It’s Everyone’s Job to be a “Job Creator”
I am tired of hearing about jobs programs and job creators. There is something in these terms that implies that there is a small, elite group of people who serve as the job creators, while everyone else prepares for and competes to work for these people and their jobs. In my opinion, that is a deeply flawed view of what makes the American economy great. America became great because everyone has the potential to be a job creator. What we are doing in our Tracy Learning Center (TLC) program is creating a new
generation of job creators, not just workers. But frequently, when I tell people about what a great impact the TLC program is having on its students, people look at just their academic performance numbers to validate my claim. Our students do very well academically, but that is only a small part of the overall impact of the program.
To use an analogy; life is like building a house. TLC provides an education that prepares the person to be able to build the whole house, and even be the developer who builds the community. A traditional school focuses only on teaching students how to drive a nail. Clearly our students will be able to drive a nail, and remarkably, they will do it very well. So, if getting a job means being able to drive a nail, we’re good. But we’re much more than good.
Students in our program are taught how to get a job. But they are also taught how to start a company. The career program includes a unit where they work in small teams and have to take an idea and build a business around it. In other courses, TLC students work in small teams solving problems. Tis model of learning ensures that they master the traditional academic content, but it also does much more than that. As a result of their team problem-solving approach, the students learn a broad assortment of high- performance skills such as teamwork, communications, problem-solving, researching, creativity, responsibility, reliability, innovation, planning, etc. Our program gives students the confidence and skills to create their own jobs, and potentially jobs for other as well. Every student coming out of school has to feel like he or she is a job creator, not just a worker. The TLC model does that very well.
On one of my trips to the school, I happened to be there on the same day that one of their graduates had chosen to return and thank the school for what it had done for him. He had transferred to the TLC as a high school student because he was having all kinds of problems in his old school – not just academically, but behaviorally and even problems with substance abuse (possibly including dealing drugs to other students). He had come back to the school that day to thank the teachers for not giving up on him and to tell the next generation of students to listen to the teachers because they care and they are right.
A couple of years earlier, he was coming to the end of his senior year and because he lacked the credits to earn a diploma was not going to graduate. As a result of the work with his teachers at the TLC, he realized how important getting the diploma was, so he asked for permission to spend another semester at the school to earn the diploma. Permission was granted, and he did earn it. He worked with the teachers and counselors, wrote letters, and got scholarships that allowed him to attend a local vocational school to learn the HVAC trades. He now has a job in the field, is seeking additional scholarships to further his education, and is already planning to start his own business. All of this success was directly related to the program and teachers at the TLC.
At the other end of the spectrum, I should also mention the story of the young female student who earned her associates degree at the local college while attending the TLC and then enrolled at UC Berkeley as a junior the fall following her high school graduation.
These are just two examples. If you take the time to sit down and talk with virtually any student at the school, you will hear some variation of these stories. The program teaches every student in some individual way. It gives them the knowledge and skills to be successful. But more importantly, it gives them the self-confidence to try.
Don’t We All Teach for America?
This is from my friend Dr. Bob Plants. We worked in Mississippi at Fairhaven , University of Mississippi on one hot summer workshop. 
Smithsonian Summer camp work
Viewpoint from Bob Plants.. Why TFA can work for many.. THe Screening Process
I used to work in graduate medical education. Anesthesiology to be exact. We had the controversy between Nurse Anesthetists and Anesthesiologists. CRNA’s were cheaper while MD’s were more expensive. But the general public never knew the difference. I’m not knocking CRNA’s but if people knew the difference, there would not be a controversy. CRNA’s are nothing more than technicians while Anesthesiologists are experts. Why do I make this disctinction, well Anesthesiologists have the depth and breadth of experiences, medical knowledge, and anesthesia training to be experts for any situation. CRNA’s have much less experience and/or depth of knowledge but good on technique and procedure. So in typical Surgical cases, it the CRNA who is supervised by the Anesthesiologist.
