On Teaching “Other People’s Children”
A post from Jose Luis Vilson recently popped up on my Facebook feed, featuring this quote from First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama, in a commencement address at Dillard University:
So my mother volunteered at my school — helping out every day in the front office, making sure our teachers were doing their jobs, holding their feet to the fire if she thought they were falling short. I’d walk by the office and there she’d be. (Laughter.) I’d leave class to go to the bathroom, there she’d be again, roaming the halls, looking in the classrooms. And of course, as a kid, I have to say, that was a bit mortifying, having your mother at school all the time.
But looking back, I have no doubt that my classmates and I got a better education because she was looking over those teachers’ shoulders. (Applause.) You see, my mom was not a teacher or a principal or a school board member. But when it came to education, she had that hunger. So she believed that our education was very much her business.
…which Jose prefaces with the following, “Every time someone says something, anything, about teachers, without fail, a naysayer always nags how it’s a conspiracy against teachers as a whole.”
Context is everything, and I must say I do take issue with both the messenger, and the message being made. Let’s look at the context. We have the first lady of an administration that has been hostile to teachers and teacher professionalism both in macro-policy and in statements about individual schools, and made some pretty racists and Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » On Teaching “Other People’s Children”: