We Already Know How To Prepare “High Quality” New Teachers

“Having taught four decades, and having had the privilege of working with so many talented and experienced educators throughout those four decades, I can say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that becoming a good teacher takes time. Nor only do you need time to develop and hone your skills, you need time to learn about kids and “how they work.” You don’t develop these skills in a vacuum, but through the mentoring, assistance and wisdom of more experience people with years of experience, tired and true, proven methods, strategies, best practices and techniques.”

– Former colleague and old friend, Bernie Keller: Former Teacher of English for 40 years.

I graduated from Fordham University’s undergraduate School of Education in 1970 with Bernie’s older brother Harold who eventually joined Bernie and me at A.E. Stevenson High School in the Bronx, NY. Fordham undergraduate education was probably considered a 2nd tier University, yet it produced a large number of excellent teachers in and around NYC, and I will lay odds that it was better at producing high quality teachers than many a top tier university. The program no longer exists. It was merged into a graduate program.

Our four years included heavy academic work in our subject area, class work in pedagogy, and fieldwork in local neighborhood, afternoon centers. All of that was before you began a full-time, semester-long internship as a student teacher. The pedagogy classes weren’t worth much, but that’s true in all schools of education. That is because more are still taught by researchers or “higher “education professors and less by experienced public school teachers. I have always believed that more practical experience with great teachers beats theory taught in an ivory tower.

University education programs must get with the program. The ivory tower is too blinded by its own light. They must retool and develop more in-school mentor programs rather than rely on pedagogy classes that, well, for the most part, are less than helpful. They have to put more emphasis on fieldwork and internship work. If schools of education want to improve teaching they must make teaching training more similar to the other “life saving” professions, plumbing and medicine. They both include long periods of apprenticeships and ongoing certification before permanent licensing. As long as they think PhD academics are more important than teacher training, things won’t change much.

A major difference between my generation and present-day new teachers in quick fix programs like Teach for America, or even some university based programs, was that I gradually entered teaching. I wasn’t dumped into the quicksand up to my neck. When I student taught at Taft HS in the Bronx I was extremely lucky to have a cooperating teacher (think hospital attending physician), Phyllis Opochinsky,  a young master who, in turn, had been trained by an older master, Mr. Milton Belasco, chairman of the social studies department and author of textbooks and Regents review books. Unknowingly, I became part of the chain that passed down “practical wisdom” from one teacher generation to the next.

The first few weeks, I did nothing but watch her, learn from her work, and practice writing lesson plans with her. I was then, on occasion, allowed to teach one of her classes. Then, when she thought I was ready, I took over one of her classes as my own, but always with her in the room: By law, she had to be there. More importantly—she was there for me. We had pre- and post class discussions to work on improving my techniques. As good as that experience was, it should have lasted a full year. There is no better way to learn to teach than by this process: having a master cooperating teacher at your side, letting you fail, helping you succeed, coaxing, pushing, and teaching you how to teach. It is how many generations of great New York City teachers were made. Somehow, this process was lost over the past couple of decades. Perhaps, it will now be regenerated.

The second difference was where and for whom I worked when I started my first job in 1970, at the brand new Adlai E. Stevenson High School, also in the South Bronx. As far as the public knew, we were the gang-filled, violence-laden school with championship basketball teams whose leading players, Ed Pinckney (currently a coach for the Denver Nuggets) and Fred Brown (now a successful financial advisor in the DC area and philanthropist) became famous playing for Villanova, Georgetown, and the Boston Celtics. We were stereotyped. The reality was that it was a great place to teach, to learn to teach, and to go to school.

My immediate supervisor, Department Chair / Assistant Principal Bertram Linder, and my principal, Leonard Littwin, were also master teachers of social studies and gifted mentors of new teachers. Together they gave me the foundation to become a confident teacher in my field of study. They also gave me academic freedom. They trusted my intelligence and creativity. As a result, I knew I could grow, and grow I did.

My only assistance was to come from Misters Linder and Littwin. As a non-tenured teacher, I could be observed informally as often as they wished. Formally, I was to be observed least three times EACH semester. That was six times per year for each of my three non-tenured years. If after eighteen full formal observations, and multiple informal ones, they couldn’t evaluate me, everyone had a problem.

When I started in Stevenson, I was given a lousy schedule. I was to teach world history to the least motivated, non special education ninth-graders in the school. There were no peer mentors. Bert’s visits and follow-up discussions gave me confidence by telling me he knew I would—as a first-year teacher—make lots of mistakes, but I had the essential tools to become a great teacher. He gave me responsibilities, gave me reviews to write for the Journal of New York City Teachers of Social Studies, and saved my ass more than once.

