Shameful blog from Teach for America

As I came out of my summer social media hibernation, I came across a Teach for America blog post titled Changing Conversations For Unhoused Students. Actually, it wasn't the title that got my attention. It was this excerpt from a tweet:

What if our schools could see the trying time of homelessness as an asset of experience and knowledge that a child brings to school?

Here are 3 thoughts:

1. This attitude can only come from a position of privilege. If being homeless is such an asset, then Teach For America will waste no time making homelessness a part of their 5 week training program. Of course this is almost as absurd as spinning homelessness as an asset.

People who like to say "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" need to remember that lemonade requires a lot of sugar and sugar is expensive. They also need to remember that it's easier to pull up your socks when you own socks.

Homeless people don't sit around talking about how being homeless is an asset. The only people who can afford to to talk like this are those who have a home with a twisted view of the world.

2. Words reveal agendas. Used cars are also pre-owned but they are only called pre-owned by those who have an agenda -- people who have a car that they don't want anymore have a used car -- those who want to sell you that car, call it pre-owned. Only those with an agenda re-label used to pre-owned, homeless to unhoused and hungry to food insecure.

3. When bad things happen to children, they are not assets to be romanticized -- they are problems to be solved. I'm all for rethinking problems and changing the conversation when that means we solve old problems with new solutions, but we should all object when rethinking problems and changing the conversation become code for seeing problems as assets that we don't need to fix.

Here's what I mean:

I taught four years in a children's inpatient psychiatric assessment unit where students were admitted by a psychiatrist for many unfortunate reasons.Too many of these children had very bad things happen to them -- some had no parents, some were sexually abused and some were psychotic (these are just three examples).

Can you imagine changing the conversation and asking how being sexually abused or psychotic could be seen as an asset for a child?

Neither can I.

Being sexually abused, psychotic or homeless are problems to be solved. Spinning these awful things as assets is an abdication of our responsibility to make things more equitable for children. These children don't need spin (and they don't need grit) -- they need their basic needs met.

New York principal Carol Burris gets the last word on all this:

Shameful. Work to fight homelessness, not celebrate it.

Eliminate tenure and it gets a little chilly at school

This was written by Tamar Wyschogrod who is a mother, writer, journalist who is from New York but now lives in New Jersey. Tamar blogs here. This post was originally found here.

by Tamar Wyschogrod

Without tenure, every teacher is the pawn and puppet of whoever happens to be the most powerful person in the building today. Without tenure, anybody can shoulder his way into the classroom and declare, ‘You're going to do things my way, or else.’

That’s from the wonderful blog Curmudgucation, written by Peter Greene [if you’re appalled by the attacks on public education that pass for reform these days, you really should follow his blog]. His point is that tenure gives teachers the freedom to do their jobs right, without the threat of dismissal hanging over their heads.

This reminded me of an incident related to me by a math teacher I know. I’m sharing it because I think it illustrates perfectly how tenure’s guarantee of due process empowers good teachers to do the right thing.

The state of New Jersey had recently introduced a required algebra test, and the administration in our district hadn’t been very pleased with the results. So they decided to bring a consultant into the high school to make recommendations on boosting the test scores. The thing is, many students don’t take algebra in high school, where it’s a ninth-grade course. Some take it in middle school. In fact, in our district, many students take algebra in eighth grade, and a smaller number in seventh.

So the consultant came in, did his thing, and presented his recommendations to the high school. But the district, presumably in an effort to get its money’s worth out of this consultant, decided that his recommendations should be adopted in the middle school as well. So the fellow was duly trotted out at a meeting of the middle school math faculty, where he proceeded to repeat his dog and pony show.

The thing is, there’s one obvious difference between teaching algebra in high school and teaching it in middle school. Generally, kids taking algebra in ninth grade are not the strongest math students; kids taking it in middle school are. This math teacher, who’d been teaching the middle school’s top math students for years, was appalled by the recommendations being offered. It was obvious to a teacher with a wealth of experience that the methods being proposed would be a real turn-off to strong math students who learn the subject more quickly and easily.

So the teacher spoke up and forcefully challenged the recommendations – persuasively enough so that they were not adopted in the middle school.

“Good thing I have tenure,” the teacher added as the story drew to a close. “I would never have spoken up otherwise.”

This little tale is the perfect illustration of tenure’s role in the delicate public school ecosystem. On one side, you have an administration that’s understandably concerned with the results on a state-mandated test. They decide to throw some money at the problem in the form of a paid outside consultant, who may or may not have some great ideas on improving algebra performance in high school. But once the decision has been made to spend money, the administrators seek to maximize the return on their dollar, as administrators are wont to do. They assume that they’ve purchased a one-size-fits-all solution, and the more widely it’s implemented, the greater their test-points-per-dollar return on investment. After all, algebra is algebra, right?

