Teachers Fight Back

The latest suggestion from the geniuses behind “education reform” is to have students evaluate their teachers, and that score would then become part of a teachers overall evaluation by the administration.  Gee, can anyone see a potential problem with this ?  I can think of a few dozen problems with this idea, but I’ll leave it to your imagination to come up with a few of your own. Some of them should be quite obvious if you’ve been a teacher for any length of time. What adult wouldn’t want to be evaluated by an eight year old that has been a discipline problem for the entire year? Wouldn’t you want to be evaluated by that occasional “class from hell” that most teachers will experience if they’re in the profession for any length of time?

I’m not against a teacher hearing the OPINIONS of students from time to time as regards the teachers performance, but to be an actual part of the evaluation, I don’t think so. I valued student opinions and used an opinion form a few times during the year  to help me understand how to better relate to the students.  I had my students write unsigned opinion pieces about me and my teaching methods. I provided a form with questions as well as an area for general comments. The forms made for some very interesting reading and sometimes helped me to improve certain teaching methods.

I’ve written before about one of the biggest changes that happened over my thirty-seven year career in teaching. That change was the attitude that every student needed to be happy and content. (See my previous posts about what I call the modern “happy happy school”.  Your job as a teacher is to make sure every students’ needs and learning styles are met, and every student is having a wonderful school experience. It makes a teachers job much more challenging than when I began my career and when very few teachers considered a student’s happiness to be their responsibility.

If student evaluations are to be counted in a teacher’s overall evaluation, I think you are going to see teachers place even more emphasis on student happiness. The current “happy happy school” environment will soon become the “ultra happy school”. I’m sure that will be a good thing. I’ve been hammered by readers before because of my sarcasm directed towards the modern “happy happy school”.  I know I’m an old school curmudgeon who believes children are not little adults, and self-esteem pills should not be dispensed like candy, and students should be held responsible for their own actions, and all the old dinosaur like ideas of thirty years ago. The only defense I can offer for my dislike of the “happy school approach”, is the fact that child psychiatrists and pediatricians tell us that childhood and teen depression is reaching epidemic proportions. I don’t understand how this could be happening. I’ve never seen a generation of young parents who are so obsessed with the happiness of their children. These parents are doing everything known to man in order to insure their child’s happiness. Teachers are working unbelievably hard to make sure their students have a wonderful school experience. We have wonderful efforts to curb bullying, outstanding techniques to build self-esteem, adults who are always bending over backwards to insure a child’s happiness. Where in the world is all this childhood depression coming from ? And how in the world did I go from the topic of student evaluations of teachers to my dislike of “happy happy schools”?  Sorry about that.

A Golden Chalk Award goes to Paul Easton an English teacher at New Trier High School.  He managed to get the Chicago Tribune to publish his opinion piece in the editorial page.  I’ve been trying to do so for some time without success. His piece sums up a great deal of what I have been saying about the Tribune.  The following is the editorial:

“I’m ceaselessly amazed at how the oligarchic Tribune editorial board can on one hand call public teachers as lazy, union-protected unprofessionals and  – sometimes using the same hand – cry aghast as the best-educated, most qualified professionals seek career security anywhere but Illinois schools.  Who’d a-thunk it ?  Certainly not the Tribune, which pummels teachers daily, which somehow believes teachers, nurses, firefighters, police officers and other public servants are to blame for decades of legislative malfeasance.

As it happens, I’ve been a teacher for nearly 20 years.  A professional.  I pay a higher percentage of my salary into the Teachers’ Retirement system than any other educated professional (9.4 percent of my salary, mandated by law!).  This same law prohibits me from receiving the Social Security benefits I earned in a former career.  I likely won’t ever be able to retire, and if I do, it won’t be until I’m at least 75.  I doubt I will ever see the money I contributed into TRS.  These paid-out -of-my-own-pocket dollars will be absconded by our elected state Legislature.  Yet, according to the Tribune, I’m the source of all Illinoisans’ financial woes.  Even though I, too, am an Illinois taxpayer, a homeowner, a working professional with a family to feed, stuck in the economic downturn like everyone else. Good luck with that.”

Nicely stated, Paul.

Here we go!  Several more incidences of kids and or parents secretly taping their teachers have been cropping up on the news.  Let the madness begin!

One such incident is particularly troubling.  A New Jersey teacher who oversees a classroom where a father says his autistic son was verbally abused by adults has been placed on leave. The You Tube secretly recorded audio caught one adult calling his autistic son a “bastard”.

The teacher denied that she was in the classroom at the time.  Assistants were allegedly in the room and supervising at the time of the incident. An investigation by the district also found that the teacher wasn’t present.

The superintendent said that she put the teacher on leave to minimize the “disruption to our school”.

I’ve written before about the fact that teachers are not accorded the same “presumption of innocence” as everyone else in American society.  More than one teacher has  been removed from a  classroom in handcuffs because a disgruntled student made up a story about the teacher abusing him. I’ve personally witnessed a teacher being suspended after false allegations.  The teacher was later exonerated but left the profession after becoming disenchanted with the way things were handled.

Notice that the New Jersey teacher was proved innocent by the district but was placed on leave despite that.  I fear these recent stories are just the tip of the iceberg if these secret tapings are allowed to continue.

It’s also interesting to see the outrage from parents and the news media anytime a teacher verbally abuses a student. Everyone knows that a teacher must never verbally abuse anyone. It’s inexcusable. This is one of the reasons why successful teachers must have an extreme amount of patience and self-control. Imagine trying to control a room full of children, many with behavioral problems, and yet never losing patience or acting in an unprofessional manner FOR YOUR ENTIRE CAREER.  Prospective teachers need to have a certain type of personality or they shouldn’t even think about entering a classroom. A prospective teacher can be a genius in their subject matter, an excellent motivator, and yet without the correct disposition they will be an utter failure as a teacher.

I would like to see teachers afforded the same legal rights as everyone else in America. While unprofessional teachers need to weeded out, I worry that these tapings are going to claim more than a few innocent victims.

I just heard a CNN announcer tease an upcoming segment with, “more parents are secretly recording their kids’ teachers”. I couldn’t stay to hear the story.  Has anyone heard of this trend?  Has it been on the news before ?

If this is true, the news media certainly has to take a large share of the blame for this.  When the news, and You Tube make a big deal out of one or two crazy teachers yelling at a student, this is what we get.  Every parent is now worried that their child’s teacher is some crazed maniac. Just what we need.

Next up will be the parents and the school office video taping every classroom.  Then students will be interviewed on a regular basis to see if they feel that their teacher might be doing anything inappropriate. Perhaps monetary rewards will be given to students who give a parent or the office a bad report about a teacher. Finally, teachers will have to submit to quarterly lie detector tests, where they will be asked questions about possible student and parental accusations.

I’m so glad I retired before the teaching profession lost all of its respect and credibility. We are heading towards a Soviet Union style education system from the 1950′s where children were encouraged to spy on and report to the authorities any teacher or parent that displayed any disloyalty to the communist party.

I’ve written before about how occasionally taping myself in the classroom helped me to find flaws in my style and delivery. I suggested it for other teachers as a way to improve themselves.  Now I would suggest teachers do it full-time as a way to constantly remind themselves to be very careful about what they say on a daily basis.

You teachers thought your biggest worry these days was the test results of your students?  Maybe not. Get ready for Soviet style intrigue and inquisitions. I have warned you before about being  very professional in every thing you do and say. That might not be enough to keep you out of trouble these days. I would suggest you start reading some of the survival guide books written by Soviet dissidents who were sent to labor camps in Siberia. You never know, they might come in handy some day.

I don’t like the idea of singling out certain teachers for awards.  It’s nice that something is done to recognize the profession, I just think the whole process is flawed. How in the world can anyone determine who deserves a “Golden Apple” or “Teacher of the Year” award ?  No matter who gets the award, there are thousands of teachers doing similar work throughout the country.

I do like what this year’s “Teacher of the Year”, Rebecca Mieliwocki had to say upon accepting the award. She said, “I am not the best teacher in America – there isn’t one.  All across this nation there are millions of teachers who do the work that I do and many do it better.”

Nicely stated Rebecca, we are proud of you and all the teachers who work so hard to make the lives of children better. Only a small percentage of all teachers don’t work hard at what they do. Now if only we could get the politicians and reformers to understand that.

This Wisconsin governor is UNBELIEVABLE !  Gov. Scott Walker has reshaped a rule to lower inflation-based raises that public unions can negotiate for teachers in public schools.  The rule change wouldn’t use an individual’s actual salary as a “base salary” to calculate raises and would exclude factors such as a teacher’s higher degree.

