by Tom Allon
How did we get to a place in this country that our teaching force of more than 4 million professionals is being made the scapegoat for all the mistakes and ills of an educational system that has been in decline for more than five decades?
The scapegoat, as any good teacher of literature will teach their tenth graders, is an age-old historical device that has been used by political leaders, religious figures and novelists as a convenient device to shift blame and derision in times of crisis.
In 21st century America we are alarmed each year when we learn that countries around the world are passing us easily in the left lane on the global education highway. Our elected leaders, many of whom have not set foot in a classroom in decades, reshuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic by closing down “failing schools” and insist that we “test” children more, weed out “bad” teachers and then all will be solved, like a Euclidean equation that has eluded mathematicians for decades.
But then when things don’t improve, they look for excuses and continue their misguided attempts to measure progress of students and teachers by allowing testing companies to make millions of dollars to administer ineffective tests that tell us that our kids are falling further and further behind their peers in other countries.
It is an old truism that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and each time expecting a different result.
Our education system, led by elected leaders who should try teaching five classes of 35 kids each for just one week, is, unfortunately, “insane.”
There are some “cures” for this insanity. But like medicine, we need to properly diagnose the ills of the patient before we can prescribe the proper remedies.
First of all, our children are not being stimulated from an early age and many lose interest in learning by the time they are in elementary school. We think that the “one size fits all” public education system, an industrial model designed in the mid-1900s, should work in this post-information and digital age.
This is clearly wrong and we must now design curriculums that set every child’s mind “on fire,” even if it means using digital technology much more in the classroom, incorporate online learning, animation and vocational training for those who are not traditional academic learners.
The most important function of learning is to find something that excites each student and makes them feel successful. This is step number one in making our children “lifelong learners.”
Along these lines, we need to attract, train and retain teachers who can inspire and motivate students. As prominent education historian Diane Ravitch wrote in her book, “The Death and Life of the American Education System,” it was her third grade teacher who inspired her, but who may not have scored high on “value added” evaluation systems we now administer in New York City.
Teachers are probably the most valuable commodity this country has and yet we spend so little to train them properly and retain them. A little-known NEA report a few years ago highlighted the shortcomings of teacher training in America and prescribed numerous ways to remedy this national crisis.
Training teachers is not a one-week series of seminars before their first days in the classroom. It’s not a theoretical class in one of our educational graduate programs. It means at least one year of vigorous apprenticeship before entering the classroom as a lead teacher and then a 5-10 year series of mentoring programs that are conducted by “master teachers” or “mentors,” two new tiers of teaching that I would recommend to remedy our teacher training and retaining crisis (50 percent of American teachers leave the profession in their first five years).
There is another intangible thing necessary to lift our country out of our downward spiral: R-E-S-P-E-C-T for teachers and the teaching profession.
We need to emulate Finland and Singapore and other education systems that are working: attract the top quartile from colleges graduating classes to teach in public schools, pay them well, train them continuously AND give them an exalted place in society. Tax breaks and housing subsidies or stipends. Bonuses for “master teachers” and “mentors.”
And give teachers and students great working environments and facilities: rebuild our schools and ensure they have broadband and great auditoriums, gymnasiums, science labs and technology centers. Use public real estate — the land that exists beneath and above our current public schools — and wisely trade it for new schools with public-minded developers who want to well while doing good.
The path to education victory is not as simple as A-B-C. But it’s also not as hard as the Pythagorean Theorem. It just takes a paradigm shift for our elected leaders to stop searching for scapegoats and start acting like real superheroes.
Our kids — this generation and the next one — can’t wait any longer. We need the fierce urgency of now to stop the educational insanity which plagues our society.
But first we must put our Teachers and Students First — ahead of Politicians and the Testing Industry.
Tom Allon is a Liberal and Democratic candidate for Mayor of New York City in 2013. He is a former public school English teacher who has helped create two successful public high schools in New York.
Beautifully written and Oh so true!!! I did my training (most of it idiocy) Masters K-12 at Teacher’s College and started but was cut short by disabling illness. This was in 2002 and the lack of supplies, overcrowded classrooms, idiot paperwork plus the constant observance of a principal who knew nothing about the children other than how to terrorize teachers was already discouraging. The tests were stupid and boring for both teacher and student. And that was 10 years ago – today my teacher friends tell me it’s worse – no respect – some crazy idea that “better teamwork” will effect positive changes to a system that is structurally flawed and BROKE and the idea that new fresh “better trained” young teachers will effect magic.
In the TV pro-teacher ads various successful adults talk about how a teacher and education has given them life and success. That’s fine but I noticed that all of these successes were engineers, mathematicians, bio-chemists, and technology graduates. What happened to teaching Literature, Sociology, Geography and the Humanities. (I’m not even mentioning possibilities of music or art they are so frivolous.) Where is the whole person in this – the young person who understands his government, crucial world events – the adult who will make decisions in life changing moments where the rules are not set in stone. Are we to only create bridges, IPODs, medical products and armaments? And in math, bio, and basic technology we don’t even have the labs and ideas that can make these valuable educations relevant to the average middle school child. It’s still mostly taught by rote and assessed by one-fits-all test scores. Or should we go to the Chinese way (where the majority of the Chinese population only goes to 6th grade) and use brute harrassment to create the kind of robots we need to compete with their best and brightest.? We need people to think out of the box not in the box that has made such a mess of this country. And we’re not doing it.