For example, one very hot, Friday afternoon, I had an eighth (last) period class. They clearly didn’t want to be there. One student decided to “test” me by walking up to a window, opening it, and climbing on to the sill. As I stood there dumbfounded, Bert walked in the room to observe me. “Oh shit,” I thought; I was finished. Monday I’d be driving a cab. Bert stayed and watched the class I could barely control, let alone teach as i talked the kid down. Bert’s presence probably helped. When the class ended, he told me to see him later. Later turned out to be Monday. Surely, I was going to be given a U (unsatisfactory).

When I met with him on Monday, he said three things. First, how bad my lesson was. Second, he wasn’t going to count it as an observation, because he remembered teaching classes like that when he was younger. Third, we discussed how to use my personal strengths to counteract what technical weaknesses I had because I was new. He encouraged me by saying that once my technique caught up with what I brought to the classroom, I would be the master others could come to learn from. And I thought I was to be fired.

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, who filtered it down to their teachers, 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). These three fundamental questions still define great teaching, regardless of what the new “data driven” reform movement says.

How ironic that, in the fall of 2008, I found myself mentoring a TFA Corps Member in the “campus” that once was A.E. Stevenson. Many of the old offices were converted into classrooms. My mentee and I were sitting in his classroom, which at one time was Littwin’s old office. Lo and behold, what comes out of my mouth?

“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?”

Our subsequent discussions about what was necessary to make those happen was the basis for my mentee’s success in that school and subsequent hiring in a school of his choice. That is how you pass on the traditions of great teaching. Over the past forty-five years, I have worked with several student teachers and nineteen TFA Corps Members as well as younger colleagues. Their success is not due to anything more than my passing forward what I have learned from those old masters from Stevenson.

Today’s “reform” business model principals cannot do it. Most don’t really know how. Teachers need experienced supervisors and mentors as well as real mentoring programs. There are thousands of retired, high-quality teachers willing to do become mentors. Why not use them? Will there be any “old” masters left to pass forward what makes great teaching? Will there be any Littwins, Linders, or even Greenes left to pass on what they learned from those before them? Will there be any lifetime teachers? Will public education as we knew it be crushed and replaced by a system of short-term, temporary, robotic teachers who simply follow a conveyor-belt script in this new, factory like, privatized, education-for-profit system, and then move on to another job when they burn out?

Who will pass on these characteristics of good teaching?

• Listen to and learn form the best teachers you know. Think about what your best teachers did. Given that, know thyself. What works or some doesn’t work for all.

• Know your kids. If you come from a different environment than them, learn as much as you can about it. Immerse yourself in it. Understand their needs, not just as a sociological group, but also as individuals….

• Whatever original methodology you were taught, don’t get stuck in it. Learn to adapt. Develop a BIG toolbox of methods, both in pedagogy and human relations. Keep analyzing your work. Always try to get better, no matter how self gratified you might be.

• Be genuine. Use humor if you can. Develop mutual respect. Trust. Be both firm AND caring. Be a good listener. Conduct a class, don’t control it.

• Set challenging, but reachable, goals. Don’t give busy work. That is a quick turn off. Kids need to know why what they do is important to them. Be tough when necessary, but fair. Be understanding!

Teaching is an art, to be cherished, not lost and mummified. Our students should not become guinea pigs in a Fahrenheit 451 world of mathematical schema and “data-driven” engineering. Lifelong teachers must be allowed to continue to use our God-given abilities to think, reason, and create. Will we be allowed to, or will we, like other endangered species, just become extinct?

Yes, We Can “Fight The Powers That Be”

At the end of the attached speech, Senator Warren refers to the most difficult possibility; passing new amendment to deal with the Citizen United SCOTUS decision.

(https://www.facebook.com/VivaBernie2016/videos/1551410445178446/?pnref=story)

Amendments were in fact passed once before to correct an other era’s poetical control by corporate interests. Both the 16th and 17th amendments were passed during our last “Progressive Era”

The 16th permitted Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on the United States Census. The 17th established the direct election of United States Senators by popular vote.

 This Thomas Nast cartoon entitled “THE BOSSES OF THE SENATE” during the First Gilded Age of the late 19th Century illustrates the similarities: If that was temporarily repairable, so is today’s problem.

History tells us that this is a constant battle and cycle. Every few decades, muckrakers, the people and their leaders have to rise up against the “Octopus” and the rulers of “The Jungle” that control politics.

Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, Jacob Riis, Lincoln Steffens, and others wrote. Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson governed in each succeeding generation to “fight the power”, and “we the people” must do our part by supporting the presidential candidate most likely to do so today.

