I KNOW GREAT TEACHING WHEN I SEE IT: A Book Excerpt

http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Right-Thing-Teacher-Speaks/dp/1460225481

Who remembers their favorite test from school? You know, the one that inspired you to become who you are now, or saved you from the wrong part of yourself? Who remembers the test that made you want to come out of your shell? Which test gave you the courage to try new things and challenge yourself? For me, it was the 1966 Regents Comprehensive Examination in Social Studies.

Ok, only kidding. We all know that it is teachers who inspire and challenge us to be our best. It isn’t testing, or much of what is now being called teaching. We also know which teachers did that. We might remember some incidents in their classes, or things they said or wrote to us. Do we remember the everyday things? The attitude they brought to the room? Their techniques?

When I see former students (from the Bronx to Scarsdale), they don’t tell me about the Goals or Aim or Motivation from October 23^rd, 2002. They will tell me about my energy, my excitement, my caring, and my prodding them to do their best, not to settle for mediocrity. They tell me about a particular project that inspired or challenged them to think critically, or do things they never thought they could. They even remember what they learned while doing those things. What they don’t know is how all of that was planned.

            “Great teaching is an art.” Of course, there are great techniques that have been used by great teachers, but it isn’t the technique that makes the teacher great. It is what the great teacher brings to the technique. I have watched these techniques used perfectly in perfectly horrible lessons and marginally well in absolutely magnificent lessons, because of who the teacher is as much as what the teacher does. This is true, whatever the teacher’s age or experience level. Teaching is as much talent as it is skill.

Great teachers plan objectives, then matching assessments and activities. What is also important is the quality of the activities and the probing, challenging, written, and oral questions accompanying those activities. It is all one big package. How does that lesson or activity, as simple or complex as it may be, get your kids to learn and understand those objectives and succeed on the assessments?

So, what is a good teacher? The sum of all those things. Each and every day a good teacher is a motivator, planner, questioner, assessor, mother or father, even entertainer. Plan accordingly. It is the key. Your kids rely on that. But don’t make it look too planned.

            So many so-called educational reformers believe that given their version of the right tools, techniques, and tests, any top college student can become a successful teacher.

     I learned from several esteemed mentors that the best teachers never stopped learning and listening. How else can we find out what makes good teaching, but by listening to people from both sides of the desk? In researching this book, I reached out to many people and asked these simple questions:

As a student:

1. What made your best teachers your best teachers? Consider personal characteristics, techniques, activities, and relationships with students. What made your worst teachers your worst teachers? Consider personal characteristics, techniques, activities, and relationships with students.
2. From which teachers did you learn the most? Why? From which teachers did you learn the least? Why? (You don’t have to name names.)
3. Please describe any particularly positive or negative classroom moments or activities that stand out. What made them so memorable?

     I received a wide variety of answers from friends, family, colleagues, and former students. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I have been saying for years to anyone who will listen that all you have to do to improve education is to ask people what made their best teachers best, then train teachers to do as many of those replicable things as possible. Two things cannot be replicated, though: personality and natural talent. Although personality and natural talent cannot be learned, teachers certainly can be taught to use what works best for them as individuals.

       Hard as it was, I selected what I thought were the clearest messages and tried to list them by six essential categories: Challenge, Engagement, Interaction, Personality, Personal Touch, and Planning. These are listed in alphabetical order, because they are equally important.

Challenge:

• The best teachers build a relationship with their students by challenging them.

• The best teacher puts you in a position to succeed.

• They actually cared about my success and did not allow for the possibility of failure by setting high expectations. This made a lifelong impact on my life.

• The best teachers paced the class at a level that worked for everyone. In hindsight, it seems magical, apparent more when absent. I’m aware of teachers who kept everyone challenged, but more aware of teachers where I felt like the material was moving too slowly or too quickly for me to handle. In the latter case, the result (on my part) was boredom or frustration–and in both cases, a loss of interest in the topic. But in the former case, the result was challenge, pride in my work, and a feeling of accomplishment.

• The best teachers are those that lead the students to water but force them to get to the end on their own.

• The ones that I learned the most were the ones who challenged me, who wouldn’t let me just take the easy route, who were patient yet firm, who didn’t cosign my BS and let me get away with mediocrity.

Engagement:

• The best teachers came in prepared and eager to reach out. You felt that they loved what they were doing. I learned most from the ones who were able to engage the classroom.

• Kids know if you want to be there.

• The best classroom is one where students can think, question, and make those personal and meaningful connections.