I am surprised that you, as a former teacher, mentioned nothing about discipline problems that hamper teaching. If there are any culprits in this blame game, it may well be parents.
Other than the six months student teaching and the two years teacher ed (which included teaching) I would not qualify myself as a teacher. I have done volunteer work in after school, a summer day camp session and some years assisting students in a local Community Center I’ve directed enough activities to be quite aware of problems with discipline which is a small part of the problem.
I do not consider I ever really became a teacher (which is what I wanted to do since I was in my twenties and circumstances prevented i.e. taking any kind of job because I was left to support 3 children by myself.
By the time (after a horrible 6 years at Willowbrook State School and 16 miserable years in the Corporate World where I finally was downsized) I made the decision to go to Teacher’s College Columbia for the Masters K-12 program I was older and, even though the doctors told me I was fine, I had a degenerative disease that finally made me too ill to work.
“Class Management” which is a relevant course in the Teacher Ed program (because of problems really replicating it in the classroom environment) does not prepare new teacher ed students to really manage a class – here are the serious discipline problems of which you speak.
Yes some of the parents are horrible and many of the students are just as bad. The classes are too crowded and paperwork too involved to even eject what may only be a few disruptive students. Not only this but you are told not to document discipline problems because it may reflect upon the reputation of the school (and sometimes the reputation of a terrified principal who is hanging onto his/her job with his/her fingernails.)
I did become aware in many of my experiences that the best “Class Management” seemed to be demonstrated by the more experience teacher not newbies. By the time I gave up I think I had only assimilated a tiny fraction of the skill involved in real class management (i.e. How to calm a situation down without murdering a youngster.)
This cannot be taught in any “Principal Training” or teacher training class. It must be learned over the years and it is hard. There are also no support systems anymore. When my children were in school (many years ago) there was a social worker who worked on to one with difficult students. There were many more creative after school programs that utilized excess energy and helped with general self-esteem.
In the NYC school where I taught you had a 45 minute class. The school was huge and half the students were able (even if they wanted to) to arrive on time. Then you had these old Delaney cards (for 35 to 40 students) arranged in their slots. Teachers liked to have students sit in desks that correlated exactly to the Delaney Card folder so they could call out names more quickly.
You were told not to report that the class size was too big as most of the students you had at the time would probably drop out or be absent most of the time. Too big classes reflected badly on the NYC school system and might be closed down.
On each Delaney Card you wrote present or absent and turned over- if present left upside down if absent. (Half the time you had to go back and re-write “Late” over the “Absent” when the student showed up tardy.
You wrote the purpose of the class on the backboard (never turning your back to the students so you learned to write sideways) – then the steps to achieve that purpose (Class Plan.) Most of the time there had been a different class before you or your classroom was changed so this procedure was duplicated many times.
In nonsensical fashion you also got printouts of student’s name with bubbles next to them stating “present” “absent,” and made sure the office downstairs got a copy so they could input it into their computers to track attendance (which was a crucial issue.)
If you were lucky you got almost 30 minutes for what is considered an hour class on a subject (the 15 minutes is supposed to allow students to get back and forth to class.)
Your student plans were often complicated and nonsense as for time allowed. i.e. If your one class purpose was to teach about a certain Civil War general or battle you would often have to use 2 class times to teach it (ineffectively often) and according to the school curriculum you would be falling back already and so would your students. So you rushed stuff and spent time training students to take a test emphasizing what questions would most probably be on it.
Most of the students I met a Columbia Teachers College told me they were only interested in being principals preferably in New Jersey (not Newark.)
In teacher’s ed classes you are lectured on the psychology of teaching, the philosophy and how to make complex presentations (for which equipment in most schools is lacking.)
Students are working off the books at jobs (like a butcher’s assistant where one boy sliced off the tip of a finger.) They are taking care of grandmothers and small siblings. They are angry because they are smart enough to know the American Dream will most likely not be theirs even if they could work. Most of them come to school without pens or pencils (I spent a fortune on those.)
No I am not and never really was a teacher. But I tried and I saw what I saw. I saw a broken system where there is not enough money (or mismanaged money) and no social safety nets for parents or children.
I saw teachers DISRESPECTED over and over again. Why I ever wanted to be a teacher is today, in my old age, something I cannot understand.
My grandchildren auditioned to various charter schools in the city for both Middle and High School. They were lucky with their local grammar schools (two with a lottery two lived in upscale neighborhoods.) Their classes are only about 25 children and their schools didn’t suffer with supplies (much of the supplies given by parents not the city.)
They’re the lucky ones. They don’t live in a project (where I lived for 12 years) nor have parents who need to work around the clock just to pay for food. But my grandchildren’s parents have been hit by the recession and their children my not be so lucky.
Yes Discipline is a problem (part of this I personally attribute to what I see as excessive parental permissiveness aggravated by the behavior of media idols). But the main problem is as always M O N E Y and lack of care at the top. Children are not robots and most of the facts they are taught may get them into college but will be pretty irrelevant to their jobs or personal lives.
But a good teacher can teach love of learning, respect and some awareness of the world around them. After all how much do you remember your high school trigonometry? But I bet you remember the teacher who sparked your curiosity or made you fell better about yourself!
In the middle of this American mess we call education is the teacher. Because the greedy always want to show that someone beside themselves is the culprit – the teacher suffers – he/she has failed.