“Turning the Tide”. Solid recommendations regarding college admissions:

Someone has finally listened to years of reporting from high schools from all over America. We should all support and reinforce these recommendations.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/opinion/rethinking-college-admissions.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

“Turning the Tide” sagely reflects on what’s wrong with admissions and rightly calls for a revolution, including specific suggestions. It could make a real difference not just because it has widespread backing but also because it nails the way in which society in general — and children in particular — are badly served by the status quo.”

“The report recommends less emphasis on standardized test scores, which largely correlate with family income.

It asks colleges to send a clear message that admissions officers won’t be impressed by more than a few Advanced Placement courses. Poorer high schools aren’t as likely to offer A.P. courses, and a heavy load of them is often cited as a culprit in sleep deprivation, anxiety and depression among students at richer schools.

The report also suggests that colleges discourage manic résumé padding by accepting information on a sharply limited number of extracurricular activities; that they better use essays and references to figure out which students’ community-service projects are heartfelt and which are merely window dressing; and that they give full due to the family obligations and part-time work that some underprivileged kids take on.”

“….They still need to stop filling so much of each freshman class with specially tagged legacy cases and athletes and to quit worrying about rankings like those of U.S. News and World Report. Only then will the tide fully turn.”

“…Somethin’ Might Be Gainin’ On You” 5/8/11

by Bernard Keller

This tells a story of teacher friends and colleagues at the former A. E. Stevenson H.S. in the Bronx…..but it say so much more!

Some we won

some we lost

and some we just played,

but every game mattered

and everything counted.

 

Over a thousand times

we took to some gym floor.

We played ourselves

or students

or folks we hardly even knew.

 

Bank shots

line drives

high arching shots

that just fell over the lip of the rim,

hook shots

or scoops

inside out

dump it down low-

we didn’t have any plays,

we just wandered to our spots on the floor

and moved the ball around

until we got something we wanted.

 

Every game

every week was different,

had a different hero

or play we’d be talking about

years later

over beers

or at reunions.

 

 

I never thought there’d be a time

we would not play,

that we wouldn’t run some floor, somewhere

or challenge somebody to beat us,

never really thought about how it was gonna feel

lookin’ back on us playin’

instead of lookin’ forward to playin’ the next game.

 

Never ever really thought about

what I would miss

( or how much I would miss it),

but I can’t help thinkin’ about it, now.

 

B. Keller

EXPERIENCE MATTERS Guest Post: Bernie Keller

In June 2015, I had the opportunity to attend the Big Apple awards which recognizes teachers who have demonstrated excellence. In point of full disclosure, I was invited by one of the recipients of the award, Rick Ouimet. Having had the chance to teach with Mr. Ouimet at Stevenson High School as a colleague, and at Millennium High School team teaching with him, I’d have to say this choice was not only prudent but well deserved.

As I watched the celebrants, and listened to their bios, I was struck by an interesting thread that seemed to run through the presentations which was that none of the awardees had less than a decade of experience. One had thirty-four years of experience, while another had twenty-four and yet another one had sixteen years of experience. Not one of them was a three year or a five year teacher! This is particularly interesting to me because when I look at the way experienced teachers are being herded into ATR pols, or harassed or “encouraged” to retire because we “need younger teachers who are connected to or in tune with the students in the 21^st century, it seems there is little interest in acknowledging or employing the expertise and skills of these teachers. Charter schools regularly eschew them and smaller schools routinely avoid them because they “cost too much.”

Having taught four decades, and having had the privilege of working with so many talented and experienced educators throughout those four decades, I can say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that becoming a good teacher takes time. Nor only do you need time to develop and hone your skills, you need time to learn about kids and “how they work.” You don’t develop these skills in a vacuum, but through the mentoring, assistance and wisdom of more experience people with years of experience, tired and true, proven methods, strategies, best practices and techniques.

When people speak about “reforming education” they seem to spend little or no time on the rock bottom foundation which is experienced teachers, for experienced teachers not only educate the students in their rooms, they mentor younger teachers and help them to develop and hone their skills, and share best practices with them.

The definition of wisdom is “accumulated philosophic or scientific learning and knowledge.” By definition, wisdom is developed over time. You can’t short cut it or microwave it. It has to run its course.

