Yeah, he’s not the right guy for the job.

Re: Teachers at the recent rally supporting the Governor's 6.25% funding request for education:

"It reminded me of when my kid was 3 years old and they started crying on Christmas morning because he didn't get one more thing."

Who said that?

Gayle Ruzicka?

 

 

Sen. Howard Stephenson?

 

Paul Mero of the Sutherland Institute?

 

No.

It was Brad Smith - the new Superintendent of the Utah State Board of Education. The guy who is supposed to be doing everything he can to improve education for the students of Utah. The guy who is supposed to be fighting to give me the tools to properly teach my students. The guy who should have some respect and appreciation for the people who he is crafting policy for.

Dude, you need to read the book “How to make friends and influence people.”

An evening at the Capitol Building

“A picture is worth a thousand words” so here’s about 27,000 words, plus just a few I need to add.

The rally was great.  The Capitol Rotunda was packed and there were people lined up two deep all along the second floor, and most of the third, and people were still showing up as the rest of us started to leave.  The energy was amazing.  Now, on to the pictures including a bunch of the better hand-made posters.

Now, we get to see if it did any good.

Another Rally at the Capitol

For anyone who is worried about the state of Public Education in this state, and the valiant effort our Legislators are putting for at dismantling it,

There will be a Pro-Education Rally at the state Capitol next Monday (March 9th).

Sponsored by the Utah Parent-Teacher Association and the Teacher's Union (UEA)

Everyone who is concerned about the fate of Public Education in Utah is encouraged to join us up there on 

Monday, March 9th at 5:30 pm in the Capitol Rotunda.

Plan on getting there early and parking far away - or take TRAX downtown and then just walk up the hill.  I've been to several rallies at the Capitol and they can be very interesting and amusing, and:

The more people that show up the more the Legislators will understand that the bullshit they are pulling on Public Education will not be tolerated.

Please be there if at all possible.

More details from the UEA email can be seen HERE.

Some guy’s view on education.

I don’t know who Don Gale is*, but as I read his commentary in the Tribune today (Let’s not reduce education to mere data transfer) I saw him echoing something that I have felt for years.

“The CEO of Yahoo ordered employees to come into the office rather than work from home via computers, not because they can't do their work at home but because they work more productively and more creatively when they interact with others in the hallways and at the company cafeteria.

All of us, beginning with state legislators, must realize that information transfer is not the only purpose of education. In fact, it is probably a secondary function. The primary purposes are social. We throw young people into classrooms so they might begin to sense from classmates and teachers the importance of education . . . so they might be exposed to different disciplines . . . so they might see the value of multiple viewpoints . . . so they might learn to appreciate those different from themselves.

The highlighted part is what I’ve been saying for years, the rest is there to keep it in context and because I liked the Yahoo story.

High School drop-outs are created long before high school.  I’ve seen this many times in my middle school classes and thought that if we, as middle school teachers could just get them to see the importance of education, and maybe even encourage a desire in them to learn anything, they would be more likely to stay in school.  A lot of times this is where all the extracurricular subjects and activities that are getting thrown by the wayside by the hyper-emphasis on the core subjects come into play.  For a lot of students, these activities are what make them happy to come to school.

Even in the core subjects, the micromanaging and over-testing make it harder and harder for me to find the time to help students see the beauty in mathematics, to learn to like the challenge and satisfaction of figuring things out on their own.

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* The Tribune describes him as “a long time fan of computers, books, education, newspapers and wisdom.”

More proof?

Want more proof that the powers that be in the Utah Legislature are trying to ruin public education and get (more of) that money into the pockets of their cronies?

HB-197

11          This bill:
12          ▸     requires the State Board of Education to make certain rules regarding administrative
13     or supervisory licensing; and
14          ▸     makes technical changes

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26          (1) A local school board or charter school governing board may request, and the [State
27     Board of Education] board may grant, a letter of authorization permitting a person with
28     outstanding professional qualifications to serve in any position that requires a person to hold an
29     administrative/supervisory license or certificate, including principal, assistant principal,
30     associate principal, vice principal, assistant superintendent, administrative assistant, director,
31     specialist, or other district position.

