Reading through an OpEd in The Boston Globe, Choppy waters for teaching, by Junia Yearwood, I was struck by her struggles as a teacher to maintain a consistent and effective approach to her ninth grade students and their study of English.
However, I was more struck by the fact that she is talking about 27 years of teaching—teaching in which there was no agreed path, no consistent educational doctrine running through the school system, year after year, guiding the students on an agreed path. Rather, it was churn.
I will be honest, from ninth grade I remember only Mr Dibs and drafting class and gym. The rest has receded into the mists of time. But, I am smart enough to know that the English teacher was also preparing me for my future. I remember my high school English teachers, Ms Glada Thrawl and, in another grade, a pert young woman who gave me extra credit for reading my way through James Joyce's Ulysses—"banned in Boston", all 548 pages.
The question is, how long will we continue to hazard our children and our own future by not having a serious and consistent approach to education? I sometimes make this point for someone by counting up the number of generations that have passed since a young women entered Kindergarten when Judge Arthur Garrity issued his famous ruling. If they actually graduated high school before getting married and getting pregnant, we are talking the third generation. Ms Yearwood makes me dispair that Judge Garrity did anything for Boston Schools. The more scary scenario is that he made a major positive change, but it just wasn't enough.
I think we need to be listening to Teacher Junia Yearwood and hear what she is telling us. Then we need to take action to really turn this nation around in terms of education. It isn't going to be through spending more money or through the Federal Department of Education. It is going to be local parents and local concerned citizens working together to pick a plan and then making sure the schools stick to it for a while. And, it is going to mean helping those young students who come from homes where there are no books or magazines. They need extra help with English. And the young women who are going in the direction of having a baby rather than having a shot at graduating from High School. The statistics are telling a grim story and they are predicting a less than successful future—for all of us.
Regards — Cliff
Cliff, this may help in graph form.
ReplyDeletehttp://graphjam.memebase.com/2010/11/26/funny-graphs-awkward-showers-too/
If link doesn't work.
High School is basically jail, mere containment. It's to keep teens occupied, then entering education or skills to enter adulthood. They're approaching adulthood, and they have very little choice to determine anything regarding maturity. Having a baby is ultimately rebelling from the constricted lifestyle, teens really live in or the other option to go anorexic.
Don't ask me how this happened, but just a shade before 5 this morning I started wondering about Mr. Mill City. This response to the Boston Magazine high school rankings woke me up!
ReplyDeleteColor me unimpressed. To manage my business, I’ll take a seasoned Red Raider over these green Ghosts any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. Sure these pickles can average 500 on their SAT’s, but can they survive Spirit Day in the Riddick Field House?
I’ve checked out all these schools on the list…and they’re all identical. The only thing that sets them apart is the different ways the parents are spelling Aiden and Braiden. In other words, nobody needs to take the LRTA to school because mom has Volvo Cross Country that seats 6.
And how on any planet is “graduation rate” an authentic measurement for how good a school is. What, if Lowell High all of a sudden had a 12 to 1 teacher to student ratio, are we saying that would keep for example, the (fill in the blank Asian kid) from dropping out to join TRG? How about the kid that drops out because he’s working full time at night and he’s having trouble waking up for school? Or the sophomore who drops out because she’s expecting her second child? How is that an indictment on the school?
Seems to me you didn’t even need to bring in Babson Professors to do crazy math formulas (averaging) to complete these rankings. You could have just listed the top 50 schools in the state based on a community’s household income and celebrated the exact same results. But, I’m just a Lowell High graduate, and that would probably make too much sense.
Thanks for both comments.
ReplyDeleteI think the house-hold income is representative of something else. To just cite house-hold income is to miss that there are cultural factors undergirding that house-hold income.
Naming those undergirding cultural factors can only get one in trouble. It gets into value judgments and labeling of things.
Regards — Cliff
The labeling stuff is dangerous, but it's also dangerous to squash ideas because they might seem improper.
ReplyDeleteExperiences shape and form you. I reference my 2002-03 experience a lot because it is responsible for so much of what I think, and why. Student-teaching for a year in a public high school that spends $27k per year per student (that's according to the very same Boston magazine issue cited above) but didn't always produce results taught me a lot about a lot.
You can have 12-person classes. You can have brand-new textbooks and computers. You can have your pick of the young, super-motivated save-the-world type of teachers. You can offer all the after-school resources in the world.
ALL of those things can't overcome the bigger issues that affect the outside environment of an average student at Acton-Boxborough versus that of an average student at English H.S.
Yes, you can argue the counterfactual about how Cambridge students might fare WITHOUT all those bells and whistles...but I'm inclined to say that without bigger changes,as the MMC writer says, things like public high school rankings are pretty much going to mirror their areas' incomes.
I have thought, for a long time, that it is the job of the student to learn and everything else is to help him or her. Or, as I put it, one should not let school interfere with one's education. A hard, bitter comment, but a lot of truth there.
ReplyDeleteRanking schools and teachers as schools and teachers ignores the socio-economic and cultural factors that contribute to success. On the other hand, the Jack Welch approach to management—getting rid of the bottom 10% of managers each year—has a certain primitive effectiveness. I don't like the Jack Welch approach, but I think truth sits somewhere in the middle.
Regards — Cliff
Regards — Cliff
For older grades, how many of the teachers actually enjoy the subject matter they are teaching. Like many in high school, I felt very demotivated by the circumstances but I have to admit looking back the teachers actually like the subjects they taught. I can't really think of any bad teachers in that concern.
ReplyDeleteIn elementary school though, I had a few teachers looking back in memory I thought shouldn't be in the profession. They were much older women, closing onto retirement in the mid 80s. While intelligent, I can only assume they became teachers because of limited career opportunities.
Because women do have opportunities outside of being a teacher, it seems we also lost a larger of pool of candidates.