What Next For TFA and Teacher Prep (7/15/2011)

“This problem is so pervasive and so ingrained that we’ve stopped seeing it as a problem at all, and instead adjusted our values and beliefs to accommodate it. If we’re ever going to truly make progress, we have to be honest with ourselves and name injustice for what it is.” (Haycock, 2004, p. 36)

Introduction

TFA seems to be acceptable public and corporate policy. Media, corporations, State, and national policy makers present TFA, in its present format, not only as a viable program for teaching poor kids, but one to emulate and use as a model for all teacher training programs (Carver, 2007; Gates, 2011, Gerdes, 2007; Will, 2011; Wolfman, 2003). But unexamined assumptions embedded in mission statements, advertisements, slogans, color schemes and rhetoric are problematic (Affeldt 2010, Veltri, 2010).

 

TFA’s “mission” in poor urban and rural schools embraces a business model with a brand, image, and culture designed to attract candidates for a finite commitment. Some view TFA’s service agenda as one that lets others: policy makers, school districts, Corporate sponsors, politicians, TFA’s organization, and even university administration, “off the hook, both financially and socially, because of reasoning based on:

1. “‘The Tinkerbelle Tenet of Teaching, where teachers and others believe that something will occur solely on the strength of that belief” (Hamilton, 1993, p. 206), and
2. the “TINA Thesis: There Is No Alternative” (Saltman & Gabbard, 2003, p. 6). But there are alternatives. They are costly, not popular with those supporting TFA, and no aligned to the narrative and spin that’s out there in the public domain. (Veltri, Education and Urban Society, July 2008).

 

Programmatic Changes (Colleges of Education)

1. Set up a program that supports TFA novices full-time during their 1st year of teaching, and do not overload TFA with course work during the first semester.
2. Insist that TFA’s organization change its training model by extending the training by 3 weeks (starting during the Spring Semester) and accompanying that training with in-district summer school teaching, supervised by veteran educators and not TFA’s first year corps who “know nothing and are offered positions at TFA’s Institute because it pays well. “
3. Further develop the site-based clinical practice of TFA novices under the guidance of district-trained and university teacher educators during spring semester of senior year. TFA accepts their recruits in November, so start the program earlier.
4. Change your instructional style with TFA and group their learning according to their age/developmental group. One size does not fit all TFA, and many resent the impersonal nature and constant “ALL-CORPS” type of learning and institutional programming that occurs.
5. Do not be tempted by huge philanthropic donations that seek to ‘gather data” and study how TFA’s model is working. It’s not working, period.
6. Understand that TFAers:
   1. possess a strong success framework and expect to excel. They do not anticipate the level of difficulty they will encounter.
   2. appreciate directness, a plan designed for their students and their realities, want more “do this tomorrow,” and less theory in the beginning, and value the expertise and experience of instructors who are practitioners and experienced with the socio-economic, grade levels, and subject realities that TFA’s are dealing with.
   3. need people who are keenly knowledgeable of what needs to happen in their classroom immediately. Do not expect TFA’s Program Directors to fill this need. Do not expect some of the new TFA-designed university programs to address this need, either. Find people who know and can work with TFA full time teachers –in-training.
7. Find staff who can be in charge of the TFA program, value them, appreciate them, pay them, and have them develop their liaisons for schools, and have them insist upon ‘monthly’ TFA updates on corps progress.
8. Do not succumb to TFA leadership telling you how to run things, because their way of leading is corporate. Corporations do not appreciate child or adolescent development. They understand profit and loss and doing ‘service’ for a short term.
9. We are losing kids and good teachers. We are losing TFAers who become jaded by their experiences and do not remain in the professional long enough to ever really ‘get to be good’ … and that is costing all of us.

Programmatic Changes (Districts)

1. Placement: Do not assign TFA to teach Special Education classes; TFA are not skilled in general education, let alone, SPED law and issues of remediation.
2. Do not request or require TFA’s to write grants, tutor kids after school, coach, sponsor clubs or assume ‘extra’ duties during their first year. They are trying to figure out teaching and that alone consumes their time.
3. Set up a dedicated mentor program for veteran teachers who want to mentor TFAmericans and has this duty as their full time job. This worked very well in The School District of Philadelphia with a semi-retired teacher with years of experience who offered incentives (supplies and book store gift certificates) for novices who attend his weekly professional development/coaching sessions. 30 minutes can really save someone’s day when there is a venting opportunity with an action plan attached. Assign one person to each group of TFAers and new teachers (can’t discriminate) and meet with them regularly to offer feedback on classroom practice and what’s required by term.
4. Reduce or eliminate the $5,000 (finder’s fee) that districts pay to TFA to train and hire cadres of effective veteran teachers to “coach the corps” on-site. Use the veterans in your own system of get them from university programs. These educators have not lost their passion for teaching and were never dull, so they can model effective teaching practices in TFA classrooms, build trust, and support TFAers off hours (when they are planning or have an issue that is not addressed or solved by TFA’s Program Directors, who have minimum classroom experience, and often provide unreasonable suggestions to corps members.