---

(c) The board may not require that an applicant described in Subsection (3)(a):
43          (i) have a particular graduate degree;
44          (ii) hold a teaching license;
45          (iii) complete an education leadership graduate program;
46          (iv) obtain a professional recommendation solely from a school with an approved
47     preparation program; or
48          (v) have experience in an education field.

So, if this bill passes, the person running your local school, making decisions that effect your children, identifying good teaching and bad teaching, allocating resources, implementing rewards and consequences, hiring, firing, approving and rejecting educational programs and the million other decisions that require an understand of how students think, act and learn will not need to have any educational experience at all.

Yup.  ‘Cause managing a business with a hundred adult employees that can be fired is exactly like running a Junior High School.  Yup.  Uh huh.

Societal Priorities

For quite a while I’ve questioned the priority of a society that cannot find the funds to improve the situation of their bottom-of-the-barrel education funding, but easily found the money to build the state-of-the-art Rio Tinto Soccer Stadium.  University coaches make more than the people running the academic (primary purpose) of the institution, and as a teacher, if you don’t coach something good luck finding a high school position.  Individually we are willing to shell out a hundred or more dollars to see a live sporting event, but when our property taxes are raised $20 a year for education we freak out.

To me, it seems like we’re playing our fiddles as our society burns.

Finally, the truth comes out.

For years, decades, the Utah State Legislature has been denying the “starve the beast” attitude towards public education in this state.  “Top Priority”, but can’t find the money, gotta keep the rainy-day fund for rainy days and don’t want to foist a tax increase upon the unwilling taxpayers have been their mantras.

In yesterday’s Tribune, House Speaker Becky Lockhart let the cat out of the bag.

In an article about putting iPads (or something technologically similar) in the hands of every student in the state and it’s $300M-$750M price tag, she was quoted as saying:

“Let’s not try to be so focused on the money.  If this is the vision we want to have for education, if this is where we know we are headed … then we’ll find the money.”

So, since we can in fact find the money for our vision for public education, then that means that our vision for over 20 years has been “lowest funding in the nation, largest class sizes and lowest pay.”  Nice vision.

2013’s Bangerter

Over 20 years ago, when I was just starting on my path to become a teacher, teachers were already complaining about Utah’s huge class sizes and lowest per-pupil spending in the nation.  Then Governor Norm Bangerter told teachers to quit complaining and “take two aspirins and go back to work.”

We’ve made a lot of progress since then.  Now Governor Gary Herbert, as reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, recently commented “A teacher could have gone to sleep 100 years ago, come back 100 years later and felt very comfortable in the classroom – because nothing has changed.”

That’s probably because he hasn’t been in a classroom for over 100 years.

For a (beginning) list of things that would freak out a teacher from 100 years ago, go HERE.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Early in my teaching career I learned that no matter what we do, we’re going to be criticized in the media for it.

One year a huge snow storm hit the valley and our district decided to cancel classes because of it.  Headlines read something like “Schools closed, parents left scrambling for daycare upset.”

The very next year we had another huge snowstorm, much like the one the year before.  Fearing the backlash they got the year before (my assumption) the district decided to keep the schools open.  This time the headlines read something like “Schools open despite snow, parents upset by dangerous conditions, many keep kids home.”

I have no idea how many were the same parents complaining both years, but the fact remains no matter what the decision, there was going to be a hissy-fit.

I remembered this lesson as I was reading the comments on this Facebook post:

This 7th grade student from Canada got in trouble with his school for STOPPING a dispute between two students, one of which pulled out a knife! The school says they don't "condone heroics" and he should have ran to get a teacher! Just another example of what is wrong with the world today. I'm glad he had the courage to act, and stop a situation that could have ended badly. LIKE if you think he did the right thing!  Story and interview here.

All of the comments I read (only about 20) were critical of the school’s actions.  Some were downright furious and a few were just this side of asking for the public lynching of the school’s administration.

I’m not saying the kid should be punished for what he did, frankly it would be nice if more kids would stand up against bullies.  And according to the article, anyone who works in a school would realize he wasn’t actually punished.  He wasn’t suspended, issued a detention or even written up for it.

