Motley Moose – Archive

I originally wrote this as a comment in my other diary, wanting to get off the issue of whether or not POTUS should be more or less involved in WI.

But then I decided it needs a diary, not just a comment.

So this is about educators, and even though I know ALL public employees are involved in WI, I have never been anything but a teacher (but I support ALL of them).  For forty years I have taught, mostly sixth grade, but at some point or another I did K through college, classroom to specialist in the media center, an MA in ed tech, an MA equivalent in Counseling and 100 credits above those degrees.  I am now retired but still sub.  Education is my expertise as well as my passion.

So I want to address the hot potato issue of tenure which seems to irritate many, even on the left.

This AM I am watching CNN and Ali Velshi(sp), seemingly on the surface pretty fair minded, is talking with Randi Weingarten (leader of AFT).  

She did a good job of pointing out the false equivalency of “tenure keeps bad teachers.”

I could write a book in this.  But I won’t. 8)

However I want to give some food for thought here.  Too many simplify this issue.  I will start with something that while not a factual, unemotional point (bad for bargaining but good for others to understand who I am ideology wise).

*****’It’s better that 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man be wrongly convicted’  All of us who believe in social justice know this tenet.  On some level, humans got it. With flawed human beings, mistakes can be made.  But if we are truly to have justice, we must always err on the side of protecting the innocent.

What does this have to do with teachers/tenure?

Tenure protects way more innocent teachers than it protects guilty ones.  Why do teachers need protection?   From whom?   Political school boards. Bullies in the form of administrators, and even some parents.  When I was a young teacher, only in my third year, my teammate across the hall, was a man not much older than I was.  He was a very mild mannered male teacher, a poet, actually.  He even had a book published.  Tall, thin, soft spoken, he had gone skiing and at the time of this incident, he was on crutches.  It was right after lunch.  Suddenly half his class was up screaming, running into my room.  A parent, a rather large woman, came into his room, walked up to him, and punched him in the face.   Because of his crutches and his unsuspecting nature, he did not expect this and went down hard on the floor.  By then the office had called the police, the cowardly principal was slowly making his way to the room when the parent was leaving.  

Anyway, she accused him of slapping her daughter.  The child was lying, had been in a fight with another kid and when questioned, lied and said it was the teacher.  The kid was probably angry at the teacher who had punished both kids for the fight or was afraid of getting in trouble with Mom.  Had it not been for the union, for the lawyers, that teacher could have/would have had huge legal legal bills for what?  Being a teacher…

he was questioned by administrators, cops, school board.  No innocent until proven guilty….

At that same school, I myself had parents so angry at me one night (are you ready for this), because I had the kids break their crayons, take off the paper for an art project where they use the side of the crayon.  It was after school (no kids in the room) but she took the “broken crayons” out of her son’s desk and threw them across the room.  Think of the “no more wire hangers” scene in Mommy dearest, and put in “no more broken crayons.”  Inside I was quite frightened, but calmly said, “Well, I can buy him new crayons.”   In the end, it worked our and I did not need a strong principal or the union, but had I reacted to her anger with anger, things may have been different.

When one has a weak administrator, or an administrator who does not have the right skills,  dealing with crazed parents could lose teachers jobs, or money.  Legal protection is a huge part of the union along with tenure.

I could spend days on how teachers have had to deal, without saying a word, with angry, sometimes scary parents.

There are MOSTLY WONDERFUL supportive parents in most of my stories, but honestly just a few times of being cursed at, called names, or threatened can do a young teacher in if there is no support.  