Policy Changes (National Level)

1. Eliminate the AmeriCorps stipend paid to TFA teachers entirely for first two years as TFA teachers. Instead, pay it upon TFAers’ extension of their teaching contract into year 3 and 4 when they have earned their credential and are not being awarded grant funds, to learn how to teach poor children.
2. Offer the $10,000 educational vouchers to non-TFAers who attend credentialing programs specializing in urban education and agree to a 5-year commitment to teach in urban high-needs districts.
3. Sign a Petition today (DC) and in your local communities addressed to your Congressional representative to a) repeal the “highly qualified” designation of TFA novices inserted into the 110^th Congressional provision Section 163 that overturned the 9^th Circuit’s decision that noted that TFA and other “intern” teachers are not highly qualified and should not be disproportionately assigned to schools with high concentrations of poor children of color and b) that in the reauthorization of the ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Schools Act) TFA are not “highly qualified” nor prepared to teach students in Special Education.

As noted by John Affeldt (lawyer for the plaintiff):

“Teach for America, which has vociferously opposed the lawsuit and has substantial clout on Capitol Hill, is the most likely suspect behind the covert attempt to overturn the court’s decision through stealth legislation. The problem is that actual parents and students in schools where these alternative route trainees teach don’t want their classrooms to be the exclusive training grounds. They also want the disclosures that NCLB promises as to which teachers have been fully prepared to teach their children and which haven’t,” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-affeldt/congress-lowering-standar_b_799523.html

 

Final Notes

So many people in high places are getting this “education reform” issue… wrong! What do hedge fund managers, philanthropists and political leader know about education? In no other profession (military, medicine, law, auto mechanics, or cosmetology) could people who are untrained and inexperienced practice on the public and not be in violation of the law and state licensing requirements. The founder of TFA, Wendy Kopp was NEVER a teacher; the president of TFA, Matthew Kramer, was NEVER a teacher.  Our secretary of education, Arne Duncan was NEVER a teacher.  The rest of the people setting policy, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, The Walton family, and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg were NEVER teachers! Why do people think non-educators can be education leaders?

 

 

The issues:

1. The spin on a national scale is directed toward the voting public who may not have any problem with their local public schools their children attend or their own kids’ teachers, but might be alerted to the issue of how someone has to “Save America’s Tough Schools” which was the cover headline of a Readers’ Digest issue in 2003 touting a TFA teacher in her first year teaching kindergarten students in the Bronx, NY.
2. TFA corps members are not equipped to handle the fall out from poverty and public policies that marginalize children and adolescents in many communities. They need to learn the culture of the community, the culture of schools and the art of reaching and teaching these particular students, so different from them . But before this can be done they (and their students) need to be safe and assured of personal and professional “homeostasis”.

 

But will TFA ally with the traditional programs to meet our recommendations? Will TFA join with teaching professionals as well as other professional organizations and institutions to improve the quality of teaching and teacher training or will it continue to “believe its own hype”? Right now I am not optimistic.

TFA (the organization) has become more and more like an Empress with no clothes. As it gains more and more corporate and political supporters and funding, it is less inclined to do the kind of self-evaluation good teachers do in good schools.

Who among the TFA courtiers will tell the Empress the truth? Who will be so bold as to say, “Wendy, you did a good thing getting so many new and able people to be at least interested in teaching. But now, what are you going to do to make keep them there and improve? How will you do each of the following?

1. Decrease the number of resume builders who join the corps and leave after two years for the Ivy League grad school or Goldman Sachs.
2. Decrease the number of TFAmericans who idealistically want to do 2 years of Peace Corps but are afraid to go to Africa.
3. Decrease the number of “teacherpreneurs” who enter the corps to do their two years and go on to the new for-profit educational world.
4. Decrease the number of TFAmericans who see the administrative or business end of TFA as their life’s work, not teaching.
5. Decrease the number of hardworking and sincere TFAmericans who drop out because they find themselves unprepared to start and undersupervised for their two-year stint.
6. Increase the number of well prepared, well supervised professional teachers for whom this career is an avocation as well as a vocation, who seek advice, constructive criticism, peer review, and cooperation from experienced people outside the of the “Chosen.”

While the Empress Kopp parades around in her new clothes, her serfs in the field are being sacrificed. Will she listen to reason? Will she ally with others in education for the benefit of all?

Who will give her the mirror? WE MUST! WE MUST FORCE TFA TO CHANGE. IT CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT OUR DEMAND FOR TFA RECRUITS.

