SPEAKING UP ABOUT TEACHING

***YOUTUBE—POUGHKEEPSIE, NY– David Greene, teacher and author is a guest speaker at Barnes & Noble Local Author Day and speaks about his book “Doing The Right Thing.”– October 25, 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Z68V2xMqU
For more information:  dcgmentor.wordpress.com

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 — in Poughkeepsie, New York.

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TIME marches backwards.

TIME magazine.

Hubbub. Noise.Din. Racket. Commotion.

This week teachers are rotten apples. (At least we aren’t at the Ebola scare level yet.)

In 2008 TIME was raving about Rhee.

In 1965 the cover had this quote, by the US Commissioner of Education at the time, Francis Keppel.

“Education is too important to be left solely to the educators.”

In 1961 TIME tells us that US schools were,

“Soft,” “flabby,” “lax,” “easy,” exclaimed Commissioner Sterling M. McMurrin, 47. “We have much less knowledge, much less creativity, much less moral fiber than we would have had if our educational process had been more rigorous.” McMurrin set his goal as “quality and rigor in teaching”—strong talk for the Office of Education, which for most of its 94 years has been a tame source of statistics rather than of standards. …”

In 1960 Time scares us with:

“When Sputnik flashed across California, it lit dark places in the nation’s biggest public school system. Heckled by parents, the state legislature named a blue-ribbon jury to examine the quality of California’s schooling. Called the Citizens Advisory Commission, it was sparked by former University of California President Robert Sproul. Without pussyfooting, the group soon made clear its stance. It attacked the theory of education for “life adjustment” as non-education: “The school has neither the chief responsibility nor the means for dealing with all aspects of personal development . . .

In 1959 we read:

“Otto and Mary Krai, who live on a farm near Hastings, Minn., have one main goal in life: they want to educate their son. So last year they took seven-year-old Tommy out of Lakeland-Afton public school after watching him vegetate on a soda-pop diet of “life-adjustment” courses. Mary Krai is a former high school teacher; her 35-year-old husband is a professional mathematician. The Krals decided to school their bright but not prodigious boy at home (TIME, March 2). Tommy’s six-or-seven-hours-a-day curriculum: arithmetic, grammar, German, geography, composition, spelling, mythology, music, poetry and chess.”

Let’s just rest with this last one which goes back to 1939:

“To the parents of some 26,000,000 U. S. public school children the all-important question as they send their youngsters to school each term is: Who will his teacher be? Parents well know that whether a school is Progressive or Traditional, palace or shack, a good teacher is still a good teacher and a poor one a menace to their children.”

So folks, TIME has been at this game for at least 75 years. That’s three quarters of a century of teacher and public education bashing.

TIME simply marches backward.

NYC Schools May Be Leading Us Back to Real Education Policy

In case you misused this.

DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing

To me what follows is a fabulous example of trying to do the right thing under very constricted laws that need changing.

I know there will be those of you ready to comment negatively on this report. Some of you will argue that Farina goes too far and some that she doesn’t go far enough, but  what I saw in this first paragraph is the the kind of leadership in NYC schools we haven’t seen in decades.

“New York City is overhauling its system for evaluating schools, de-emphasizing test scores in favor of measures like the strength of the curriculum and the school environment, and doing away with an overall A-through-F grade for each school, the schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, said on Tuesday.”

New School Evaluations Will Lower Test Scores’ Influence

I have often written and emphasized that when I was  a student in NYC public Schools during the 1950’s and mid…

View original post 501 more words

NYC Schools May Be Leading Us Back to Real Education Policy

To me what follows is a fabulous example of trying to do the right thing under very constricted laws that need changing.

I know there will be those of you ready to comment negatively on this report. Some of you will argue that Farina goes too far and some that she doesn’t go far enough, but  what I saw in this first paragraph is the the kind of leadership in NYC schools we haven’t seen in decades.

“New York City is overhauling its system for evaluating schools, de-emphasizing test scores in favor of measures like the strength of the curriculum and the school environment, and doing away with an overall A-through-F grade for each school, the schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, said on Tuesday.”

New School Evaluations Will Lower Test Scores’ Influence

I have often written and emphasized that when I was  a student in NYC public Schools during the 1950’s and mid 1960’s and a teacher there from 1970-1986, I was part of a system that allowed for the respect of creativity in the creation of curricula and innovation in teaching methodology that emphasized student engagement and learning though authentic assessments and evaluations. In fact my book, Doing the Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks is based on those sets of experiences as well as others.

For example, in 1941, the NYC Association for the Teaching of Social Studies published this book , A Handbook for the teaching of social studies, which was used as the guide for new social studies teachers in NYC and elsewhere for decades. Its second printing was as late as 1985. It was my student teaching handbook and my textbook for  my Social Studies methodology class when I attended Fordham University. This book along with observing its practices used during  the  student teaching experience taught us how to use student centered developmental lessons which were based on the use of  a few essential questions (pivotal questions) and mostly class discussion led, not controlled, by the teacher . Yes, It was written in 1941.

It is only one example of the student centered spirit of education that existed in NYC schools (if of course you were in a building with a positive environment for teaching…determined by the Principal [teacher] in each school). That much has not changed, except that in NYC over the past few decades  the role of a Principal has become less about teaching and more about managing.

The Di Blasio – Farina  team have hopefully set us back on the right track. Even though they are forced to work within the guidelines set up by the educationally ignorant state legislature and present governor, Farina and her school leaders have found a way back to the right path.

“Mayor Bill de Blasio had pledged to end Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s system of giving schools letter grades, which some parents and educators argued were too simplistic and, in some cases, painted an inaccurate picture.”

“Mr. de Blasio has repeatedly criticized the Bloomberg administration’s focus on test scores and vowed to be more holistic in assessing schools and students. The new assessments attempt to fulfill that pledge by integrating aspects of the quality review and giving them the same weight as test scores.

The new assessments, which will be released for the first time later this fall, will take two forms: a School Quality Snapshot, directed at parents; and a more comprehensive School Quality Guide, designed for school leaders.

The snapshot ranks the school from poor to excellent on questions like ‘How interesting and challenging is the curriculum?’ and ‘How clearly are high expectations communicated to students and staff?'”

When I see  those two essential, pivotal questions as the focus of this new attempt, I can be nothing but pleased. Those were the questions posed to me by my Principal and Department Chair when I started teaching in 1970.

I can only see this as a positive step. I hope you can as well.