To me, Teach for American is sort of built on the same model. Participants are pitched into the teaching environment where they must learn on the fly. Some are really bright and actually put it together. TFA prides itself on the screening process. So in effect, schools are getting technicians not experts. Should I remind you who the patient’s are in this analogy. Do you want to take that chance in your childs future. Especially, when the only good thing out of Value Added assessment research suggests that a child’s success in school depends on the number of good teachers he/she has in successive grades. Do you want the technician over the expert? I don’t pretend to ignore the fact that Teacher Education programs and accreditation organizations are behind the curve on integrating what we now know about learning and pedagogy into their training programs. They are not perfect. But they are already shackled by the state agencies and TFA is not. So now schools and states see SFA as a cheaper alternative.
Goddard Space Center
Bob
Robert Plantsbplants@gmail.com662-202-2999
Planting the Seeds of Curiousity About History
Making History Real
Once when I was teaching a mother who came from a country I knew little about complained that the history we taught was boring and not interesting. So I had to change my teaching ways. There was before the Internet a woman named Hilda Taba.. and there was the National Geographic.
I lived in an historical town. Alexandria, Virginia.It’s George Washington’s town, with lots of colonial parts to it.
Did I make an interesting lesson from history with a project called “Turkey Run:
It was the first grant I ever won with the help of a fellow teacher, and parents.
See the Turkey Run
Judith Leibner ,Bonnie Bracey, Long Branch Elementary School, Arlington, Virginia
Subject: Social Studies ,Grade: 5
“Photography was an incentive for children to put stories together, to sequence learning activities and to make flow charts….Photographs enabled our students to share their experiences effectively.”
Purpose and Description of Project
A group of 55 fifth graders participated in a three-day living experience at a working 18th century farm as a follow-up to their study of Colonial history. The project was multidisciplinary in that it involved not only social studies concepts but also reading, research, language, writing, photography, and even handicraft skills. It was carefully designed to enable students to perceive the history study they had just completed in a larger framework.
Activities
After brainstorming about life in the 18th century and discussing photographs as a means of documenting the project, the students developed a checklist of field trips and activities. The girls sewed colonial costumes with the help of parent volunteers, and everyone helped cook several typical colonial foods at school to take to the farm. In social studies they examined the roles of men, women, and children, education, slavery, and religion in 18th century society, and compiled charts based on their research that showed how colonists met their basic needs for food, shelter, and clothing and the roles technology, values, customs, and religion played in their lives. In reading and language classes, they wrote compositions and researched the occupations of the times. Historical fiction and biographies gave students an even greater feeling for the period. Finally, students developed their photography skills to record the field trip and to provide photos to serve as the basis for original stories. Preliminary small-group field trips prepared the students for the three-day trip. During each of these short field trips, students recorded activities on film to share with the entire class.
Students participated in the logistical planning for the trip as they estimated the food that would be needed and planned the purchases. They also scheduled activities and chores for each student while at the farm. During the field trip, students role-played the lives of poor colonists as they slept on straw beds in linen tents, drew their own water, chopped wood, and cooked over an open pit. Workshops gave them the opportunity to make corn husk and dried apple dolls, baskets, wood carvings, and patchwork squares. They were even visited by the First Virginia Regiment, who talked to the students as if they were troops in Washington’s army that were just passing by, and an “indentured servant girl,” who sang songs and told stories. Each student kept a personal journal of the events as if he or she were a colonial child.
Back in the classroom, students wrote essays and poems which were combined with their drawings and photos into a magazine describing their Colonial living experience.
Materials, Resources, and Expenses
We felt the greatest resources, in addition to Turkey Run Farm and the various other museums and nature centers they visited, were the volunteers and paid professionals who shared their expertise with the students. Parents also helped plan the major trip, and six actually accompanied the group; others helped by supplying film, sewing costumes, and doing the necessary shopping. It was hard work but history that kids will never forgot.
Outcomes and Adaptability
The activities in this project required students to develop a variety of skills-research, scientific inquiry, expository writing, role playing, cooperation, organization, and photography. The overall project was successful in that it used all these factors to produce the desired result: students obtained greater insight into American history and culture and they developed a framework into which they could integrate the isolated facts and concepts they had learned as they studied the late 18th century.