 

Our recommendation is to return education to the professionally, scientifically trained, experienced educators who have studied and practiced and mastered the art and science of teaching.

 

Districts must be sure that new teachers prior to being hired:

• Do as much pre-student teaching field experience as possible where they work with children in school and afternoon settings
• Observe master teachers in several classrooms
• Have a minimum of a full semester of student teaching under the supervision of a highly qualified master cooperating teacher
• Receive additional mentoring from outside mentors (i.e. former teachers working as field specialist/mentors through Universities)

Once hired they:

• Are properly supervised and observed by Principals, Assistant Principals and department chairs. This includes 3 observations per semester with pre observation and post observation meetings.
• Receive peer mentoring by in school master teachers
• Are provided adequate planning time and are therefor excused from committee busy work
• Use Critical Friends and or Lesson study peer support
• Continue PD and continuing education through Universioties and District Teacher Centers

TFA was awarded a 50 million dollar grant from DOE this year, and 18.2 million by another billionaire in Arizona to show how TFA’s training should be a national model.  If one copies from a model is that art? Reproduction? Or is It more like paint by numbers?

Barbara Tuchman, in her book, The March of Folly, from Troy to Vietnam, defines ”Folly” as the pursuit of public policy contrary to self-interest where people pursue the same failed policies and expect different results!

We have slipped to the 27th rung on the international standardized tests because people who know nothing about education make decisions as to what and how students are taught. Successful schools, both abroad and at home, are run by trained professional, unionized educators-not billionaires and politicians! All teachers should be able to pass subject matter, pedagogical knowledge, and MOST IMPORTANTLY a demonstration lesson BEFORE entering any classroom. Good education has to be provided in the classroom, the home, the community and the culture.  The least we can do is provide the best-trained teachers possible to make our urban public schools the pride of the nation once again.

There are NO SHORTCUTS to quality education.  That is why TFA NEEDS TO: LISTEN, GET FIXED… OR GO.

GROWING UP IN THE SOUTH BRONX ENLIGHTENED THIS “WHITE SHADOW”.

WARNING: URBAN LANGUAGE  AHEAD

William Wordsworth wrote in his famous poem, The Rainbow, “The child is the father of the man.” It sure applies to me.

I went to kindergarten in PS 96, the Bronx. At the time it was in the mostly Jewish Pelham Parkway area. I wasn’t there long. My mom and I had to move out of our nice digs to my grandmother’s place in the south (at the time misnamed east) Bronx. It turns out that we were evicted for lack of rent. Dad did not pay his obligated monthly child support and alimony payments and mom’s job in the garment district as a former model turned “Gal Friday” paid her slave wages. She had no union. So, like little red riding hood, it was off to grandmother’s (Mom’s mom) I went, and PS 61, on Boston Road and Charlotte Street to finish kindergarten.

You might know grandma’s place. President Jimmy Carter visited the area. She lived on Minford Place and Charlotte Street. Somehow we were able to move to our own place a few blocks away on Longfellow Ave. and 172nd street, not far from Grandma and a block from my new scholastic and athletic home, PS 66. It was there that I endured Mrs. Witch in class 1-3. I have one class picture of me in a cowboy outfit. I was smiling; it must have been Halloween. It was probably the only time. I smiled in first grade. What I do remember is getting yelled out for putting my feet in the aisle because I didn’t fit under those screwed in wooden desks.

My second grade teacher spoiled me. Actually after 2nd grade, there wasn’t much in school I was interested in except playing ball in the schoolyard with my mostly black and Puerto Rican buddies. The other Jewish kids were doing their homework. Actually, I don’t remember much of 3rd, 4th, or 6th grades. I skipped 5th grade. I guess I really was gifted. I only remember 6th grade because of 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.

PS 66 was on Jennings Street and Longfellow Ave, in the part of the south Bronx that was changing rapidly. It was a place where white (mostly Jewish) flight was already happening. What is with my people? Why do they always have an exodus when “those” people move in? PS 66 was a well “integrated” school with fewer and fewer white students annually. Black, Puerto Rican and white kids just played together and went to classes together. We were all the same to each other, although I do remember my mom saying that all although all people deserve equal rights, I still couldn’t bring a “colored” into the house. Perplexed, I believed the first statement and was forced to follow the second.

That takes me back to 2nd grade. Miss Stafford was our teacher. She must have been the ripe old age of 23. We had no idea. We were 7. To us she was ancient. She was also incredible. When she passed away in 2009 several of us from her 2nd grade class were at her memorial service. This is who she was to the world.

