Jon Schoening’s Educational Blog

Why do teachers do what we do for average to below average pay nationally with little respect for our profession and/or suppposed meager importance on the grand scheme of things in a capitalistic society such as our own?

We do not do it for money. We do not do it for presitge. We do not do it for glory.

Teachers live for the moments when the light bulb goes off in a student’s mind, when the underdog overcomes a challenge, or when we see our efforts inspire a student to achieve something for which they did not even seek out to achieve or believed they could. It is when a student smiles because they read their first word or their first chapter book. We do it for the students and the communities we have committed our lives to educate. We create possibilities, not profit margins. We have the power to create dreams as well as hope. We invest our time and energies in the future, not futures markets or speculation. We invest in people, not portfolios. That is what we do often without regard for our own needs or well being. It is often a thankless profession, because the return interest on our investment does not occur for decades to come. We may never see or hear the appreciation, but it is there in the hearts of all the students we have touched over the years.

In the educational arena today, educators are faced with the reality that their professional reputation and effectiveness as an educator will be measured by the gains that their students make on a standardized test. This is the direction that the pendulum has swung. The intent of these standardized tests is being misused to the detriment of students. Authentic teaching is being sacrificed to meet a political goal with a substandard measurement that attempts to lump all students into one category.

I am all for a movement that promotes teacher accountability, but this is not the way to do it. The standardized test should be a measure to identify areas that need improvement. This could mean curricular, possibly faculty, staff development, or areas that need more resources of training. Placing all the blame on a teacher using one test is a gross misuse of standardized test- a quick and dangerous pseudo solution to a serious problem.

Teachers are told that students must pass a test so that policy makers and administrators can pass the buck.

Parental Involvement in a school is imperative and we have read that it is a huge influence on the effectiveness of a school, but involving the entire community, that is something that bridges gaps of misunderstanding and mistrust.

Why can a school not be the center of community, a conduit for promoting activism, understanding, and pride? It can, but it takes a serious commitment by all staff involved. That is not something that a handful of teachers can accomplish on their own. At my school, we have teachers volunteer to put on community events after school, tutor on Saturday’s, and go out into the community to put on different events with our students. It is an amazing thing to see. They do it without asking to be compensated in anyway. They just do it because they have the opportunity to do so, administration sets that expectation (not a requirement), and everyone goes along because that is the norm at our school. I have never seen anything like it until I became a part of this staff three years ago.

It is a double-edged blessing because the more parents and the community are involved in your school the more scrutiny a teacher is going to receive. You just have to be a professional and back up what you do with research and experience. Involve parents in the problem solving process makes them a partner in what goes on in your class. I have found that some criticism I have received has been constructive and sometimes the criticism is not so constructive. Sometimes a parent is blowing off steam and venting frustrations. That is okay. I don’t take it personally. I would rather have someone inside the tent peeing outside than someone outside the tent peeing in.

The idea of getting the community involved in your school in any way possible is to break down walls, open lines of communication, and ultimately build bridges. Your community is going to make investments of some type somewhere, why not make it your school.

A school’s culture is influenced by many factors, many of which, actually mostly of which you have zero control over. The truth be told you have little power to control anything other than your perception and interaction within your school. Negativity and low expectations are a cancer among a staff of teachers. If you teach in a community that is living in poverty, there is nothing you can do about the income level of your students, but you can set high standards and give the students a sense of pride in their accomplishments and accolades. You have no control over what happened to Little Suzy before she got on the bus that morning, but you can control what happens when she gets to school. If the staff is not collaborating, then you need to provide the opportunity and make the invitation. If the atmosphere is toxic and negative, then you have the power to ignore such attitudes and become that beacon of joy and positive light. Inspire not only your students, but your peers as well. Don’t let circumstances outside your control steal your joy. Change can begin with one person’s vision and example.

The reflections and things that have been marinating in my mind since Gorki’s presentation on poverty and inequality have really hit home today. I received an email from a friend giving the details of SB 458 which has recently been passed by the Senate and is in the process of going through the Georgia House. It stipulates that students from a school system that has lost accreditation have to right to go to any school they wish including across county lines and private schools. The state will provide vouchers for the private schools and state money for the students that cross county lines. The state money only accounts for 48% of our budget. They are requiring accredited school systems to take on a serious burden of providing the other 52%.

We all know what school system is in danger of losing its accreditation. But why?  Clayton County, from what I hear, use to be a pretty good school system. What happened? What changed? An unequal distribution of resources? Low expectations? Bad leadership? How does a school system get off track so fast?

If we do not understand the problem, we can never figure out a solution. And so far the best solution our legislators have created is to allow families to cart their kids everyday across county lines to better performing schools and give those schools half the resources to educate that child. I hope this is not their only solution. Clayton County needs serious help. What can we do to help? We have all this new information and research in our heads. Let’s put it to use. I have been racking my brain all day, and I got nothing.  

