Topic: Serious teacher reflection
 
My principal, who is somewhat of a visionary given today’s principals, puts up quotes every morning for the staff fto read.  This was this morning’s quote:

“I am entirely certain that
twenty years from now we will look back at
education as it is practiced in most schools
today and wonder that we could have
tolerated anything so primitive.” John Gardner

I smiled when I read this, because this thinking is what brought me into teaching in the first place.  For years as a student, I felt as though my own education was primitive, stifling to my creativity, and failing to engage me.  The reality I now face, is the challenge of bringing the highest educational ideals into the classroom.  I recently discovered a book written by a first year NYC Teaching Fellow, named Dan Brown, (The Great Expecations School), and I discovered an interview with him and educator/writer Jonathan Kozol on NPR.  Listening to the two of them speak, I recognized in their voices some of the struggles I am experiencing now.  I am like 1000s of other teachers, energetic and idealistic about education.  But, I am also faced with the same reality that they face, that drive 50% of new teachers out of the profession in the first 3 years.  And it’s not so much the challenges of student behavior, or clerical work, or lesson planning, although it is in part all of these.  But what is in my mind the biggest challenge, is the culture and community in which I work.  Few and far between are teachers like one mentioned in the interview, a teacher named Francesca, who brought in her elite education into an underprivilaged 1st grade classroom, and raised test scores by focussing her teaching not on the tests, but on her students learning and development.  And it’s not because of lack of effort or philosophy, but rather a lack of culture to bring out what many teachers surely hold as a true belief in what education can be.

I’ve been tinkering at the margins this year, trying to inspire my colleagues about the potential of our curriculum to spark real changes in our students’ minds, attitudes, and behaviors.  But my energy hasn’t caught on, and I’m beginning to witness this year sliding away, and it’s only October.  How can I be tolerating something so primitive in my very own classroom?  I wish it weren’t so, but I know that it begins not with students’ attitudes changing, but by teachers.  More than anything, what I’ve learned this year from teaching, is the necessity of linking myself to people who can support me in developing truly progressive teaching, and in doing so can help me to bring together others teachers in this same mission. 

I’m not quite sure how tomorrow is going to turn out, but I need to re-discover that commitment to bringing the best education possible to my students, despite that overwhelming challenge that is planning, assessment, and classroom management.  I’ve learned that I’m not perfect, and there won’t be any movies made of me as a heroic new-teacher.  But, I hope to be in this thing for 20 years, as a teacher or otherwise, and I’m hopeful that my experiences today will be history lesson for tomorrow.

Topic: 6 weeks in

I’m about 6-weeks into my 2nd year of teaching, and there’s a lot to say.  I have so much to learn, but what’s absolutely killing me is curriculum.  My school is unique in that they give teachers a great deal of autonomy to create curriculum.  The problem is, to do this succefully a lot has to be done in the summer.  There is simply not enough time to synthesize the various standards, teachers manuals, internet materials, and other resources, to develop the type of curriculum that an open-curriculum school such as mine ought to have. 

I am putting a lot on my shoulder this year.  I am in a unique position where I can implement a lot of the ideas that I’ve developed about education of the last few years, but am also burdened by being new, by having a lot of theory and practical pedagogy to learn, and by not having the time to sit down with other teachers to put together this curriculum.

Topic: Thoughts on “communism,”

I know very little about communism, or communist countries.  But a comment was made about something that happened in my classroom involving group rewards.  My co-teacher and I had donuts for our students, and were planning to give them out if the whole group was well behaved one afternoon.  They weren’t, and the issue came up whether or not we should give donuts to the few students who did do the right thing.  My philosophy is that in this situation, nobody deserved the donuts, but a colleague of mind responded, “That’s communist.”  She went on to say, “How is it fair to penalize those who are doing the right thing, because some people are making bad decisions.” 

My roommate and I were further discussing this point.  Isn’t this like saying, “Why should the government take my money, and pay for people who are making bad decision in their lives?”  But the argument I saw, was, it is our responsibility, as a community, to help each other.  And if people disagree, then that just further shows that we live in an everyone for themselves society.  My classroom might only be my small attempt to create a utopian society, but it does ask the question of what is the best way for a community of people to live?

The conversation continued about how communist countries restrict freedom of speech.  “How could they possibly restrict people from doing a google search on democracy?” I wondered.  I couldn’t imagine having people policing my thoughts, and my words.  But there was a small piece of logic I saw.  If your goal is to build a community, then you need to weed out those who are interested in the idea of an individual society.  But I don’t believe in a coerced community.  For community to work, just like democracy, there needs to be an effort from the bottom up.  In my classroom, I support both democratic education, giving my students voice, and community building, creating a sense of team.