The Colonial living experience provided excellent motivation, and photography in particular was an important incentive as well as an excellent means of sharing experiences.
We found that “for students who are “visual” learners, photographs provided a chance to gain greater understanding.” The teachers suggest that the project could be duplicated for other areas of social history. Longer living experiences could be provided, or even no living experiences if supplementary classroom experiences were offered. This was the first time I ever used a Mac. Project Based Learning Modules can help you create great teaching.
http://www.edutopia.org/teaching-module-pbl
Staunton , Virginia Farm
Alexandria and the Colonial Farm were Next
We studied the history of the town and had bell ringers, made candles, and learned to read sundials we learned to cook over the hearth, card wool, and drop spin. We hatched chickens and had a colonial set of gardents. We went to the Smithsonian and looked at what they said were GW’s teeth. We read a lot about when he died on the anniversary of his death and how some people think that the blood letting caused him to die. We attended a faux colonial funeral. We made colonial clothes. That is easy to do here. So many places to go , and see and learn about.
Your History/Your Story of Where?
I teach a lot of STEM ( science, technology , engineering and math) People may not know how to teach it so that it is interesting, but I have been trained by the National Geographic. We did participatory culture using Kidsnetwork.It was project based learning and we told about our area. People say , don’t forget the art, music etc. Please.. how can you teach these things without sharing the elements of culture. ( But after seeing a bale of cotton I will never mouth that song again!!)
We had to teach the other groups we were communicating with about our place. I was teaching in Arlington, Virginia. We were near a waterway called Four Mile Run. That started a real investigation by the class of the place, the area and what past, present and local history may be of interest to others.
When I was a child we only traveled the main highways because it was dangerous for minorities to travel the back roads. So when I began to teach, I had a lot of learning to do about my own state. I had some help from the National Geographic. I had a little bit of help from books. Then, when I was a child, the National Mall was my favorite place to go to learn about things.
I was not so interested in personal history. I knew about history that most people will never know. Growing up around Mount Vernon, I know my share of Colonial History. I have probably read every book about the Civil Wat that there is. We rode by the place of the Battle of the Wilderness, or Lee’s Retreat, and countiless other places from the war. Inquiring minds wanted to know. I found myself last year in the Confederate Cemetary with an Indian friend who acted as my guide. Never had I been in that part of Richmond.
Personal Journey- What Makes You Who You Are?
In coe class we make personal family maps.Truxton , Virginia was a place my dad took me it is where he grew up in Portsmouth.
TRUXTON DISTRICT, PORTSMOUTH
Rising from fields of waving corn, in the 1910s, Truxtun began as a village called U.S. Housing Project 150C, designed as a grand effort by the Virginia native, President Woodrow Wilson to house colored workers in a segregated, but caring manner so that they could work in the ship yards and be close to their work.. Named for Admiral Truxtun of the U.S. Navy, it was a model town that consisted of 250 houses, each having 5 rooms. All interiors were the same, while exteriors were built to have minor variations of their frame and brick foundation. Lot sizes were 28’ x 100’ for single homes. The Two-family type home had 40’ x 100’ lot. Each had a full indoor bathroom, electric lights and running water — uncommon amenities for most of the South. My grandmother had one of these houses.The houses had porches . The school had an auditorium.
I lived around the corner from the Lee Mansion. Sometimes they had tea. I did not know I was not supposed to go there, but I did for cookies and tea. In the summers, I had to go to Petersburg, Va and then spend a month on the farm. ( uch!) I used to crawl about on the family farm and find arrowheads. I know my cousins sold them. It was a long while before I found that there were Free Towns.. that is places that blacks and Indians could live and not have to worry people lived in sections in some towns.
Virginia Slave doll with furniture
Stauton Virginia, Early habitations
Shoes
Farmstead
We studied the tools of the farm, the engineering, the scientific process of raising crops, and pickling and canning, as well as weaving and spinning.
The National Geographic would come and I would inspect it first for the pictures, and then for the articles.
Reality …The Economic Divide, The Digital Divide, The Education Divide, The Technology Divide the Cultural Divide
This will be an essay about black children , because I am
sharing the information as shown in a column by
George F. Will. Substitute any minority here for
interesting comparisons and difficulties. I will post
more on these divides for all to see , for all children.