One of the main reasons I wanted to get into this EdS. program was because we would learn how to critically evaluate programs of instruction and curriculum. In addition, I have learned a great deal about constructivist pedagogy, instructional evaluation, multiculturalism, research practices, and reflection. Using my newly polished educator lenses and my experience, I would have to say that Ruby is overgeneralizing a serious issue to quanitify something that can be packaged, easily understood, and sold. Her views on poverty are too simple. I have seen poverty with my own eyes that she describes in her vignettes, but I have seen some wealthy people act in the same manner that she describes as traits linked to poverty. There are deplorable character traits across all classes and all cultures. I have seen children abused by poor as well as wealthy parents. Drug abuse and sexual promiscuousness does not stop at 15K a year. Violence and a lack of respect of life does not start once you are put on welfare. Her views on poverty do not require any deep reflection or change in sociopolitical practice to correct the problem; all that is needed is teaching the poor to act middle-class, right.

Poverty is not a disease that needs a cure or a war that needs to be won; it is a group of people who have needs, not wants, that are not being met. They deserve respect and kindness, not generalizations and empty promises.

The reality is that some people find themselves living in poverty from their poor choices and others just from circumstances that are out of their control. That is the truth. You cannot lump them all together into one corner and fulfill all their needs in the same way. It is complicated and larger than Ruby Payne or Gorski. To make progress and a positive impact, we need serious people making serious policy changes on a national scale before things get better.

On the list of twenty steps to becoming a more equitable educator, I applaud the section on challenging one another as professionals to grow and mature. If we do not keep one another in check, we give away our power. We force ourselves to be regulated by textbook publishers, politicians, and others bent on keeping the status quo. I know educators do not like confrontation and typically want to keep the peace, but it is through conflict and struggle that we grow. All of us who have gone through this EdS program know what it means to grow from struggle. We need to create an atmosphere of professionalism that lends a forum for open discussion and challenge one another in all areas of our craft including multiculturism.

I kept thinking while reading this chapter how far we have come as teachers, but then also how far we have not. There are still teachers in my school who write students’ names on the board and give check marks. My teachers did that to me in grade school; the sting of the embarrassment and humiliation never really leaves. I am still guilty of using positive and negative reinforcement on my students, but I am trying to emply more constructivist methods in my routine.

I think I have a strong community of learners because we do a great deal of partnership and small group learning which in turn implies and forces the students to take a great deal of responsibility for their learning. I love the idea of the circle time to discuss issues in the class and allowing the students to talk things out; I have done this on a small scale with little squabbles between a few students but never a whole class. I embrace the idea of students taking on the responsibility of behavior, but there is the catch. This seems strangely similar to the phonics vs. whole language debates: behaviorist vs. constructivist behavior management. I think you must employ a little of both.

I think their should be some level of respect for authority in the classroom- a teacher does not have to act like the only moral authority in the class, but at least give the impression as having good morals, judgement, and makes good and fair decisions. Children have to know that someone in the class is in control. They have to know that when something is going on in the classroom that is inappropriate that someone there has the authority to put a stop to it quickly and effectively. There is a level of trust that your teacher has everything under control. You can’t wait for a circle time for every squabble, interruption, outburst, or insult. Pre-teachers should be given both points of view and practice both philosophies.

Whole language vs. Phonics (ding-ding), that was a mess. I remember as an undergraduate having a professor strongly pushing whole-language instruction. I also remember receiving whole-language instruction in school. It was a just as big a struggle to understand in the second grade why we did reading the way we did as it was as a Junior in college. There is so much data out there that promotes a blending of the two philosophies; the whole argument kind of reminds me of the Budweiser’s commercial- taste great, less filling! Where is the problem? Do both.

I think the reading instruction has improved since I was in school; I truly see kids reading more, having more opportunities to read, and having more reading materials to read. I recall in elementary school if you had a book late you got a late fee of a dime a week or something like that; and if you could not pay the money, you could not check out a book. Needless to say, I didn’t spend much time in our school library checking out books.

The standards, communities, and society may change, but our philosophies, if grounded in truly rigorous and substantiated research, should not.

At first, I thought Ken Goodman might have been one of those conspiracy theorist/ anti-government whack jobs; but upon further reflection, some of those dots he is attempting to connect do fit together. It is clear that publishers have a lot of voice in Washington; they have a larger voice than do teachers. If a genuinely good program of reading instruction is invented, the federal government could create a statistical standardized test that shows the program is not cutting the mustard. They can use their data to show that the reading programs of big publishing companies will fill in the gaps and create standards that are favorable to the publishing companies’ philosophies on reading. Why? The experts, teachers and professors, lack a loud enough voice and/or money to line to pockets of policy makers. It is how the game is played. Publishing companies know how to play the game, and ultimately the students lose, the teachers lose credibility and respect. 

Continue to follow the dots and a pattern emerges illustrating a disturbing future in education. It is the policymakers of our country that will tie one arm behind teachers backs and place tape over their mouth to muffle their calls for common sense. And ultimately when their policies fail, we will get all the blame; the buck will stop with us. And the policymaker will be absolved and pass legislation to increase accountability for teachers and lessen the accountability for policymakers because they will control the standards, the purse strings, and have the strongest voice and influence. Oh, wait. That already happened. (Expletive)

To change this course, we as teachers must find our voice and stand together in our pedagogical and philosophical stances firmly and not waver.