“Dr. Rita Dunn, an authority on learning styles, a professor in the Division of Administrative and Instructional Leadership and the director of the Center for the Study of Learning and Teaching Styles became an inspiring, internationally renowned professor of higher education; prolific author of 32 textbooks and more than 450 manuscripts and research papers; the recipient of 31 professional research awards, and expert on using individual learning styles to improve teaching. During her career at St. Johns, Dr. Dunn mentored more than 160 doctoral students, many of whom now occupy positions of leadership throughout the world.”

Little did we know as 7 year olds entering Rita Stafford’s class 2-1 in PS 66, Bx. in September of 1956, that we were to become happy guinea pigs. 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 12 years, and at our last reunion, twelve years ago and 44 years after our second grade class.

I can’t count the number of times I have told people how we learned about Little Rock and Civil Rights by reading the newspapers and actually writing letters of advice to President Eisenhower. We all got along and couldn’t figure out what was going on down there. (We even received a reply and were quoted in the New York Times. (Go look. Second Grade Bronx Pupils Query President On Bias In The South 4/19/57). When I taught at Scarsdale High School, Terrence Roberts, one of the Little Rock Nine, was honored and I showed him the article. Tears welled up in his eyes as he thanked me. Through the letter writing experience we learned that in the right atmosphere, kids from all ethnicities could live, work, and play together while even becoming civil rights activists while still in second grade.

I left Longfellow Avenue in 1960 after “graduating” elementary school. I moved 3 blocks away to Vyse Ave and 173^rd street. I went to (the soon to be “notorious”) Herman Ridder JHS until 1963. During that 3-year period of time, the pace at which the neighborhood changed increased geometrically. Mom got more and more worried. When I went to Ridder it was still integrated, but maybe 70-30 with white kids being the minority. Then as I stayed there, “we” became more of a minority. There were very few white kids by the time I graduated. I guess I was a White Shadow. I became friends with Ron Ingram, Walter Jones, and Clarence Thomas who became a well-known musician in the Jimmy Castor and Fatback Bands in the 70s. – – All black guys.

One conversation that I remember was with my friend, Walter. He said you know I really feel sorry for you. I said why? And he said, because all white girls are ugly and black girls are really much more attractive. Remember, he’s like a year and a half older then me, so I’m like, who cares? And then I would look around and I would realize that he was right, but at the time I didn’t care enough to do anything about it.

One time. This friend of mine, Fred, who was the only white kid I became friendly with, and I were walking home from school down 173^rd Street, when three black kids we didn’t know, mugged us because we weren’t the toughest looking kids in the neighborhood. We were younger, and we were a little pudgy at the time. We were easy targets. That was the only time I ever had a negative experience when I lived there.

Of course my mother freaked. So in the middle of ninth grade we “had to” move somewhere else. Again, because of my mom’s lack of money we could not afford to move to the mostly white northern Bronx or the virtually all white part of the Bronx called Riverdale. People in Riverdale never said that they were from the Bronx. They tried to convince people that they lived in a separate place called Riverdale.

We did move to the Roosevelt Gardens on 171^st and the Grand Concourse. But at the time, the Concourse was also rapidly changing. The Roosevelt Gardens had once been a very famous building. A full city block, it was named after Theodore Roosevelt. Built in 1903, it was a huge complex of apartments – – buildings that opened up into this huge courtyard. It was probably beautiful at one time, before I moved in, but it was already deteriorating when I got there.

As I said, I went to the Bronx High School Of Science. Interestingly enough Walter went and Ron also did. They were two of the very few black males there. We took a test and got in. I hated it and the commute. I wanted just cross the Concourse and go to my local high school, Taft. I wasn’t very studious, especially compared to the other students. I did poorly. Out of a class of 950, I ranked 903^rd with an average of roughly 80. Part of the reason was that I spent more time playing basketball, softball and football at Taft every afternoon and all weekend. Taft had this huge schoolyard where we could actually play full games of softball, full games of tackle football, even though it was asphalt.   And so I would go to the other (“dark”) side of the Concourse, therefore coming in contact and making friends with more guys of color. I played ball with them well into my adult years. They had a great influence on my views on people, race, and bigotry.

When once asked if I made any connections between what was going on in the country in terms of Civil Rights, and my life in Bronx, I responded, yes. Because of my experience back in second grade and growing up as I did, I was always aware of civil rights and race issues. You know, as a kid, I didn’t want to read the newspaper, but there it was, and on occasion I would read the newspaper, and see stuff that was on TV, and I remember being very interested and intrigued with the 1963 March on Washington, and what was I? 12-13 years old?