Sunday, August 29, 2010 George Will
For black children, daunting divides in
achievement and family life
“Various figures denote vexing social problems. They include 10,000 (the number of new baby boomers eligible for Social Security and Medicare every day), 10.2 percent (what the unemployment rate would be if 1.2 million discouraged workers had not recently stopped looking for jobs), $9.9 trillion (the Government Accountability Office calculation of the gap between the expected revenue and outlays for state and local governments during the next 50 years), $76.4 trillion (the GAO’s similar estimate of the federal government’s 75-year fiscal shortfall).”
“Remedies for these problems can at least be imagined. But America’s tragic number — tragic because it is difficult to conceive remedial policies — is 70 percent. This is the portion of African American children born to unmarried women. It may explain what puzzles Nathan Glazer.”
“Writing in the American Interest, Glazer, a sociology professor emeritus at Harvard, considers it a “paradox” that the election of Barack Obama “coincided with the almost complete disappearance from American public life of discussion of the black condition and what public policy might do to improve it.”
“The statistics are in the piece. Most of us who work in the urban and poor communities know the statistics, but the report that Will shares is more information than most have to insert into the current discussion on schools , children and community.”
The most important thing about this column is that it is a perspective that has been left out of the current discussion about who is to blame for the current state of knowledge for these children. Those of us who have worked up close and personally in the areas of need can tell stories about our work, but no one seems to be listening.
I have a friend who was scheduling me to teach in rural , and poor parts of the state. She created radio broadcasts and had flyers. We thought that the fact that my parents and relatives opened schools in those areas would serve to bring in some parents before school. But I forgot. I forgot that because of our legacy, we in the black community, in the poor black community tend to believe in the school and bring the student to it, thinking all the while that the school knows best what is for the child. It is a part of our old legacy, and probably a part of our culture. We believed in education when we did not have education.
My gtandmother saved every book that every child of hers had. I loved to go up into her stacks of books and magazines to search for something new to read and learn. I am sure she had a thousand books up there in that room. It was full of all kinds of books. That was in a time when the encyclopedia was king and not the Internet.If I told a kid today that I used to read the encyclopedia, he or she may say, what is that? What was that?
I came home from rural Virginia, burying a relative who sued the schools in Petersburg to demand that black children go to the city schools. I came home the back way through Amelia, down through Culpeper , Va. we passed at least 4 centers of incarceration. The place where dropouts go.
Will shares the new report from the Educational Testing Service, comes a report about “The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped,” written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley. It examines the “startling” fact that most of the progress in closing the gap in reading and mathematics occurred in the 1970s and ’80s. This means “progress generally halted for those born around the mid-1960s, a time when landmark legislative victories heralded an end to racial discrimination.”
Only 35 percent of black children live with two parents, which partly explains why, while only 24 percent of white eighth-graders watch four or more hours of television on an average day, 59 percent of their black peers do. (Privileged children waste their time on new social media and other very mixed blessings of computers and fancy phones.)
Will does not share the Achievement Trap. He may not know that piece of research from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.
Achievement Trap: How America is Failing 3.4 Million High-Achieving Students from Lower-Income Families
This report from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and Civic Enterprises suggests that the nation’s schools are failing not just low-achieving, poor students, but their high-achieving peers as well. The report calls for continuing the national goal of improving basic skills and ensuring minimal proficiency in reading and math among low-income students but says that there also must be a more concerted effort to promote high achievement within the same population. You know , innovation, encouragement of STEM and that kind of attention.
Capturing the attention of kids with science...
Capturing the imagination of the outer galaxies of the mind...
You wonder what happened to the kids who could. You wonder how many of them are in those centers of incarceration and why. Principals used to always give me the students that were considered trouble makers and wonder what I did! What did I do? I taught them, I loved them as children with curious minds and a desire to know. I grew up with a lot of boys, so I rarely had trouble. Lots of people dismiss black boys as being too loud, too active , and mobile. Worked for me. My dad taught vocational education, bricklaying, carpentry, electrical shop and he never had trouble either. I am told he had pretty strict rules.