He was called down to the office to answer questions about the incident and reminded that he put himself in a dangerous situation which was against school policy.  Questioning and reminding go on in a school every day, not too many students would consider either a punishment. 

What really annoys me is that these people refuse to look at it from the school’s point of view.  The kid put himself in the middle of a knife fight.  How many of these people bitching and moaning, the parents included, would be even more upset if this kid had got himself stabbed?  “The school should have done something to protect him?” “He should have known to just go get a teacher.”  I would bet a full month’s paycheck that someone would come out with “They should tell the kids not to put themselves in a dangerous situation.”

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.  My job became a lot less stressful when I finally came to terms with that.

Matt Damon ponin’ a noob.

Whenever I go down to Free Wheeler they have some new videos to show me.  Some are downright hilarious, a lot are not something I would put on my blog.  This one (or actually these two that I cut and condensed into one), I just had to share.

I love that last line “Because you were a student there?”

In my opinion, the one attitude that quote is responding to is the kingpin to the problems with Ed Policy these days.  “I was a student for 12 years, I know…”

Unless you worked there as an adult, your view of what went on is through the eyes of a teenager (and younger).   Half the students I’ve taught are amazed when they run into a teacher at the grocery store or a movie.  They don’t think about those things. They don’t think about the time it takes to grade tests, prepare lesson plans or the backroom conversations we have with the administration because we’ve heard or seen something that worries us about the well being of our students.

Would you consider yourself an expert on running that grocery store just because you’ve been going there several times a week for the last couple decades?  Could you write that program you use every day at your job?

I don’t think so.

War on Public Education Rages.

There is no doubt in my mind that, especially since their 2007 defeat by public referendum, the Utah State Legislature has been waging a war against public education.  There are more than enough rumors of legislators referring to “starving the beast” of public ed. for them to be believable.  Especially in view of legislation passes since then, and three bills that most likely will be put on the floor during the 2012 legislative session.

1. Public High Schools will be charged for remedial courses their students are required to take in college.
2. Amend the Utah Constitution to give the Governor direct control over Public Education.
3. Require failing schools to be dismantled and put out to private contractors.

I’ve been at 6 different schools, from the upper income east side to lower income inner city schools.  The majority of the teachers I know are doing their damnedest to educate their students with the largest class sizes and lowest per-pupil funding in the nation.  I do agree that the reforms of the last couple decades were necessary to help bring education into the 21^st century, and education in general needs to continue being required to adapt to the changing face of our society.  But since George W first introduced the No Child Left Behind concept, the silence regarding parental and student responsibility has been deafening.  Here’s my comments on these three pieces of legislation:

1. And the student is not the least bit responsible?  A motivated student will learn even if they have a bad teacher, a student determined to fail will fail despite a great teacher.  Success in school depends on a trifecta: Students, parents and teachers.  This legislation puts absolutely no responsibility on either the student or the parents.
2. Uh.  Hm.  Let’s not leave the running of education in the hands of people elected (despite being hand-picked by the Governor) for the sole purpose of making decisions for education.  Nah, let’s put that power in the hands of a single person, whose responsibility includes the entirety of the State Government.
3. This is my favorite one.  If a school fails, let’s fire everyone responsible for it’s failure.  Oh, wait.  The students are responsible too (see #1).  And what about the parents who can’t, or won’t, help or even expect their student to succeed in school.  (YES, that does happen).

I had a 9^th grade student at an inner city school that just about fell asleep in class.  I asked him about it and he told me that he was out late working.  He told me that, in addition to school, he worked about 30 hours a week.  I made a comment about how great it must be to have all that money to spend.  He looked at me and said “Nah, I have to pay the rent.”

How can I compete with that?

I will bet an entire month’s paycheck on two things if this privatization of “failing” schools passes.

1. No private school can improve the scores of students if they are required to do it with the exact same clientele and money per student.
2. Somehow, miraculously, the Utah State Legislature will find a way to improve education funding, helping line the pockets of their cronies in the private education business.

I love my job, can’t imagine doing anything else right now.  But with each and every attack on my profession (and I do not view every change or criticism as an attack, there is a lot I agree with) managing a Chevron is looking better and better.