Ira Shor is a professor at the City University of New York, where he teaches composition and rhetoric. Shor understands that standardized testing is the foundation on which the entire “reform” project rests. Take away the test scores, and the data-driven teacher evaluation collapses, along with the ambitious plans for privatization.
Shor writes:
“Opt-Out: The REAL Parent Revolution”
We parents can stop the destruction of our public schools. We can stop the looting of school budgets by private charters and testing vendors. We can stop the abuse of our children by the relentless hours of testing. We can stop the closings, the co-locations, the mass firings, the replacement of veteran teachers with short-term Teach for America newbies, the shameful indignity of public schools told they have 24 hours to clear out so a charter can seize their classrooms. To do this, we have to opt-out our kids from the new…
Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading my blog ‘Maestra Teacher’. My son has been kind enough to make me my own website for my blog. Again thank you so much for reading my blog. From now on all my blog posts will be going on: http://www.maestrateacher.com/ I hope you will check it out!
Teaching ELL is a little like being in a small family. My co-teacher Ms.R and I share students and support each other as if we were co-parenting. Several times a year she has her students present their work to their other teachers and their families. Last Friday, the students presented poetry compilations they had been working on in her ELA class. Walking into the classroom was like entering a family reunion. There were hugs and kisses and kind words exchanged. There was chatter about the students and excitement as the presentations were about to begin.
The student emcee proudly opened the event; normally a fidgety, boisterous student, I was impressed at how composed and calm she was. The students did an amazing job, each reading poetry they wrote in a language that was not their own, no small feat. We celebrated the event afterwards the way we always do, with food. There was sushi, rice and beans, tiramisu, sweet plantains, Colombian passion fruit lollipops, and Turkish baklava. Together we ate, laughed and celebrated our students’ successes. Our students’ parents were visibly thankful to us and appreciative of our school for welcoming their students.
Next week, one of our students will be going back to her home country; in January another will do the same. We will have going away parties for both and the class will be a little bit changed each time. One of the wonderful and difficult parts of living in a college town is that you make fabulous friends and meet great people who come to study, but inevitably, they leave. New students will come; we will welcome them into our close-knit ELL family; nurture and teach them; push them to do better; and hopefully ease their transition to this very different world. We will celebrate their successes and help them understand their failures and challenges. Their families will be complicit partners with us in helping their children.
For the students who are still here 4 and 5 years from now, we will go to their graduation from high school. Like 2 proud parents, we will sit in the front row, cheer for them and high-five and hug them as they walk down from the stage. As the mother of one of my students told me in an email today, “Ustedes son las segundas madres de mi hijo” – You are my son’s second mothers.
These are the moments that affirm that what we do as teachers is valued and valuable, appreciated, needed, and sometimes, very fulfilling.
The last 2 weeks have been trying in many ways, personally and globally: Ferguson and Eric Garner, the images of war in Syria, a debilitating injury in the family (my mom broke her wrist – ouch), stress for various reasons at school, my own kids have been super-sensitive and stressed, and on top of that, I haven’t been feeling 100%. Despite all that – or maybe because of all that – I am trying hard to continue finding joy in what I do. And I do, find joy. Sometimes it’s just harder than others.
Some joyful moments this week, for example:
– communicating with parents of two of my students resulted in a complete, awesome turnaround of behavior
– lunch with my lunch buddies, LG and TW
– positive interactions with several students
– a new-found camaraderie among teachers
Also, because my class of 5 ELL students, each from a different cultural background and language, was having a difficult time getting along respectfully, I began an unit on “Empathy and Kindness” within the context of a larger unit on “Our Diverse World”. With the help of Teaching Tolerance (especially), ReadWriteThink.org, YouTube videos, and a book my mom gave me called Open Minds to Equality (Nancy Schniedewind and Ellen Davidson), I developed a unit that will last a total of about 3 weeks.
I began with asking my students what “empathy” was. Curiously, only one of them had an idea of what it was. We defined it and discussed it together. During the first week, I showed them videos (of which there are a bunch) showing people engaging in empathetic acts. We also watched videos showing random acts of kindness. I assigned them homework: Do something nice for someone you usually do not get along well with, then write a paragraph about it. What was the result? How did it make you feel?” (they hated that assignment!) and writing prompts such as, “Are kindness and empathy important? Why or why not?” and “How can acts of kindness make our community a better place?”
At first, it was very rocky going. In this class of two female and three male students, the females revolted. They stopped talking to me for an entire class, which had more to do with conflict with the boys than being angry at me (I think). One of them decided she would try to talk to me using sign language, which she looked up in a dictionary, until I let her know that I did not understand sign language. It got to the point where the girls protested almost anything anyone said.
After I contacted their parents, things changed quickly 🙂
Our learning about empathy was then able to continue in a very positive way. We finally had a breakthrough yesterday when we began talking about possible class projects that show empathy. I asked the class to think for homework about whether the project should be school-wide, community-wide or worldwide. Today we resumed our discussion and narrowed it down to 2 projects that we are going to take on: food/clothing for homeless people, and something for our local animal shelter. This video made the kids laugh and got them thinking:
I’m excited to start planning our project, though I know that there are many details involved. If you have had experience with similar class community projects and how to organize them, please let me know! The best thing about this project is that I have rediscovered joy in a difficult year of being a teacher, and I find my students engaged, too.
There are SO many to choose from! Here are some of the best (or worst, I guess):
10.Benchmarks
9.Discourse
8.Exemplars
7.Rigor
6.Process
5.Learning target
4.Adequate yearly progress
3.SIP, DIP, DDM and a few other acronyms I can’t remember
2.Protocol
2.Outcome
1.Data-driven
The world of teaching in public school has its very own ever-expanding vocabulary.
It’s not that I don’t believe in some of the above phrases and words. It just seems that when people in education leadership get hold of certain words and phrases, they grab onto them and they don’t let go. These phrases and words get used ad nauseum (in the literal sense of the word).
There are a lot of new and great trends in education and teaching. However, I can’t help thinking that sometimes, great, old-fashioned teaching isn’t so bad. Maybe that makes me old school. Of course, so many real advances have been made and changes in education that are so much better for all students than when I was young and in school.
That being said, when I was in high school, I had some amazing teachers.Our classes were, almost without exception, teacher-centered. And yet, I learned a great deal from some (not all) of my teachers. My French teacher from ninth to twelfth grades, Madame Christian, was low-key and calm, but pushed us always to speak in French. My history teacher, Mr.Hansbury, constantly encouraged us to think critically. Both of those teachers were the kind of people I could have gone to with personal problems, as well. As one of two Puerto Ricans and one of three students of color in the entire junior-senior high school, with them I felt comfortable, not “other”. They also always pronounced my name correctly (this is a big deal when you have been called “Alisha” your whole life. No offense to my friend whose name IS pronounced that way!)
This is the type of teacher I hope I am for some students. This is why, when I hear education buzzwords all the time, I feel we are losing sight of what is really important. As always, it always comes back to our students. Are we reaching them? Are we establishing relationships with them and fostering their creativity, and building upon the skills they already have? Are we trying different ways to help them understand? Are we remembering the complex beings they are? At the end of the day, this is what matters to me. Not the “outcome” of a lesson, or the “protocol” we used to discuss a topic at a faculty meeting.
Maestra Teacher 