Administrators have been known to go after teachers for their political views. It was quite common before union.  When I transferred to a new school in 1983, the principal there told his secretary (now a close friend) that he was concerned that I was a “hippie troublemaker.  He had to take me because I went to my union and wanted out of my old school because of that principal.  As you can tell I am outspoken and an activist.  In the old school they were trying a new program: mainstreaming kids who were at the time labeled E/L (emotionally/learning disabled).  This could include kids who had been abused and were really angry; kids who set fires, who generally had difficulty in a regular ed setting.  They had been grouped in special ed classes and now “mainstream” was the way to go.  I was teaching sixth grade, and none of my teammates was happy.  In the end, all five of the sixth grade EL kids were in my room.  WHY?  Ms T (an award winning teacher in the mind of our principal was so rigid, so strict, the spec ed teachers feared her anger issues would hurt these kids).  Mr. K was a traditional teacher who did not believe in mainstreaming.  And M. S was in the middle of divorce and could barely keep it together.  So I got all the kids and a promise of support from spec ed and counseling. I did it for two years.  That last year, I applied to teach summer school. I was paying for an MA degree and needed extra money.  Summer school then was ONLY for special ed kids.  My principal was in charge.  He would not hire me because, he said, I did not have a special ed degree.  He wanted special teachers. I reminded him I had five special ed kids in my class daily for the last two years.  He stood his ground. I was angry…I wanted out. I demanded the district move me or I would go union on them.  So they did.

Apparently old principal told new principal I was a trouble maker.  Never explained what really happened.   So I am at the new school, and one night I go to a PEACE demonstration. It was small but the news was there and of course I was on the NEWS.   The next day, some teacher friends warned me that they had seen me on the news and to look out for the principal, a right winger religious zealot type.   I told them, knowing one of them would relay the message,“Bring it on.  I will go to CSEA, CEA and NEA.  I have a right to be a citizen.”  Never heard a word.  He retired that year. 8)

One more thing, in this long writing, in case anyone is reading it, this “experience, longevity” that the private sector so resents is important.  We all KNOW it has been used in the private sector to save money.  I know of 55 year olds who have been shoved out, NOT because they were inefficient or bad, but because they cost too much.   Balancing a budget by taking away jobs of long time employees is just, imo, immoral.  The assumption is that “old  are not as good as young” is being played in some places.  Where’s the proof?  In the private sector, seemingly there are little or no protection except an ageism lawsuit.  Costly and no guarantee.

With education, evaluation is not cut and dried.   The teacher I mentioned above, who would not handle E/L kids because she was so strict, so prone to anger, won awards. In the minds of s
ome in our society, a quiet, well disciplined, nose the grindstone, classroom is great.  I disagree.  I don’t like the “boot camp” mentality but some believe it is good for some kids.  On the other hand, some people assume if a classroom is noisy, or kids are not sitting in rows and on task at all times, there is no learning.  Not necessarily so.

I believe a great classroom is a combination of “sage on the stage” and “guide on the side.”  It is no easy task allowing students the freedom to think their own thoughts, disagree with the adults, be loud and have fun and accept that there is learning.  I believe it takes years for teachers to gain the confidence and the skills to do it well.   I had a gal come in from the university here to be my student teacher. As the process works, she had weeks of observing and building up to taking over the classroom on her own.  At the time, I had been doing an integrated unit using Voyage of the Mimi.  We studied whales, had learning centers and activities that included everything from math to science to reading to social studies to writing.  The study of Humpback whales was the enticement, but we learned, all of us including me, about so much.

One of my students wrote me years later to tell me he had become a marine biologist because of sixth grade.    Anyway, that kind of teaching requires a lot of up front organizing, and you must have command of the classroom without it showing at all.  My student teacher’s first day alone overwhelmed her.  After school she was almost in tears and told me, “You made it look so easy.”  I calmly told her it was, for me, because by then I had been teaching for nearly 20 years.  And that it would get easier for her.

So there is, imo, a problem with meritocracy for education  Teaching is more of an art than a science.  And it takes time to be a truly magnificent teacher.  I always had an intuitive talent for teaching, but I KNOW this. I was much better after 15 years than I was in the beginning.  

Also, no one way works for all teachers.  I could no more be a strict boot camp type than that other teacher could be me.  My best friend and teammate from another school, now deceased, was fantastic.  She was way funnier than I was (she was like a stand up comedian at times in teaching) and yet she was much stricter than I was. I believe both of us were good, and so did our students.  One size does not fit all with either students or teachers.  In fact, the difference in teachers (their style, their humor, or lack thereof, their diversity) are a plus for a diverse student population.  This is why, imo, meritocracy will not work well in education, and losing tenure will  leave a clear path to abusing the system and firing experienced teachers to save money.  

As long as we play the meritocracy game in things like public ed, public prisons, public services of any kind, abuse is inevitable.  Just look at the privatized juvenile prisons in PA.