The Economic Divide
There was a time when a person could live off the land. My family had a farm, raised tobacco and peanuts and truck garden products, but those days are numbered. The skills required in their lifespan have been replaced , and though there are some of us who have some gardens, the crops don’t sustain life, create summer in a jar for winter food, or sustain us , and create a bank deposit for funding for the rest of the year.
Television and the media bring so much into the home that we, cannot afford. If there is media.
Desegregation?
Studies of the effects of desegregation on achievement have concluded that it had a positiveeffect on Black students and no effect on White students.13 Grissmer and colleagues examined the regional patterns of desegregation over the period when the gap narrowed. Although the gap narrowingwas spread over all regions, the differences in the rate of desegregation by region were very large, so itis hard to see desegregation as an explanatory factor. However, the authors point out that the gains in both desegregation and achievement in the South, where the gains were the largest among the regions,The cultural divide is still another thing.
Of course, tracking ( segregation within a school still esists in some school systems. )
Bonnie Bracey Sutton
The song of September is of Schools
Here is an interesting post.
The longer I teach, the more I reflect on exactly how school is being done. Somewhere along the line, the focus of education and schools shifted the wrong direction. Schools and policy makers have become obsessed with curriculum, and assessments, and data, and money, and the latest tool for the classroom. Where is the obsession and passion for creating rich learning environments for every student? We live in a society where everything is individualized and personalized. We can get a burger made just the way we want it. We can get computers built to our exact specifications. We can personalize our cell phones with ring tones, wallpapers, and skins. And yet, in this world of customization, one thing that we fail to customize and personalize is education. Kids enter the classroom and are taught the same way day in and day out. They sit in seats, in rows, filling out worksheet after worksheet and then, they take a test. The programs that do allow students to do something different are being systematically cut due to budget difficulties (P.E., Art, Library, Music). Is it any wonder that when kids are asked what their favorite part of school is, they answer “lunch and recess”? What does this say about the state of our schools?
Maybe it says…
Effective Teachers? Effective Society? Maybe the President Really Does not Care about Teachers!!
Teachers may want to adopt and adapt their thoughts to this Michael Jackson lyric.
All I wanna say is thatThey don’t really care about us
All I wanna say is thatThey don’t really care about us
Tell me what has become of my rights
Am I invisible because you ignore me?
All I wanna say is that
They don’t really care about usAll I wanna say is thatThey don’t really care about us
This may be how teachers feel today in the US today.
It is late at night, and raining, the rain feels like all of the tears and angst that are caused by the latest onslaught of derisive press allegations against teachers in America.
We seem to have been weighed in the balance and found wanting, by the President of the United States and the Dept of Education.. I protest, but I know I am a little person.
I did not go to Harvard, MiT, or Brown. I am not elite enough to have been a member of Ted, Poptech, nor was I invited to Aspen.. none of the think tanks were within my economic reach. I do access their ideas using the technology. As the Convocation on the Gathering Storm, concluded the finger is being pointed at K-12 for the educational ills of America. I am also a minority. It is not my fault that I was educated as separate in unequal ways.
I have made the changes necessary at my own expense.
I protest.
Who am I to make a protest? Just an American taxpayer, a person who has invested in teaching for a lifetime, to find out that I am being made fun of and my work .. my lifetime of dedication to teaching is being treated as a joke.
I have worked and taught in a variety of schools, venues , worked nationally and internationally.
I know a lot about education.What I know is that education has to change. But I never thought that we who dedicated our lives to teaching would be savaged by the press , the pundits, and the President.
It hurts.
I have spent the summer in learning. First at the University of Colorado, then at the various conventions, ISTE, Teragrid, and in a new venture in education. Today I was learning at the National Research Council. In the trenches we know that there are problems in education. I have an interest in infusing high perfomance computing and computational thinking into curriculum, along with a very special interest in a new way of delivering curriculum which is probably not so different than that of some of the winners of the Race to the Top. I believe in Cloud Computing. I also have investigated and learnedabout ways to infuse serious gaming into education. Think Globaloria.