What do you think?

Topic: Activism

Here’s a brilliant quote by Thomas Freedman in today’s NYT:

“Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking
people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms.
Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters
speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or
the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that — virtual.”

I’m being an activist in my own small way.  In 5 years, if I stay at my school, I think I can help transform an underperforming inner-city school, into a positive learning community, with minimal discipline problems despite students who live in a community where there are sometimes gaps in role models for positive behaviors, and where students are engaged in serious learning.

Part of the struggle of my 2nd year has to do with curriculum development.  With only a vague picture of what each month looks like, and no textbook to guide me or my grade team, we’re essentially left to build a curriculum from scratch.  A wonderful opportunity, but also a terrible burden, given our time constraints.  Clearly, to be successful, a great deal of planning needs to occur the summer before.

Currently, we are having students practice summarizing skills in reading, learning how to write surveys in writing, learning how to identify fractional parts and add fractions in math, and exploring the ideas of community, conflict, and co-existence in social studies.  In the next month, our social studies unit will shift to Chistopher Columbus and the effects of his expedition to the New World, as well as learning more reading comprehension skills, writing memoirs, and learning about fractions, decimals, and percents.  All the while incorporating a philosophy of character development into the daily activities.

It’s a challenge, but a fun one.  The kids are great, but I forgot how chatty and pre-occupied 10year olds can be.  There is so much for me to learn about their behaviors and personalities, along with their cognitive abilities, their content knowledge, and their academic interests.

But, as Thomas Freedman pointed out, “America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be
in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to
light a fire under the country.”  Now I just need to get myself networked.

Topic: Conservative politics, Barack Obama, and my little school in Brooklyn

I just read an article by Paul Krugman, describing an interesting phenomenon involving George Bush. 

Mark Crispin Miller, the author of “The Bush Dyslexicon,” once made
a striking observation: all of the famous Bush malapropisms — “I know
how hard it is for you to put food on your family,” and so on — have
involved occasions when Mr. Bush was trying to sound caring and
compassionate.

By contrast, Mr. Bush is articulate and even
grammatical when he talks about punishing people; that’s when he’s
speaking from the heart. The only animation Mr. Bush showed during the
flooding of New Orleans was when he declared “zero tolerance of people
breaking the law,” even those breaking into abandoned stores in search
of the food and water they weren’t getting from his administration.

The article itself was mostly about the mentality of conservative leaders, both in government and the media.  Krugman discussed how Reagan once remarked that if there were 17million hungry people in America, they were those who were on a diet.  Bush once remarked that there is no health insurance problem in this country, “You just go to an emergency room.”  And Rush Limbaugh remarked on a Michael J. Fox commercial about stem-cell research, “In this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He
is moving all around and shaking. And it’s purely an act.”  Just the other week, Bill O’Reily made a comment about how surprised he was to discover a famous black restraurant, was actually a civilized place.

These comments reveal the sad truth that our society is influenced largely by the ignorant, and the spiteful.  I had an opportunity to hear Barak Obama speak in NYC the other week, and it was the first time in my life that politics seemed relevant.  Here was a person who generally gets is, who was able to reach that part of me that has been wondering, “Why isn’t there a single person in politics who is inspiring in some way?”  I specifically like how he shared a personal story of his mother, who died of cancer, and on her death bed was worried about paying her bills.  I like how he is one of the few candidates who had the foresight to criticize the Iraq war before it began.  I like how he announed he doesn’t wear an American flag pin, to make the point that patriotism in America has been turned into a farce, and that he wants to shift the conversation towards rationality.

On another note, I am in the 5th week of my 2nd year of teaching, and my thoughts are brewing on the subject of education.  As I’ve written before, I believe change in education must be a bottom-up type of change.  This is certainly true in my school, where so many teachers criticize those above us, when the truth is we weild an incredible amount of power with whatever we bring to our students each day.  Certainly, 40-50 teachers should have as much of an effect on a school, as 4-5 administrators.  What I’ve noticed, is that many teachers have gone through their entire teaching careers lacking a leader, whether an administrator, or a teacher, who has inspired them to see the potential in education.  I hope that in time, I can role model what I hope to see in teaching, and can unite with my colleagues to truly revolutionize education in a low-income school in Brooklyn.