The Observation Deck

Sean Wheeler wrote:Wow. That's not the way I see it. At all. Are there no depths?

Could you could be a little more specific about how you do see it.
Enlighten me.

As for there being no depths...let me use a line we've heard from our President.
"If it saves one child..."

I think it's how we perceive things in life.

There are many factors working to influence public education on the national and state levels. Some of those factors seem to me, to be in it for the money. Other factors, left-wing, right-wing, or otherwise, would appear to be in the scrabble for political or philosophical reasons.

I don't think that any one factor has a dominant push. The evidence for that is the wild dynamic discussion and policy shifts that periodically transpire in the national discussion.

I won't speak for Sean, but as a fellow teacher who spent more than 30 years in the classroom, I will tell you that there is a huge difference between what some philosophical "suit" might espouse on TV, and dealing with a kid who throws up on you on the first day of school!

Yes, that has happened to me. You don't handle that philosophically. You do handle it calmly, rationally, and with every ounce of compassion and common sense at your disposal. You may want to barf yourself, but you do that later and privately. You ALWAYS put the kid's needs ahead of your own, or you're not fit to be a teacher.

That's the great thing about REAL day-to-day public education. Yes, there are mistakes made, and the assignment alluded to here on this thread was apparently a mistake made by a single teacher, and not a school system.

But for the most part, at least in my experience, public school teachers do a great job, at times under very challenging conditions. They do not concern themselves with personal philosophies. I do not recall EVER seeing a teacher let their personal philosophies get in the way of providing a good education.

I would encourage anyone doubting the excellence in the Lakewood Schools to go and visit. It's been my experience that what is discussed nationally about education only rarely comes to the local classroom. There's simply too much practical work to be done.

Please support the Lakewood School levy.

Back to the banjo...

You don't really care how I see it, Roy. You clearly have made up your mind. This isn't a conversation, it's a straw-man/slippery slope escapade filled with not-at-all subtle swipes at the integrity of the work my fellow educators and I are engaged in. Education is not indoctrination, it's exploration.

The depths of paranoia and blatant ignorance on display in this thread regarding what it is we actually DO in school seem bottomless. Not only is it bottomless, it's intentionally so. Your mind is made up, as is Bill's. I haven't been making an argument, I've been sharing my reality, a reality that you two simply fail to take into account. Why listen to reality when you can plum the depths of pseudo-political mudslinging and public fear-mongering?

Read "The American Scholar" by Ralph Waldo Emerson if you wan to know where I'm coming from. While not the sole influence on my work, it is akin to the American foundational texts that clearly interest you.

As for the idea of continuing to ride this dead and beaten horse, I don't really see the benefit. I'm still goin to show up and do my best to live up to the high expectations our community has for my students and I, and you and Bill are still going to minimize and misrepresent our work via logical fallacies and anecdotal tales of misdeeds and malpractice. No thanks.

Sean, I commend you for your patience with exactly what you have just described.

Patience or an affinity for brick walls?

Much of this conversation has been downright Dickensian. Here's the opening few paragraphs of Hard Times (1854).

'NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing
but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else,
and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of
reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any
service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own
children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these
children. Stick to Facts, sir!'

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and
the speaker's square forefinger emphasized his observations by
underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster's
sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's square wall of a
forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found
commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall.
The emphasis was helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide,
thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's
voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis
was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of
his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its
shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum
pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts
stored inside. The speaker's obstinate carriage, square coat,
square legs, square shoulders, - nay, his very neckcloth, trained
to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a
stubborn fact, as it was, - all helped the emphasis.

'In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!'

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person
present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the
inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order,
ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they
were full to the brim.

Sean,
I don't know why you say I've made up my mind. If my mind was made up, I wouldn't be asking for clarification on your position.

Regarding bias:
You say you and other educators are non-biased. I would certainly like to believe that, but a simple search of the news turns up stories of...well, I've posted one or two of them and there's plenty more.
Is it a majority? No.
Is it happening in Lakewood? Not that I've heard about.
Could it happen? Certainly it could, unless teachers, administrators and parents are vigilant against it.

When a retiring NEA higher-up states that (paraphrasing), 'We don't exist to advocate for children, we are in this for power.' I can't help but be a little concerned, especially given the amount of cheering that came from the crowd.

Regarding standards:
Much of this is a matter of my perspective. I deal with people of all ages who can't string together a coherent sentence. Teenagers who, as I mentioned before, can't read an analog clock and don't know their address. I once had a 20+ year old say to me, "I'm still not used to these number things." I can't help but ask myself if the educational system is at fault.

I do believe, whether by intent or not, that this thread has pushed towards becoming less of a neighborhood conversation and more of an ideological public questioning regarding many aspects of public education; sadly and unfortunately, at a very critical and sensitive time for the the Lakewood schools.

Rather than rising to engage in any negative wheel-spinning regarding hypothetical global issues, I'll simply try to make my observations here short and to the point:

Roy and I have been over this same ground before regarding an individual's remarks being taken out of context. The remarks to which Roy alluded, when viewed in their proper perspective, clearly did not mean what a few right wingers would have liked for them to mean. Supporting unionized power and the right to organize and to advocate for one's rights does not exclude supporting children. To the contrary, thousands of teachers have supported all of these ideals for many years. Indeed, my own teacher's association provided scholarship monies to many students over the years.

It would be my sincere hope that the vast majority of teachers clearly try, (both in and out of the classroom) to be patient and relatively unbiased. They try to teach children, (and I would hope, by example, the rest of us) to be critical thinkers, and be able to sift through a hodgepodge of rhetoric and bias, in order to get closer to the truth. At the same time, teachers, like the rest of the population, have a right to have their say, and to stand up for their own rights as well, so there is that fine line involved.

Knowledge involves attainment of a proficiency and then the application of that proficiency in the real world. "Facts", on the other hand, have often been found not to be quite so factual as more and more about our world has been discovered. The world is no longer, for example, considered to be flat. Many so-called 19th century medicines once thought to be helpful have been shown to be harmful, and on and on and on.

Education is now no longer thought to conclude in the 8th or for that matter, even the 12th grade. Life-long learning is the new reality for all of us.

Some people may, for their own personal reasons, have issues with certain aspects of public education, but providing that education to everyone is absolutely critical to American society. Far from being concerned that our teachers and schools be unbiased, it is my supposition that many of our public school's critics simply do not believe that the schools are biased enough towards their own narrow-minded points of view.

Far from the idea of "bias", I would rather think that what those critics detest most is the "open-minded fairness" that public schools are well known for.

One more thing..school districts and willing teachers represent but two parts of the educational equation. You also have parental involvement and support, as well as student participation in the mix. Some students will apply themselves, and some won't. That may be one reason why there are some students out there who missed the boat regarding time-telling. All I can say however, is that I never met a student who did not know the precise second that the old clock ticked away the end of a school day.

Public schools are there to support the education of all. For that reason, all need to support their schools; particularly, our upcoming levy.

Back to the banjo.

Roy Pitchford wrote:Is it happening in Lakewood? Not that I've heard about.
Could it happen? Certainly it could, unless teachers, administrators and parents are vigilant against it.

If it's not happening in Lakewood that you are aware of, why is it an issue? I mean if we take you literally then certainly there is a probabilistic chance of literally ANYTHING happening, including all the teachers coming to work in clown suits. Why is no one worried about that?

Oh right, because as you said, no one has heard anything about it.

Thealexa Becker wrote:

Roy Pitchford wrote:Is it happening in Lakewood? Not that I've heard about.
Could it happen? Certainly it could, unless teachers, administrators and parents are vigilant against it.

If it's not happening in Lakewood that you are aware of, why is it an issue?

Because Common Core is coming next school year. The library has been gearing up for it in book purchasing for several months.
This pseudo-curriculum (in the form of standards) worries me and many others. Once it becomes implemented, the odds of uprooting it drop significantly. Better to try to stop it now.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Roy Pitchford wrote:

Thealexa Becker wrote:

Roy Pitchford wrote:Is it happening in Lakewood? Not that I've heard about.
Could it happen? Certainly it could, unless teachers, administrators and parents are vigilant against it.

If it's not happening in Lakewood that you are aware of, why is it an issue?

Because Common Core is coming next school year. The library has been gearing up for it in book purchasing for several months.
This pseudo-curriculum (in the form of standards) worries me and many others. Once it becomes implemented, the odds of uprooting it drop significantly. Better to try to stop it now.

Who others? Seems like just you and Call.

And what books?

... ready ... set ... go ...

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130416/NEWS0102/304160017?nclick_check=1

Thealexa Becker wrote:

Roy Pitchford wrote:

Thealexa Becker wrote:If it's not happening in Lakewood that you are aware of, why is it an issue?

Because Common Core is coming next school year. The library has been gearing up for it in book purchasing for several months.
This pseudo-curriculum (in the form of standards) worries me and many others. Once it becomes implemented, the odds of uprooting it drop significantly. Better to try to stop it now.

Who others? Seems like just you and Call.

And what books?

The "many others" wasn't specific to Lakewood. I was looking at nation-wide.
As for the books, I can't supply specific names of books or book series at the moment, but I was told that because of a shift in the schools, there would be a similar shift in ordering.
My issue is not with the books we purchased. I love having more non-fiction books for the children to read, but for every one of these non-fiction books we buy, there are perfectly acceptable and valuable fiction books we aren't buying.

Matthew John Markling wrote:... ready ... set ... go ...

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130416/NEWS0102/304160017?nclick_check=1

I was looking over this article and I have a few observations:

1. Sean was insisting that these standards were only for Math and Language Arts...

It’s not just affecting Language Arts classes. The Common Core calls for more reading, writing and vocabulary work in social studies and science, too.

In social studies students in Ohio will read from historical documents such as the U.S. Constitution or Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In science they’ll likely read lab reports and articles from scientific journals.

So, this will be effecting the curriculum in Social Studies and Science classes.

2.

The students will also read informational texts such as excerpts from the New Deal, propaganda, and articles about the American Dream and the roles of women, African Americans and people with special needs.

I have no problem with discussing diversity from a historical context, but what information is eliminated to make room for it?

3.

Cristina Valdiva, a West Chester sophomore, said she loved reading MacBeth because “it was a little twisted,” but she also enjoyed recent articles on President Obama and the recently injured basketball player Kevin Ware.

“I like reading nonfiction because you get to know what’s actually happening,” Cristina said. “Fiction kind of lies to you.”

Can't non-fiction lie to you too?

<sarcasm>Yes, it sure would be a shame if my daughter learned from teachers who followed these examples:

http://www.eyeoneducation.com/bookstore ... _Davis.pdf

</sarcasm>

In a turn of irony, I am usually opposed to these national initiatives because it leans to memorizing things to prove something on a test. However, the more I read about Common Core, the more I like what it is trying to accomplish.

Basically, instead of setting a test based on whether a student can remember facts (although those ARE important also), it seems to be teaching a process by which kids can be comfortable with reading, analyzing, debating and coming up with their own thoughts.

Not only does this prepare one better for college but, even if not attending college, it prepares one better for life.