My Facebook friends share lots of information and ideas with me. I volunteer to makea difference.
I was a member of the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council. We createdthe vision of the use of technology in America. My tears of frustation helped to start us on the idea of E-Rate. Frustration was turned in to ideas that worked. Our vision was to create a common ground for all. Of course all of our vision was notenacted. We were unable to create a vehicle for broadband.
There are still people on the digital darkroad, and not many people have a passion these days for discussing the digital divide. Boring they say, don’ttell us the sad stories, we don’t want to hear them.
They say tell us something that can work.
The President has the money and power of government, to do that , to enact change with our funding. He has soft power, and hard power.then there is the power of government.
In teaching, we believe in the power of us. The power of us, is ideas, networks, dedication and persuasion. We collaborate, contribute, create educational communities of thought. But.,
We don’t have funding. just soft power.
Because I am not a tenured professor, I look to the leaders in education for their ideas. As a beginning teacher I worked with Chris Dede, and learned from Seymour Papert, and later moved on to work with the organizations that empower, embrace and energize teachers by giving them support, guidance and the right to innovate, and create new ways of learning.
Dr. Paul Resta comes to mind. He talks about the digital divide, the content divide,the economic divide, the technology infrastructure divide..the mobile divide and so on. We have so many divides and factors that create the divides.All of these factors change the learning experience for students.
Sometimes we do create miracles and we as teachers, as other mothers, and educational leaders,community supporters help a student in ways that few others can. But sometimes the task is too big and we fail.
Teachers are not responsible for the failure of the whole society.
There is a video, that speaks to the problems in education at some levels that may bewhat the President and his Dept. of Education are thinking about. We as teachers think about these problems too.
Take a look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&feature=user
We are now in a participatory culture. But the schools of education, have not changed so much. Many people have not noticed this. So the teachers who are coming out are stuck in the 20th century. We have to change this and we are all working to understand the changes needed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l72UFXqa8ZU&feature=related
The fundamental problem I see is that we who teach, are not a part of the conversation. Our ideas, our thoughts, our experience and knowledge have been dismissed. It is hard to be a part of the conversation if we are on the digital dark road.
We elected Barack Obama.
The idea of an agent of change, is what I thought I was.
We are disappointed that there is no collaboration, community of thought that is inclusive of teachers.
We are not to blame for all of society’s ills and the effects that filter down to students. But we are aware.
If you looked at the videos, you probably did remember that infrastructure, and priviledge are a problem. You may have noticed that there was not a great infusion of minorities in the videos.
With cloud computing, the government can change with world of education. But we as teachers want to be a part of the change sooner than later.
There used to be a small group of schools that were not KIPP schools that made stridesin the world with little or no funding from the Dept of Education. They were called parochial schools.
I went to one of those schools. Not very different than the KIPP schools. As effective as the KIPP schools.
What happened to them?
They were bought out and sold to charter schools.
It is interesting to have also have the experience of teaching in a charter school.
In Denver, a principal of a charter school lashed out at those of us in a grassroots initiative where we shared new ideas from ITEST, NSF and Supercomputing.
He made fun of those of us who are still trying to make change.
It hurt.
He said that the President and Arne Duncan had the same disdain for regular and ordinary teachers, but that they had to keep it under wraps.
Perhaps Race to the Top means that they don’t care about us.
Does the President, not care about us? That’s can’t be true
There has to be some misunderstanding.
Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Digital Equity Chair
SITE.org
Digital Equity Chair ISTE.org
( five years of that work)
Power of US Foundation
September Song.. Waiting for Superman, or Wonder Woman?
Different voices…Different ways of looking at the situation… More than Rhee for me and still I rise…..
While discussing the DC School situation and Michelle Rhee, this comment was aired.” Ignorance is a Kryptonite worse than many of the other evils we have. Perhaps Superman learned the complexities of saving a world that does not care about saving itself. Perhaps we are all Superman now. “
Perhaps Friedman should read “Superman, peace on earth” Friedman wrote a glowing , gushing column about Ms. Rhee. Holy Batman! No one expected the Dept of Education not to do something about DC schools. If help is needed anywhere it is in DC/ I taught at Anthony Bowen for three hard years.