Enter the classroom teacher, who has taught algebra to enough different groups of students to realize that, while algebra is algebra, not every student learns algebra the same way. The solution being imposed from on high is not one-size-fits-all and will be a disaster in the honors and accelerated math classrooms at the middle school, into which kids have been placed precisely because they are adept math learners.

With tenure, that teacher can take a chance. Pushing back on administrators is risky business, after all. It’s not easy to tell the boss he’s wrong. But with the knowledge that respectful dissent cannot be a firing offense – because of tenure – the teacher can go out on a limb, challenge the powers that be, and make the case against adopting a pedagogical strategy doomed to fail.

But without tenure, the teacher sitting in the back of the room at that meeting has to wonder: “Is it worth risking my job to fight this? Clearly, the principal and superintendent are already convinced that this is the way to go. If they wanted the teachers’ opinions, they would have asked us. Maybe I can change their minds. But what if I can’t? What if my opposition is taken as insubordination? Do I really want to take that chance?”

That’s the chilling effect of job insecurity. Without tenure, the voice of the experienced teacher is muffled; kids lose out.

The obvious objection is going to be, “But that’s how it works everywhere else. In most workplaces, people don’t have a guarantee of a high level of due process. Why should schools be any different?”

The answer, of course, is that not all jobs are created equal. If your business makes widgets, and some consultant recommends a stupid change to the process, the chilling effect will at worst result in the business’s diminished profitability. So what? If the company chooses to keep in management someone who takes bad advice and creates a climate where employees are afraid to speak up, so be it. If they eventually go out of business because of their unresponsive management style, someone else will make widgets.

But – let’s say it all together, now – children are not widgets. We can't just flush this batch and hope to do better with the next one. For their sake, the bar must be set higher. Tenure is part of the checks-and-balances system that allows teachers in the classrooms to be assertive advocates for good pedagogical practices. It’s no guarantee – and yes, tenure might sometimes serve as an obstacle [though not an insurmountable one] to dismissing a bad teacher. But tenure can be modified to streamline the dismissal process for the small percentage of bad teachers. Abolishing tenure outright, on the other hand, would silence all teachers.

Jeff Johnson strengthens cynicism and weakens democracy

Two months ago,  I wrote a post that detailed 9 reasons why Education Minister Jeff Johnson has failed Albertans.

When I tweeted that post again today, a teacher asked, "You could only come up with 9?"

So here's one more:

1. In her Edmonton Journal column, Paula Simons quoted Johnson:

"School boards serve at the pleasure of the minister."

And here I thought school boards serve the public.

Silly me.

There's so much wrong with Johnson's take on school boards that it's hard to know where to start -- but here goes:

Albertans are suppose to live in a democracy where many different layers of elected government exist. Some of our government is more local than others. Municipal elections, which include school board trustees, are no less or no more important than provincial or federal elections.

There are lots of good reasons to have provincial and federally elected politicians -- enslaving or eliminating local government is not one of them.

One of my education heroes Deborah Meier once wrote that, "every time we respond to our distrust by wiping out institutions close to ordinary citizens in favour of more distant authorities, we strengthen cynicism and weaken democracy itself.”

Every politician has a legacy.

As Alberta's Education Minister, Jeff Johnson has strengthened cynicism and weakened democracy.

Prentice slams Johnson's Task Force

Jim Prentice is running for the Progressive Conservative leadership, but he sounded more like the opposition when he slammed Jeff Johnson's Task Force this morning.

Karen Kleiss with the Edmonton Journal writes:

In a bare-knuckled speech early Thursday morning, Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Jim Prentice said the shortage of schools in Alberta is “nearing crisis proportions” and pledged to build up to 50 more — in addition to the existing promise to build 50 and modernize 70 more. 

He pummeled the “so-called Task Force for Teaching Excellence,” saying he has spoken with hundreds of parents in the past month and he has “yet to meet even one who is preoccupied with changing how teachers are evaluated or disciplined.” 

He promised to work “in a respectful way” with teachers and their union, the Alberta Teachers’ Association, and said he will work with parents and educators to patiently determine what changes need to be made to Alberta’s curriculum.

In September 2013, I wrote a post that outlined 3 potential problems with Johnson's Task Force. Here is the first problem:

If I was Jeff Johnson and the Alberta Government, I may want to distract the public from funding cuts in public education by creating a task force that focuses on teacher quality. For this school year, the Alberta Government cut school board budgets by $14.5 million even though 11,000 new students entered Alberta's schools. This will lead to all sorts of problems for teachers' working conditions including larger class sizes.

Prentice's comments from this morning are pretty similar in theme:

“As an Albertan, as a grandparent, as a candidate for Premier — I am disappointed,” Prentice said. “I am disappointed that children are in our province are not receiving the very best education in Canada. 

