Teaching Based on Doug Lemov's Robot Method
I posted this interview with former Brooklyn Ascend charter school teacher, Emily Talmadge Kennedy, in early 2014. Given the firestorm over the Relay Graduate School's dependence on Lemov's Teach Like a Champion, I am re-posting that entire interview below. In it Emily tells what it's like to teach in one of these oppressive, dehumanizing environments where children and teachers, alike, are roboticized into the KIPP Model of total compliance and parrot learning.
Emily now happily teaches third grade in a Lewiston, Maine public school and has given permission to post her entire interview, which was originally conducted with an assurance of her anonymity. Since moving to Maine, she has become an outspoken advocate for children and against corporate education reform. Emily's eloquence requires no embellishment. Readher blog posts here.
As you read, you may want to keep a tally of ethical breaches and statute violations by Brooklyn Ascend. I have heard all of these and more in interviews conducted with former KIPP teachers, which I will share in early in 2016.
INT: Tell me a little bit about your own education, and how you came to be a teacher.
R: I grew up in Brunswick, Maine. I went to public elementary and middle school, and then public high school for my senior year. I actually went to boarding school for three years of high school. I was at Exeter in New Hampshire. I spent four years at Amherst College, and I was an art major. I was a New York City teaching fellow, so I actually had no real education background. I moved to New York and started teaching at a public school for kids with severe special needs. I taught a class of kids who had emotional disturbances. It was third through fifth. I did that for three years. I carried through. I had a group that I started with in the third grade, and went through with them to fifth. After that, I thought, "I ought to try Schools Matter: Teaching Based on Doug Lemov's Robot Method: