On Teaching: An Open Letter to Marc Tucker
Marc, I have read your article, On Writing, and I am wondering about a couple of issues that I address in this post. The first issue is pronoun-centered– who “we” are. The second involves your discourse on “lower ranking” teachers.
I end by offering my own suggestions.
Who Are “We”?
One of the striking quotes in your article is
First, we stopped demanding that students read anything very challenging in school, and then we stopped holding our teachers or students accountable for the quality of student writing.
Since I require my public school students to read “very challenging” fiction and nonfiction, I am wondering if I am “we.” Now, I might just be “we” because I must use my professional judgment to guide students through some of those “very challenging” texts– and perhaps in your estimation such qualifies as my having “stopped demanding.” I know my students, and I know when turning a text like Julius Caesaror To Kill a Mockingbird over to them will result in frustration and discipline problems. However, based upon the class discussions during my guided reading, I know that they are challenged.
Of course, I realize that my professional judgment may not satisfy the “we.” Based upon my such judgment, I know that I must meet my students where they are with their reading and writing abilities and move forward. I cannot “demand” that they be anywhere other than where they are in their literacy.
As for the quality of my students’ writing, I am afraid that the mysterious “we” will again be disappointed. Yes, I have my students write. During the course of our writing, we discuss nuances of grammar, of word meaning, of word history, of differences in
On Teaching: An Open Letter to Marc Tucker
Marc, I have read your article, On Writing, and I am wondering about a couple of issues that I address in this post. The first issue is pronoun-centered– who “we” are. The second involves your discourse on “lower ranking” teachers. I end by offering my own suggestions. Who Are “We”? One of the striking quotes in your article is First, we stopped demanding that students read anything very challengi
My Article in the Washington Post on January 23, 2014
Below is the text of my article entitled, A Challenge: Teach Eighth Grade Common Core Before Endorsing It, published in the Washington Post on January 23, 2014. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ On January 21, 2014, Valerie Strauss’ Washington Post education blog, The Answer Sheet, ran a supposed “reaction to” education historian Diane
JAN 23
Connecticut Teacher Does Not Want Common Core; Weingarten Refuses to Validate the Sentiment
On January 17, 2014, veteran Connecticut teacher Elizabeth Natale wrote in the Courant about her disillusion with the pressures of corporate reform upon her West Hartford, middle-school classroom. In her article, Natale makes it clear that the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are part of that disillusion– not only the CCSS assessments– but CCSS itself: When I started teaching, I learned that dea
JAN 20
ALEC and Its (Reluctantly) Newly-created Jeffersonian Project
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been in existence for over forty years– since 1973. In 1975, ALEC registered as a nonprofit organization. By the late 1980s, ALEC had begun to “actively solicit more input from private sector members” as the ALEC “task forces” became “model bill movers.” Thus, by 1990, the current ALEC practice of involving corporate America in the drafting and
My MLK Post: An Assignment for Test-Driven Reformers
On this day dedicated to the memory of a remarkable man who gave his life (literally) for the sake of civil rights and social equity, I expect that education privatizers will use the opportunity to promote themselves as “overcoming” opposition to their self-serving, destructive policies. Such grandiose, corporate reformer self-titling is nothing new. Beginning with former President George W. Bush
JAN 18
Let’s Help NEA’s Dennis Van Roekel Forsake His Common Core “Guessing”
It seems that National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel is willing to ignore the “forest” of the spectrum of top-down, punitive, privatizer-friendly, anti-democratic, community-school-destroying reforms in favor of the “tree” of his narrow focus on issues regarding concerns over specific items in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). In this January 14, 2014, Education Week arti