So, I went to visit one of my former student teachers today who is teaching third grade in Baltimore City. She was one of the best I had in my cohort last year. She is a very nice person, a creative person, and was successful in all of her experiences last year. I would also say that she was better prepared for this experience than any other alternatively certified member that I could imagine. And admirably enough, she actually listened to me when I said, “The city needs great teachers, you’re great, do the world a favor!”
Keep in mind that teacher education’s current obsession is handling the new common core and new assessments. And let me say for the record that this focus of our preparation is completely misguided and way off base. No amount of common core preparation and discussion could possibly help her in this situation. I feel terrible.
I already see a teacher, a new teacher, who has tried every GD thing we’ve suggested, and she is struggling. She has done all that has been required of her. Jumped through all of our hoops. And she is struggling.
I find it blindingly offensive that anyone would sit here and punish her with standardized assessments when she has so many challenges by no fault of her own. Unbelievable. I want to both scream and stand at her door every damn day to protect her and her students from this nonsense.
Anyone else with me?
Time to create our own system.
Here’s the thing. While banks may tumble, the hedge funders continue to prevail. They are buying out a teacher’s pension fund near you. Or so they would like. They see a good bet that the privatization of public education will capsize teachers’ unions. The bets are in and continue to mount. Teachers may strike, opt out, or not. Obama or Romney, who cares? The moneyed elite are looking at the long view. Neither party matters much as far as education goes. The continued extenuation between the haves and have nots is of primary importance to the governing elite, the multi-billionaire overclass. The coup ‘d etat, the completion of the taking of America, that’s the dream of the uber social hierarchy. Induced by excessive and unjust privilege and exploitation, they embrace the swift deterioration of all public services biding their time. There will be no sudden takeover. It will have completed itself before the people have a chance to notice what the hell happened. John Kenneth Galbraith said as much in his small tome, ” The Sheep Look Up,” printed some 50 years ago.
As we’ve discussed previously, teacher educator positions are disappearing and all the money is invested in systems where teacher training is eliminated. The age of the unenlightened proctor is upon us. I witness more and more teachers, good and well-trained teachers in California and Hawaii, who feel more stressed out than they have ever been. I’ve talked to principals whose salaries have been cut to accommodate punishing testing regimes moving onto campuses with haste. Adding insult, principals in restructuring districts are told to hire a minimum 20% of TFAs to replace or add to staffing. I have interviewed several TFAs and they all say the same thing: we are not prepared to do what we are supposed to do but, so far, no one tells us to do anything but continue to put the plane together as we take off. Also, 90% of TFAs interviewed said that they would leave education as soon as they can. They see even their roles as tentative.
A little pissed off? Yeah. I know, ever the pessimist. But witness the increasing changes, reiterations, and additions to state testing. One huge strike has been averted. This removes the headlines on education and human rights, worker rights, or at least tones it all down for the selective amnesia of the people. But, where is the next one coming from? Like the Buddy Guy song rendition, where, where, where, oh where, where is the next one comin’ from? And more strikes are coming. And yet the corporate stranglehold on public education at all levels continues to tighten. No, people aren’t going to wake up someday and put and end to the destruction of the common weal (public education being fundamental to collective en’franchisement). Pissed off. You bet. Because it’s going to take a civil war to hopefully bring America (and the rest of the planet) into a new era of equanimity. And it’s my grandchildren who will be doing the fighting and that pisses me off.