• They used clear, vivid language–some of their phrases I remember over forty years later. They loved engaging in debate with their students.

• My best teachers were always engaging, relying on interactive teaching methods to best gain the interest of the students.

• One significant quality that I admire was that they saw teaching as an adventure, constantly questioning, having fun doing it, and that it had real- life relevance.

• My best teachers were the teachers who were open and willing to reach their students on the student level.  They were the teachers who best understood how we, as students, were still growing and learning–and making mistakes. They were the teachers who made an effort to appreciate us as individuals and recognize us for our own talents and interests. 

Interaction:

• A great lesson is one in which there is student participation and connection between student and teacher.

• They use active interaction with students.

• They did not “lecture” at us–but spoke with us–used real-life examples, allowed us to speak freely, even if we disagreed. They fostered participation and real discourse.

• A lesson is great when there is enough opportunity for authentic interaction between students, teachers, and other students.

• Interactive teaching where students can chime in with their questions and thoughts, while maintaining a sense of direction and achieving teaching goals.

• I learned a lot from teachers who let us into their world and their interests–it made them more relatable. I learned the least from the teachers I did not have more than a classroom relationship with.  I now realize that the most significant learning experiences I had in high school were with the teachers that I connected with.

Personality:

• The best teachers were any teachers who seemed authentic, who seemed to really walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

• My best teachers were teachers that gave me knowledge, not only by textbook, but also with humor. They create activities that apply knowledge.

• They have a good sense of humor. They make learning fun.

• The best teachers have a big personality. You can see that they are excited by what they do!

• I enjoyed those teachers who clearly enjoyed teaching, i.e., they themselves weren’t bored with what they were doing, but rather projected a love for their subject–and their subjects [students].

• The personal characteristic of my best teachers was that they loved their job, and it was evident in their teaching style. They love to see the student “get it.”

• It seems that the best atmospheres were those where the teacher had both a personal relationship with students and (somewhat contradictory) complete control of the classroom.

• My best teachers were enthusiastic about their subjects–they cared deeply, and made us want to care also.

• They knew how to play with and poke fun at the students, to keep the atmosphere light and easy.

• Teachers who like students are generally successful.

• Many of my best teachers possessed integrity, humor, and consistency.

The Personal Touch:

• Kids pick up on attitudes and can usually cut through the facade. When kids feel genuinely cared about by a teacher, they think the teacher is a good teacher.

• The best teacher, whether teaching science, math, or football is the one who can bring out the best in me, and take my worst, and show me how to make it better. The best teacher finds qualities in the not-so gifted student that allows that student to see that he, too, can succeed. The great teachers showed an interest in us, but did not overdo it by trying to be “our friends.” The great teachers used their personal life experience to help us grow and mature.

• The best teachers gave attention, not just to the subject, but also to the real academic needs of me, as a student, as a growing person. The best allowed me to express myself creatively without judgment, and enforce critical-thinking skills. They knew how to make demands to elevate my skills, abilities, and responsibilities as a student. They were personal, without losing sight of their role as teachers, mentors, and guiders of the academic spirit. They would build and not tear down. They understood the journey a young person needed to take to get to the bridge in preparation for the next phase of development…they inspired this by their actions.

• Clearly, they were experts in their chosen field and were enthusiastic about the content, which translated many times to the students also being enthusiastic about the content.

Planning:

• They use innovative teaching methods.

• They keep the kids interested. A great lesson is one where the class is working along with the teacher.

• A great lesson plan connects planning, questioning, and activities to doing, action, and reflection.

• A lesson is great when it is well planned. One has to consider all the ways children learn. Teachers have to know their students, and provide them all opportunities.

• A great lesson is one that is well planned but is flexible enough to leave room for the “teachable” moment or for situations that would make a change of direction needed.

• I think a variety of activities are needed, both to keep the interest of the students and to find ways of reaching all different kinds of learners.

• Higher-level questions on all grade levels are important, and I never saw enough of these used by student teachers.

• Get to know your students’ learning styles and what seems to hold their interest and challenge them. This valuable information will help with how to plan your lessons, and the types of questioning and activities you use. The types of learners in your class will dictate the lessons you plan. I guess you would call this customizing your lessons to your particular students.

• All types of lessons can work, but no one technique should be used always.

Finally, one note on school atmosphere:

• The best atmospheres are supportive and self-directing and that develop a sense of professionalism and camaraderie among colleagues.

That last comment is significant. Schools and districts must create those types of atmospheres to allow teachers to be their best. Am I too Pollyannaish to think that is not that hard to do? No.

Teaching is learning how to be that person. Teachers, young and old, new or experienced, can become better at what they do by listening to and observing the best teachers do those things well. If they are lucky enough to be in a supportive and self-directing school atmosphere that develops a sense of professionalism and camaraderie among colleagues, they will become among the best in their profession.

This bears repeating: ” I Am The Seed She Planted”

William Wordsworth wrote in his famous poem, The Rainbow, “The child is the father of the man.” We could just as easily say, “The student is the father of the teacher.” Just as human traits are established while young, so are teacher traits.

All I ever needed to learn about who I am as a human and as a teacher, I learned, not in kindergarten, but in second grade. Truth be told, I don’t remember much of kindergarten and first grade, except nap time, blocks, being scolded for not wanting to nap, and having my first-grade teacher tell my mother that I needed “testing.” I was never sure what my first-grade teacher, Mrs. S. (the bunned witch), meant by that. I think she meant psychological. It was before attention deficit disorder (ADD) was the easy answer. I prefer to think that she meant gifted and talented. Turns out it was probably a bit of both.

It was there that I endured Mrs. S. in class 1-3. I have one class picture of me in a cowboy outfit. I was smiling. It must have been Halloween. Like I said, I don’t remember much of first grade. I do remember not liking her and school. My memories consist of being told to keep my hands folded on the desk and my legs under it. That was hard, because the desks were bolted to the floor, and I didn’t fit. So, I kept moving my feet and legs into the aisle, for which I was scolded time and time again. “David. Put your feet under your desk. You will trip someone.” I would usually respond, “But no one is allowed to get up and walk down the aisle.” At which point, she would tell me to be quiet and, “behave yourself.” So, I would be quiet and not pay much attention, rather than get yelled at, until the next time I had to move my oversized legs from under the undersized desk.

Actually, I don’t remember much of third, fourth, or sixth grades either. I skipped fifth grade. I guess I really was gifted. I only remember sixth grade because of two reasons. One was a guy named Murray, who did the dumbest things. He was hysterical. In fact, we created a new phrase, to “pull a Murray,” which meant doing something Murray-like. (Thirteen years later, I nicknamed my wife Murray.) The second and most important reason turned out to be my most embarrassing moment in school. You know, the one when you want to hide, not only under the screwed-to-the-floor-desks, but under the floor they were screwed into. Mrs. F. was going over some spelling list I was not particularly interested in. Actually, after second grade, there wasn’t much in school I was interested in, except playing ball in the school yard. My second-grade teacher spoiled me.

Anyway, Mrs. F. was giving each person in the room a word to spell and pronounce. “Oh no,” I thought. There were enough words to reach me in my seat in the last row; I figured out which word I was going to have to spell and pronounce. “Oh shit,” I thought. “I have no idea how to pronounce it: a.w.k.w.a.r.d. What kind of ‘fuckin’ word is that?” I had never seen it, heard it spoken, let alone knew its meaning. Pretty ironic, huh? “Hmm, is it owkword? Awwwkwaaard?” (As you can tell, I learned to curse early on in life. That was far more useful than knowing awwwkwerd.)

“Oh no. Does she see how panicked I am? I don’t have a clue,” and now she says, “David, please do word number twenty-six,” or whatever number it was. I fumbled for the right pronunciation, screwed it up, spelled it, then, as we all had to do back then, say it again… incorrectly, while listening to the belly laughs of my classmates and Mrs. Bitch telling me to try again. And again. And again. Remember when I said I had skipped fifth grade? Well, that made it even worse. Not only was I the youngest in my class by about one and a half years, but I was also in a class with very few cronies who knew how smart I really was. As a result, I never forgot this experience. It was a moment that probably led me to teaching, although I didn’t realize it back then.

That takes me back to second grade. Miss Stafford was our teacher. She must have been the ripe, old age of twenty-three. We had no idea. We were seven. In 1956 and 1957, she was ancient. She was also incredible. When she passed away in 2009, several of us from her second-grade class were at her memorial service. We had no idea that our Miss Stafford would become the world renown Dr. Rita Dunn. A professor at St. John’s University for nearly forty years, she had become an authority on learning styles, an internationally renowned professor of higher education, a prolific author of thirty-two textbooks and more than four hundred fifty manuscripts and research papers, and the recipient of thirty-one professional research awards. We had no idea who she was going to become. At the time, neither did she. I wrote this in her Tribute Book:

 

            Little did we know as seven-year-olds entering Rita Stafford’s class 2-1 in PS 66, Bronx, in September of 1956, that we were to become the happy guinea pigs for a life dedicated to helping children with all kinds of ‘personalities,’ as we called it then.

 

People marvel when they are told of what Rita did for us. They marvel at our advanced work. They marvel at our activities. They marvel at our reunions every Christmas time for twelve years, and at our last reunion, eight years ago this month. [Forty-four years after our second-grade class.]

 

I can’t count the number of times I have told students and teaching colleagues how we learned about the solar system by building one and hanging it from the ceiling; or about civil rights by writing letters to President Eisenhower. (We even received a reply and were quoted in The New York Times.)

 

She inspired me to become a teacher. Those activities were the seeds of every ‘outrageous’ activity I ever cooked up for use in my classrooms. The more I look back on my body of teaching and work, the more I see how indebted I am to her. I used a variety of styles because I knew, not intrinsically, but because I experienced it in her second-grade classroom, that they were necessary to reach more kids.

 

Over the past dozen years or so, I have become increasingly interested in the rise of the number of underachieving boys in our society. The more I read about the subject, the more I realize that she was right on the money those fifty-three years ago. Both directly as a teacher, and indirectly, through her research and training sessions, she saved countless students from failure. I know she saved me.

 

Over the years, I have never stopped talking about her. In addition to students and teachers, I have spoken about her to several colleagues involved in this latest endeavor. I have told the Teach For America teachers I mentor in the Bronx about her. She is their model.

 

I will continue to tell everyone I know about her. She was my hero. My work shall forever be in her honor and name.

 

 

She proved to me that in any one year, any one teacher could make a difference to any one student. She was creative and autonomous. She was innovative and caring. Unfortunately, I didn’t have many other teachers who had a positive impact on my life. Most were and still are forgotten. Looking back I now understand how being a student totally influenced who I became as a teacher.

There weren’t many I learned from or remember having any influence on me besides “Miss Stafford. One, most cool, was Mr. Gerard, the Junior High music teacher who could play two reed instruments at the same time in two-part harmony. He was a character. He used to take us into the huge clothing closet if we were “acting up” and whisper, “shh, just make noises like I am hurting you.” Then he would throw stuff and bang on the walls. Although it was an act we got hip to rather fast, it made him rate high on the cool-but-nuts factor. Another lesson learned–always make them think you are crazier than they are.

I went to the Bronx High School of Science. I hated it. I did poorly––for there. Out of a class of 950, I ranked 903^rd, with an average of about 80 percent. Even if I had an 85 average, a solid B, I would have been in the bottom half of the class. I spent more time playing basketball, softball, and touch football at the schoolyards with my Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood buddies. When I was in school, I was mostly bored. I was also immature and hadn’t yet learned how to “do school.” I had always gotten by on innate ability. I had no idea how to study, write, do homework correctly, or even really engage in class work. I was virtually left to my own devices. The fact that I was influenced how I taught.

Only four teachers interested me and improved my learning. Mr. Merovick was the social studies chairperson and a master teacher. His discussion-based American history class was all about how we developed points of view. Mr. Kotkin turned microbiology into fun-filled “piss and puncture.” Those two influenced me.

Mr. Rifkin, an English teacher, made studying Othello intriguing. To this day, it is the only play of Shakespeare I enjoyed reading, because of him. One day, he asked us why we thought we were studying Othello. I whispered, “to kill time,” to the student seated to my immediate left. Mr. Rifkin heard it, and for another year, every time he saw me in the hall, he would ask, in a good-natured way, “Hey Greene, still killing time?” From him, I learned the power of great hearing and a sense of self-deprecating humor. Finally, there was Mrs. Rockow, the only teacher I asked to sign my yearbook. She was my senior-year math teacher who showed me how to use my abilities to tackle sold geometry and probability. No one had tapped my brain that way before. It was her way of differentiation, and I learned how that personal touch is so important in turning students around.

Sometimes, just as we parent as a reaction to what we hated about how our parents treated us, teachers learn to do the same. Certainly I didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of my first and sixth grade teachers. I also learn what not to do from another bunned teacher, who embarrassed me what seemed daily in class. Mr. C., my economics teacher, was infamous for setting the world record for “Ums” in a forty-minute period–436. He, by the way, has one distinguishing, positive accomplishment. He was the second teacher who pointed me to my career path. I remember saying one day that I could do a better job than he. I didn’t make much of that back then, but as things turned out, it became true.

 

Just as our experiences as a child influence how we parent, our experiences as a young student influence how we teach. The problem as I see it is that too many new teachers take on the bad habits of too many teachers they had as students.

Time to say something controversial: What else is new? ‪#‎Dueprocess‬ must be done right.

I have been giving this Tenure – Due Process issue a lot of thought lately. Like anything else worth doing, it is worth doing well. How we supervise and develop better teachers and even how we get rid of bad ones has to be done the right way for the right reasons. 

We all have to be ok with the fact that due process can, and maybe should more often, find someone duly criminal or that he or she needs to be removed from their job because of incompetence or just plain laziness. What if due process means assuring that? 

Are we ok with that? I am, as long as every person and every case is judged individually and fairly. There are lots of teachers I know who, like me, who wish their supervisors were more qualified and had the “cojones” to do due process on those who make our profession look bad.

The pride we have in our schools means we all work hard to get better at what we do. Those who can’t or won’t (and we know there are too many of those) put in the time and effort become a huge problem for everyone, especially our students.

I had my share of colleagues, teachers and supervisors both, who ranged from absolutely incredible at their jobs to absolutely awful. I had principals and assistant principals / department chairs who knew great teaching from lousy and worked with people to improve their skills. However, if those teachers didn’t knew enough to understand that they brought our department, school, and staff down several notches, they had to be brought to justice.

Principals must be principled. The following story is from my book, Doing The Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks:

“Adlai Stevenson’s first principal Leonard Littwin scared people, but Lenny knew teaching. He was blunt and direct. He sat in the back of classrooms, watching and taking notes. He was a master social studies teacher before he became an administrator. His goal, which he filtered down to his department chairs, was to develop as many talented teachers as possible. Mostly, he succeeded. Many succeeded to pass on what they learned, including me. What he told me, he must have shared with hundreds of teachers over the years. He asked three essential questions: 
• What do you want your students to know, understand, do, and communicate by the end of your class? 
• How are you going to assess those? 
• What do you want them buzzing about as they leave, so that they want more tomorrow?

With those questions as our focus, we discussed how projected outcomes, goals, and objectives are to be achieved and measured using authentic assessments (essay writing, projects of all sorts, and even multiple-choice and short-answer questions).”

But for those who couldn’t pass muster, life was different. Lenny played no favorites or harbored no grudges. He had one goal and one goal only, and that was to make you a better teacher. Tenured or not, he would come to classes with that goal in mind. We all have to get better.

If you couldn’t, didn’t, or worse yet, didn’t try… other “opportunities” would be offered. Perhaps a transfer to another school? No? Ok, then you choose more observations and conferences? These weren’t to harass but to encourage growth. But I guess that depends on one’s perspective. Most of these “lesser qualified” teachers left on their own accord, to other schools they found more comfortable, but many of us felt bad for the students in those schools.

A few bucked back and either “endured” more supervision or in some cases were “2030A’d”, the NY legal term for the due process route for dismissal. The one I witnessed actually became a famous case and the person got exactly what he deserved. He should not have been teaching and it was a good thing that our principal had the principle to use the system to get rid of him, as difficult as it was.

But I warn people not to take this the wrong way or to take my words lightly. I am in favor of due process. I am in favor of helping both old and new teachers improve. However, I am also in favor of helping those who should leave the profession, shall we say, make a timely exit.

If we don’t do both our profession will continue to suffer the consequences of poor prestige, constant attacks, and a dearth of qualified people going into the profession.

ENDORSEMENTS AND REVIEWS:

ENDORSEMENTS AND REVIEWS:.

 

As summer winds down and we get back to work, perhaps a good helpful book might be in order?http://www.friesenpress.com/bookstore/title/119734000011426145/David-Greene-Doing-The-Right-Thing

 

A BOOK EXCERPT:

A BOOK EXCERPT:.

A BOOK EXCERPT:

Recently, I was at my doctor’s office getting a physical. We were talking about his group’s new offices and whether or not they would be permanent. He said, “Doctors doing real estate…oy vey, who knows?” He then went on to discuss how doctors, lawyers, and businessmen are often those who think that because they are good at what they do, they can be good at telling others how to do their work. Of course, I chuckled. It sounded very familiar.

He told me that the best patients he has are teachers, because no matter how brilliant they are, they know their limitations and would not dare tell a doctor how to perform surgery. Again, I chuckled. But this time I told him how education is exactly like his example of doctors in real estate. It was the abridged version, as he was taking my blood pressure at the time.

We finally discussed how his role as a doctor as more and more being dictated by the drug and insurance company “medical experts” is exactly like how our roles as teachers are more and more being dictated by corporate “education experts”—in both cases for huge profits. Then I recruited him to join SOS.http://www.friesenpress.com/bookstore/title/119734000011426145

History Rises Again

Curtis Wilkie’s AUG. 12, 2014 NYT column entitled, The South’s Lesson for the Tea Party provides a lesson for all of us. History is the lesson.

Wilkie examines the rise and strength of the Tea Party in the south which many of us simply see as a 21^st century event provoked by the Koch brothers and anti Obama sentiment. He depicts it, as I do, as another cycle of “nativism and populism” that reared its head early and mid 20th century just as education reform did in the same time periods with various versions of Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management.

He asks, “Will [southerners] remember their history well enough to reject the siren song of nativism and populism that has won over the region so often before?”

He adds that in the early and mid 20^th century, “grassroots” leaders like “Thomas E. Watson of Georgia, “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman of South Carolina … and Theodore G. Bilbo of Mississippi rose as a result of a revolt against big business and government corruption.” George C. Wallace of Alabama “portrayed himself as a tribune of the working class while championing segregation.”

“It’s hard not to hear echoes of those eras today. Tea Party candidates have targeted federal taxes and spending…. Racism has been replaced with nativism in their demands for immigration restrictions, but the animosity toward the “other” is the same.”

How familiar is this refrain from two books about the South written 73 and 63 years ago?

Populists of the region in 1941 felt “the rage and frustration of men intolerably oppressed by conditions which they did not understand and which they could not control.” And in 1951, they felt “forgotten” and singled out by “an enemy class” of Wall Street speculators and railroad owners backed by big government.

According to Wilkie, education was also closely associated and attacked in the early and mid 20^th century. Funds for poor, segregated schools were withheld and “nonbelievers were pressured to leave college faculties. During the 50s and 60s, southern governors such as Orval Faubus of Arkansas, Ross Barnett of Mississippi, and George C. Wallace of Alabama, “citing “states’ rights,” threatened to shut schools rather than integrate and denounced federal aid to education as a sinister investment.”

Today all over the south and elsewhere we hear that same set of ideas in “Tea Party criticisms of the federal government, of federal aid to education and of the ‘establishment.’”

What can we learn from all this history?

First, these ideas die hard.

Second, It took a loud progressive public sentiment to affect change.

And third, it took leadership from a former conservative and anti-Japanese Supreme Court Chief Justice from California (Earl Warren), a President from the deep south of Texas (LBJ), and a free press not beholding to the powers that be to react to what was going on and change things, at least temporarily.

Who can we turn to now?

STOP GRITTING YOUR TEETH WHEN YOU HEAR “GRIT”

There is nothing wrong with GRIT.

Why do we have such a knee jerk reaction to a word when the wrong people usurp it?

Isn’t true grit is a characteristic we need to fight back against these interlopers? We need to take back that word just as we need to take back other words and phrases like assessment, challenging, and critical thinking.

So I propose we make a list of what True Grit really is.

Please add to these examples:

True Grit is the poor kid from the streets of Philly who fights through the stigma of doing well in school and the resulting beat downs to succeed in school, becomes the first in his family to graduate college and goes back to teach in his own community.

True grit is the student who takes risks by learning how to learn outside the box of the classroom experientially and the school that fosters that method.

True Grit is the teacher who, given the constricting conditions in the school she teaches in takes risks to do what she knows works best for her kids and let the chips fall where they may.

True Grit is the school administrator who tells her staff not to worry about all that APPR crap and to continue to teach to the kids not to the test.

True Grit is the state Regent or Commissioner who says we will not accept the strings to the RTTT and CCSS bribe.

True Grit is the state legislator or congressman, who, regardless of her party affiliation, will not take campaign funds to influence her vote against pubic education.

True Grit is the President who fires his hated Secretary of Education and starts to listen to his inner voice, and the voices of the parents, the teachers, and the students of this country who are saying enough is enough.

ANOTHER SUPER SAD STORY RE DUE PROCESS.http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=8515738343772337569&postID=5823613187134314813&page=1&token=1407607174942&isPopup=true

David Greene Reports on the Excitement of the BAT Rally in D.C.

David Greene Reports on the Excitement of the BAT Rally in D.C..

via David Greene Reports on the Excitement of the BAT Rally in D.C..