“I am especially disappointed that so many of them spent the past school year in makeshift classrooms. This can’t be allowed to continue. And if I become leader, it won’t.”

It sure looks to me like Prentice sees Jeff Johnson's Task Force for what it truly is -- a giant distraction from predictable and sustainable funding.

To be clear, if the 2012 Progressive Conservatives couldn't make good on building 50 new schools before 2016, I have zero confidence that Prentice's 2016 Conservatives can build 100.

It's not that I think Prentice is lying -- I believe that he wants to build more schools, but I don't think the PC's will let him.

Teaching can be stressful -- children's lives are at stake

This was written by Jim Parsons who is a professor at the University of Alberta. This was written as the Forward for the Alberta Teachers' Association's research update Reflections on Teaching: Teacher Efficacy and the Professional Capital of Alberta Teachers.

by Jim Parsons

I have been a teacher my entire life. I am proud to be a teacher and have often written about the fundamental nobility of the profession. That teachers engage children in loco parentis—acting with agency in the classroom to protect and help children build futures—suggests the power that society has granted teachers. Society believes that teachers are crucial. I agree. But, more important, teachers agree. Most teachers take up their work as a calling.

My experience has shown me, over and over, that teaching is not an easy profession. Rewarding? Yes! Easy? Well, not so much. Sometimes teachers feel overwhelmed by the work and the pressures of the job. These pressures force almost daily choices: Work or rest? Students or family? Self or others? Making these choices would be easy if teachers didn’t care, but, fortunately for everyone, they do care. Teachers are acting parents of the children they teach. Most teachers believe that they make a difference and are willing to do whatever it takes to make that difference. Some days teachers feel that they are living through the 1998 Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come in which the main character travels through hell to find and save his wife. It is probably not too over-the-top to suggest that teachers are willing to travel that same road with children. The research that follows makes that case clearly.

Yes, teaching can be that stressful. Children’s lives are at stake.

I am not making this up. Psychotherapist Carl Jung might well have had teachers in mind when he proposed the archetype of the wounded healer. Jung believed that, in relating to patients, an analyst can take on their pain, a phenomenon that can be both positive and negative. I know that this experience is part of the psyche of teachers. Teachers take on students’ wounds to gain the blessing: student learning. In his book The Wounded Healer, Catholic priest Henri Nouwen counselled men and women interested in serving their communities to begin by realizing that being wounded is a common human experience. Nouwen’s analysis—a suffering world, a suffering child and a suffering teacher—opens those who serve to being caring professionals. 

The research that follows offers a clear picture of how difficult teaching is and how radically the choices that teachers make can weigh on their bodies, minds and hearts. The following report is the collective story of almost 140 teachers: more than 90 from a large urban high school and just under 50 from all over Alberta. All volunteered to participate in this study, which asked them to identify high and low points in the year with respect to both their professional practice and their personal lives. Ultimately, data are the stories the research participants tell. 

Participants’ responses are stories about the work lives of teachers. These personal and professional stories highlight the collective difficulties and joys of their work—the highs and lows. They also help us understand the immensely difficult choices that teachers must make as they carry out their work. They are at once teaching their students and trying to survive. The data outline the shortcomings of their work, their own inabilities and their feelings about their successes and failures.

Teachers live in an environment that is constantly shifting: Will they have a job next year? Will the curriculum be redesigned or will their class size change just when they are becoming comfortable with the way things are? Will their colleagues be transferred? Will their school culture change? Knowing that they are not superheroes, will their energy wane? Will they receive support for their work? What might this support look like?

What follows is a report by teachers about what makes their job both difficult and rewarding. The findings from this study about the support that Alberta teachers need mirrors what researchers in

other places are reporting. Specifically, teachers in this study find great support in their colleagues and wish that they had more opportunities for collaboration. My own recent research on this topic (Exploring the Development of Teacher Efficacy Through Professional Learning Experiences, carried out with the assistance of Larry Beauchamp, Rob Klassen, Tracy Durksen and Leah Taylor) pointed to the same conclusion: teachers attain the highest level of professional growth by collaborating with colleagues.

Finally, this study offers a methodology for capturing teachers’ stories and insights. Any research study is more than data and findings; it is also about engaging with participants. In this study, teachers discuss their highs and lows and their ability to achieve a work–life balance. In this regard, the methodology is quite ingenious, for it encourages teachers to talk together about their own and their colleagues’ work lives. The study itself, in other words, is an instance of the kind of collaboration and community reflection that teachers find so powerful.

I have no doubt that the teachers and the school leaders who participated in this study know far more about themselves and their colleagues than they did when they began. I also believe that they have a clearer idea of what they might do to meet their own needs so that they have a better chance of fulfilling the needs of their students. I suggest that people interested in teachers’ work lives and in building the professional capital of teachers use the methodology described here as a year-end reflection activity.