For instance, a teacher with a master’s degree might make $45,000 a year, while a teacher in the same district with a bachelor’s degree might make $35,000.  A 3.2 percent cost of living raise on $45,000 would be $1,440 – or more than $300 more than the same raise on $35,000. Under the new rule, the teacher with the master’s degree would have his or her raise CALCULATED OFF THE $35,000 INSTEAD OF THE ACTUAL PAY !

Yes, come to Wisconsin all you would be teachers, we welcome you. Just don’t expect to be rewarded much for your advanced degree. Governor Walker should initiate an official state poem similar to the one about the Statue of Liberty, “bring me your tired, your  homeless, the downtrodden, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. (Forgot the exact words).

Walker’s state poem – “Bring us the least educated teachers, none with an advanced degree, and only ones willing to be union free.  Bring us teachers who command no respect and can take many a blow, we promise to keep your salary low. Wisconsin values education, it’s one of our main features, unless it’s an advanced degree earned by our teachers. We are the land of cheese and the dairy cow, when it comes to abusing teachers, we know how. We welcome teachers with open arms, the kind we use to hunt deer on our farms. Please consider teaching in our beautiful state, with any luck you can ignore the Governor’s hate.”

What next ?  How about teachers who have a doctorate would have their salary return to the level of a first year teacher with only a bachelor’s degree?

I won’t go into details about the “Reform Plan”, I’m sure you have heard and read about it in the news. I doubt it will be acted upon by the legislature until after the November election. The legislators don’t have the intestinal fortitude to consider anything until the election is over.

I do want to comment on the message that it sends to the teachers of Illinois. I believe the reform sends the following message:

1. When the governor says that education is the number one priority in Illinois, he doesn’t include the teachers in that. Education is the most important, teachers are not.

2. We are heading back to the days when college education majors and beginning teachers knew they were entering a profession where pay and benefits will never be on a par with the private sector jobs.

3. Teachers had a nice little run of several years where they were beginning to feel appreciated because their salaries and benefits were climbing, those days are over, it’s back to being the same old underappreciated profession.

4. Forget about attracting the “best and the brightest” to the teaching profession in Illinois. If you want good pay and benefits, get into the business world. The CEO of Motorola received 47 million dollars in compensation last year. Get the idea ?

5. Now that benefits are heading down, don’t expect the recently added pressures of teaching to also lessen. Those will continue to increase. The education reformers now have teachers right where they always wanted them; an increase in workloads and demands, and less pay and compensation.

6. Constitutional laws and contracts mean nothing in the State of Illinois. We have the most corrupt politicians in the country, but now we also have lost the rule of law. When laws and contracts can be “legally” violated by our legislators, what’s the point of having them? Actually, I’ve exaggerated the situation, the only ones I know of that have been violated involve teachers and their pensions. Maybe only teachers have fallen victim to the violations because we value education so much in Illinois. Let that be a warning to other professions, when legislators in Illinois say they”value” you, watch out, that’s an ominous sign for you.

7. Conservative “think tanks” like the Illinois Policy Institute can now rejoice that some of their goals are within reach. Their millions of dollars spent on targeting teachers and their unions are paying big benefits. The NEA, IEA, and AFT were no match for the “big boys”. They know how to play in the rough and tumble world of image making.

8. Current teachers who are now going to pay more into their retirement plans, receive less of a contribution from the state, have to work longer in order to retire, have to pay more for health insurance, and receive less in COLA increases, need to look on the bright side. You always stated that you weren’t in the teaching profession because of the money, now is your chance to prove it. Don’t worry about any of this, just enjoy your job and be happy.

Teachers, principals, administrators, aides, and any adult associated with a school. How many times do I have to tell you? DO NOT E.MAIL, TEXT, TWEET, TOOT, SHOW A FILM, A VIDEO, MAKE A PHONE CALL, POST SOMETHING ON FACEBOOK OR COMMUNICATE TO ANYONE IN ANY WAY OTHER THAN WHAT WOULD BE PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS. DO NOT ATTEMPT ANY FORM OF HUMOR, JOKE, SARCASM, LIGHTHEARTED MOMENT, OR ANYTHING THAT DEVIATES FROM THE PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS AT HAND.

Apparently a principal with twenty-five years of dedicated service, made the mistake of trying to inject humor into a staff meeting by showing a video of a comedienne who is somewhat famous for his routine centering around the phrase, “you can’t fix stupid”.