Martin Luther King fascinated me, and for some reason I got very intrigued with Adam Clayton Powell, because I liked his hat. He was standing behind Martin Luther King, and had that hat on, and I said who is that guy? And then I found out who he was, and I was like, oh wow he’s from here; he’s from New York. And so I continued trying to figure out why civil rights was an issue 7 years after my second grade experience.

I was shocked by what I saw on TV in Mississippi and Alabama and it became a growing interest, although at some points I do remember wishing I was older so that I could do some of the things like, going down to Mississippi, but that was a little later on in 1964-5. I was still too young.

In 1965 NYC and the northeast US experienced a famous blackout. My friends and I, of various colors, discovered that there was a stuck “D” train on the express track right in the subway station on our corner. We decided to help get people out. So we broke into a storeroom in the basement of my building and brought a few ladders to bring down to the train to help these people. As we approached the corner (with me in front) a cop turned the corner and drew his gun. He accused us of trying to loot or steal and I had to explain our true purpose. I am convinced that if I wasn’t up front AND WHITE, some bad shit would have gone down. Instead he escorted us down to the train where we helped rescue a couple of hundred stranded souls.

Can you imagine if none of us was white? Talk about White Privilege.

Closer to home, Coop City opened up in the northeast Bronx and increased white flight 100 fold and fueled much of the newly “burning” South Bronx. I remember that my family and friends’ families were bitching and moaning about how the neighborhood kept “getting worse”, and I just kept saying, but if you didn’t leave it would be okay. I remember having heated arguments with people in my family and my mother, who wanted to move but couldn’t afford to move, but she defended everybody else who did.

As our building began to deteriorate even more rapidly, I learned my landlord’s name, Weinreb, who had become one of the most infamous slumlords in the nation. I remember my mother having to deal with the heat that didn’t work, the faucets that wouldn’t get fixed, the rats, the roaches, and the paint jobs that wouldn’t get done, and watching this place deteriorate in front of my eyes, and everybody moaning and groaning, and claiming that “it’s the new people moving in”, and I knew it’s not the people moving in! “It’s NOT the people moving in … it’s the landlord!”

And so I started getting angrier with people. Many white or Jewish “friends, family, or acquaintances would ask me, “What are you? The “anti-Jew?” Why don’t stick up for your own people?

I married and moved to the north Bronx in the mid 1970’s and I found my mom an apartment not far from me. The Roosevelt Gardens was condemned and shuttered soon after. It eventually was restored. I go back and visit from time to time.

As an adult, I came to learn that to have grown up working-class poor in an integrated urban setting allowed me to think much more freely about race.

Eventually I got married, had a kid (actually 2) and moved to the suburban town where I now live. I got incredibly frustrated with some of the people with whom I became neighbors. I was teaching in the Bronx, and some of them taught in the Bronx. However, when they got home they felt free to say all of the things they couldn’t say when they were at work. In the safety of their backyards they could talk about the “spics” and the “schvartze” (Yiddish for n—-r). We used to argue, and let’s just say that we never became friends because I was constantly defending the kids I was teaching, the neighbors I grew up with, and my friends of color. I felt like I was in the position of having to defend everything that I thought I was right.

Once I was in a conversation at a school committee on race at the whitest of the 3 high schools I worked. Some teachers on the Race Committee were actually afraid to talk about the subject. The people most afraid to talk about the subject were those who had rarely been in contact with anybody less white than himself or herself. For example the use of the “n-word” came up. Somebody in the conversation stuttered as they asked if it is ever ok to use the “n-word”. And I would say in my opinion, if you were not calling someone a name, but you actually want to talk about the word, you can actually say the word you want to talk about.

So for a little shock therapy I told them that when I was growing up I was called “my nigga” by some of my black friends…. and a “white nigger” by some racist folks I met along the way. When I was playing ball and slinging footballs accurately all around the place, I heard things like, “Damn, that “White Nigga” can throw.” I was proud to have been accepted. But when racist fools told me that I was just a “white nigger” for supporting civil rights, I was offended. Intent matters. Now don’t go getting all offended at those stories. I’m just “keepin it ” 100”.

My experiences in those neighborhoods allowed me to respect my fellow students, my students, my friends and taught me the real meaning of respect. It molded how I saw people and made friends, and how I taught, not just when I taught in my Bronx, but elsewhere where I met kids from varied backgrounds. My experiences allowed me to “code switch” and listen. My experiences allowed me to have the privilege of being able to get the respect of students as well as adults of color as it gave me the ability to respect them. My experiences also allowed me to know first hand how being white is an advantage. I am convinced that if all children had my experiences and grew up in integrated neighborhoods this world would be a better place.