Lots of teachers who have stood in harms way, for little or no money, for just the power of change and for the sake of children, must have had a strange feeling this beginning of school year and they have been pushed aside like so much trash. Most of the teachers in America have been asked to be Wonder Woman, a teacher, a social worker, a health semi professional. .. and then to be literate in many subjects, subject to the dictates of the school board, the state, the national politics and to serve well in the politics of the local school in which she serves. It was already a daunting task.
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance. Maya Angelou
The crickets are chirping , the asters are blooming, the children have been walked to school. Those teachers have been
victimized once by the culture of America with the separate but equal cinders and minority underserved, and now ..
weighed in the balance and found wanting because they are not of the elite.
There is no power that can turn all of the teachers of America to TFA ( Teach for America ) personnel.But the teachers in DC have been made the victims of change, as if they opposed it and were not able to learn, change or be a part of the future.Too bad that others had to notice. The balance of the voting in DC will hang on those actions. TFA is a current funded Race to the Top Initiative.
There are not enough TFA teachers to save Detroit, Cleveland, DC., name a place that needs inner city help and
compute the numbers. We have a crisis in America and we need all hands on deck. Superman, Wonder Woman, all heroes are welcome to help make the change that has to come in America. We need heroes in every community.
Take me out to the classroom... http://theconstantlinguist.org/2010/08/18/take-me-out-to-the-classroom/
It is rather depressing to think only the TFA people or the KIPP people have a program that works. They may be great models. But , is that all there is? I don’t think so.
There is soft power and there is hard power and then there is the power of us.
We all understand that the Dept of Education needs to get whatever they are going to model underway with only a few years left in this term and a possible 4 years more. There is a slow rate of change in education.They are trying to right the ship and have it sail on. Duncan is to be commended on trying to sail the ship NOW!
After slavery the women of the minority and majority populations joined with the women of the majority population to make a difference in education .Now is another time to make a difference. Teaching is , and has been in most states a profession staffed by women. Wonder women, who with the smallest of salary and the biggest heart, and passion, welcomed children to school.
Michelle Rhee is but one person and we in America need an army of people to help fuel the economy, to make change and to make a difference.. Here is a thought.
From Native American Elders
We are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For by Hopi Elders
You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour.
And there are things to be considered… Where are you living? What are you doing? What are your relationships? Are you in right relation? Where is your water? Know your garden.
It is time to speak your truth. Create your community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for your leader.
Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, “This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water. And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt.
The time of the one wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word ’struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. –Hopi Elders’ Prophecy, June 8, 2000
This may be the eleventh hour of America!!
Black Voices
Collaborate, communicate and create a new future. It Takes a Village!!
In the Black minority culture we are always running to catch up. When we do help, few notice it. Black women are taken for granted except in high places.Help is taken for granted because of the need. This may be the first time in history that the government almost actively pushes against minority women who teach , who did not matriculate at Harvard, Brown , Stanford or MIT. We have had to make our own ways to excellence. Those in charge and at the TOP may not know our stories, or care.
So we are also the ones we have been waiting for. Jenelle Leonard was a superwoman who helped me achieve. There were others too. It is not an easy job and thankfully we did it as a mission .Sister Mary Consilio, OSP. who Kipped before KIPP. The Oblate Sisters of Providence and other orders were strict. I think they were entitled in the ghetto, or poor areas, mission schools. Same mission as KIPP. Much cheaper delivery system.
As minorities we are used to being left out, not being picked and not being shown at having accomplished anything. especially in STEM, and in technology. Why so few? We are ignored. We are always running to catch up race to the top from the bottom, but when we get there the top has moved.
This article tells you the story of DC,Adrian Fenty, and Michelle Rhee. This is an important story, and you will understand why in subsequent posts.
Courtland Milloy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/search.html?st=Courtland+Milloy
“Fool a black woman once, shame on you. And that’s it. No fool me twice. She won’t hate you; she just won’t vote for you again.What black women wanted from Fenty in exchange for their support could not have been clearer to anyone who heard them speak at candidate forums, coffee klatches, neighborhood association meetings, church socials and the like.