Allegedly some staff members took offense and the incident became newsworthy. The news media recently indicated that the principal resigned.  Once the news media gets a hold of a potentially embarrassing situation, whoever caused the embarrassment for the school or the district is going to be in big trouble.

Remember folks, in this age of political correctness, instant communication, and the 24 hour news cycle, you need to be professional AT ALL TIMES! If you find yourself even tempted to deviate from the professional norm, you need to pause for a moment and think, “is their anyone in the ENTIRE WORLD who could possibly misconstrue what I am saying or doing? Is there anyone who could possibly be offended by this? If the answer could possibly be yes, don’t even consider it. In fact, if you have to pause and ask yourself that question, you have already embarked on a dangerous course.

Could every school worker please try to avoid making these stupid mistakes? You have had plenty of warnings about this type of nonsense. Now get back to your school  AND TRY TO BE PROFESSIONAL. If similar incidences like this continue, maybe the comedienne is correct, “YOU CAN’T FIX STUPID”.

With no dissenting votes, the Illinois House proposed a constitutional amendment that would make it more difficult to increase pension benefits for public employees. The House voted 113-0 to adopt the amendment and send it to the Senate. If the Senate approves it, it will appear on the November ballot. The amendment requires that any legislation that enhances pension benefits for public employees must be approved by a three-fifths vote in the General Assembly.

Are you kidding me ?  Do you know how hard it is to get any legislative body to vote unanimously on ANYTHING?  You couldn’t get the Illinois House to vote unanimously to approve a statement saying that Adolf Hitler was a bad person.

Public employees, you better wake up and understand the image problem that you currently have when it comes to your pensions. Teachers, it doesn’t matter that the State stole from your pension fund and failed to fund it for many years. This is just the first step in what is going to be a series of maneuvers to attack public employees and teachers’ pensions.

I have a suggestion for the Illinois House, how about an amendment that requires a three-fifths vote if lawmakers want to put LESS than the required payments into the retirement system? How about requiring a three-fifths vote before the State can fight lawsuits that might force it to replace the stolen funds from the Teachers’ Retirement System? Do you think that those proposals would pass 113-0 ?  No chance, in fact, no chance of even passing by one vote.

1.Joseph Stalin. 2. Adolf Hitler 3. Attila the Hun. 4. The Teachers Pension System. 5. Food poisoning.

If Illinois legislators and most people in Illinois were asked to rank the above in terms of popularity, I’m sure the Teachers Pension System would come in dead last. Instead of being viewed with sympathy because our pension money was stolen by the State, retired teachers are reviled for having bankrupted the State and for living in a luxurious retirement style.

Glad to see the NEA, IEA, CPS, AFT, and other teacher unions have done such a bang up public relations job. Glad to see how effective all our money for lobbying has been. Nice job in stating our case to the public. TRS and the Retired Teachers’ Association, way to go in informing the public about past legislative abuses. All of you keep up the good work, next legislation will probably be a bill that limits any retired teacher to a benefit of no more than $10,000 a year.

There must be something out there that would prove to be more UNPOPULAR than teachers’ pensions. How about a root canal? Cod Liver Oil ? North Korea? Start the voting now!

Chicago teachers are asking for a 30% raise in the next contract and the district is offering a 2% raise.  The district increased the school day by at least an hour and the teachers want to be compensated for the extra work. It’s still a long way off, but the teachers have taken the first steps to notify the proper authorities that a strike is possible.

The Chicago Tribune has written several editorials about the possibilities of a strike. In each editorial they always emphasize how much more difficult it would be for teachers to strike because of recently passed legislation. One part of the recent state law requires the teachers’ union to have at least 75% of its membership vote to approve a strike. The Tribune seems to think this is a massive obstacle to a strike. That’s how out of touch this newspaper continues to be.

I’ve been on several negotiating teams and on two occasions our union came close to striking. A settlement was reached both times before the strike happened. Our negotiating team knew that almost all of our membership would have supported the strike and so did the school district. I attended several union negotiating workshops and I was always told not to think about a strike unless at least 90% of the membership was in favor of the strike. No teachers’ union that I know of would strike if they felt that they only had the support of 75% of their membership. The law requiring at least a 75% vote is no impediment to a strike whatsoever. The Tribune is clueless if they think it is.