredible motivators, entertainers, self-esteem boosters, counselors, happiness producers, student protectors, substitute parents and the sole responsibility for a student’s success.

Thank goodness no students today will ever face embarrassment, humiliation, or self-esteem damage from ridiculous teaching methods that singled people out for a lack of success. Thank goodness only the teacher is responsible for a student’s success today. Parents and students can now be much happier and have time to worry about more important things. Considering how little responsibility teachers had 30 or 40 years ago, it’s a miracle the U.S. was number one in the world in education back then. Now we are a dismal 26th in the world, but I’ll bet our students and parents are happier in this country than anywhere else in the world.

We have the happiest students and parents in the world, now we just need to get teachers to take on a little more responsibility and get our national ranking to once again soar to the top of the world. Let’s go teachers, it’s all on you make this country great again. I know you can do it, just don’t expect any help from anyone, much less a student or parent.

Spurred by student and community groups demanding a less punitive student discipline system, a Chicago City Council Committee on Wednesday passed a resolution calling on Chicago Public Schools to reduce suspensions and expulsions by 40 percent.

The groups pushing for a less punitive approach want CPS to increase the use of “restorative justice programs”, which include everything from peer juries to determine student punishment to peace circles that bring together offenders and victims.

So, aldermen and “students and community groups” will now decide a new discipline system. How perfect. Has anyone asked the teachers for their input?  Once again we see that unlike all professions known to man, people outside of the teaching profession are thought to know better than the teaching professionals themselves.  Teachers are the least likely to determine school policies and to be trusted to know what works best in schools. It’s a tradition. What a shame.

Perhaps the Chicago aldermen should be on standby to respond to ongoing classroom behavioral incidences. When two gangbangers are at each others throats in a classroom, the teacher could call the aldermanic  hotline and the alderman could come right out and encourage the combatants to form a “peace circle”. Sounds like a plan to me. Maybe the alderman and or voluntary community members could come in and hum a few bars of Kumbaya, and all will be well.

We seriously need to stop referring to teachers as professionals. A professional is trusted to make the correct decisions and to implement programs that govern their work. Can you imagine aldermen and “community groups” telling doctors the best way to perform open heart surgery ?

Let’s hope this new discipline system works. If it doesn’t work, I’m sure the teachers will be blamed for not implementing it properly. Chicago teachers, please stop causing so many students to be suspended and expelled. I’m sure the majority of expelled and suspended students were simply misunderstood kids and they probably deserved a better fate. Let’s give peace a chance. Chicago teachers need to start learning the words to Kumbaya and establishing these “peace circles”.  Anyone want a John Lennon poster for their classroom? I still have some from the early 70′s. Help yourself.