Fix decrepit school buildings, update equipment and supplies, get disruptive students out of the classrooms and hallways and find some way to educate them, in spite of their self-destructive ways, someplace else.
And if there was any way to help those stressed-out, two-job-holding mothers to get more involved in their children’s education, they would appreciate it more than he could ever know. They didn’t ask him to start closing schools or to embark on a campaign of firing seasoned black teachers. And when he started taking credit for academic improvements that were already underway when he took office, they were too through with him.”
“I guess his head got too big, but I really don’t know what happened to him,” said Ethel Delaney Lee, 84, another disaffected Fenty supporter.Lee has an idea about what ought to happen to Fenty. And if enough black female voters feel the same way about him Sept. 14 as they do right now, it will.
That is a local story here that is creating a mirage in the country. We have no senator ( shadow that means no power we have an elected school board that handed its power over to the mayor. We have no input with the school system.The village is not being served.
Since Teachers are Rhee’s Victims, here is a national “expert”
On Outing Teachers by Test Scors Larry Cuban
Using Test Scores To Out Ineffective Teachers
When I served as superintendent for seven years in Arlington, Virginia, the school board evaluated me annually. Boards members and I designed the evaluation. We agreed upon the criteria and the multiple measures to be used in reaching conclusions about my performance as school chief. While the discussions were private, the school board released to the public their judgment of my performance and my salary for the coming year. Because I was a highly visible public employee, taxpayers provided the funds to operate the schools, and I participated in the design of the evaluation, I had no reservations about the process or making the results public.
I do have strong reservations, however, about the recent Los Angeles Times article analyzing English and math test scores between 2002-2009 for 6,000 district elementary school teachers who taught third through fifth graders. For those partisans who endorse policies that use student test scores as part of an annual evaluation of a teacher’s performance, the article was nectar. For opponents of such policies, and I include myself among opponents, the article was flammable material.
Yet both partisans and opponents (or bloggers who had not yet made up their minds) about value-added measures as a component for evaluating teachers agreed that releasing the names of the teachers and labeling them ineffective publicly was teacher-bashing, inducing twinges, at outing “bad” teachers.
My friend Gary Stager ( his opinion)
Enough of the magical thinking. Let’s say that Rhee is successful in solving the sudden epidemic of bad teachers.
Where does she think all of the magical good ones will come from? If she did find the magic teacher cabbage patch, I suspect that I would despise the teaching style of the instructionists she would them employ.
Duncan did such a swell job in Chicago that he has been given billions to replicate it across America.
THE QUESTION REMAINS – WOULD YOU SEND YOUR CHILD TO A KIPP ACADEMY, SEED OR D.C./CHICAGO SCHOOL USING A SCRIPTED CURRICULUM DELIVERED BY A TFA TEACHER?
My final word on this subject (I hope) is to share a predication I made about Rhee several years ago. Her career will skyrocket in direct proportion to the catastrophe she causes in D.C. Her speaking fee will be $50K/pop. The theme, even someone as incredibly clever as me, “The Great Michelle Rhee, can’t fix the damned public schools. Let’s shut them down.”
I’ve long known that Klein, Duncan, Vallas, Rhee are one-trick ponies (fire the teachers), merit pay, lots of standardized testing), I am however embarrassed that I voted for Obama. He will wreck the public schools in ways George W. Bush never dreamed of.
Pay your money, pick your choice. It is your money.
No matter which voice you are listening to, we have a problem. It will take US to change the problem. The power of US.
We must collaborate, communicate and create a community of thought to show the power of us.
Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Customized Education
Together, we will unleash America’s largest, unlimited, and virtually untapped
source of renewable energy….. The minds of all of our children!!!!
“Customizing education for every child will ensure that never again will our children’s hopes, futures, and dreams be determined by the color of their skin, their gender, the quality of their healthcare, the poverty in their home and/or community and last but far from least the teachers’ and students’ ability to withstand the frustration and boredom inherent in today’s public education systems.”
“There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” Victor Hugo – 1857
This is that idea and this is that time!!!
