The Great (Unemployed and Underpaid) Transformation | Teacher in a strange land

The Great (Unemployed and Underpaid) Transformation | Teacher in a strange land

The Great (Unemployed and Underpaid) Transformation

Short version of this blog:

No. We’re not going to get back to normal. The pandemic has changed everything.

You’ve probably seen the meme: There isn’t a ‘teacher shortage.’ There is a ‘Masters-level professionals willing to work for $35,000 shortage.’

And maybe you’re thinking… yeah, no, beginning teachers make a lot more than that. Well—not so much more, if at all. 

And then there’s this–In no state are teachers paid more than other college graduates. The situation has been steadily growing worse. And then all those underpaid teachers were asked to risk their lives, during two school years. Incredibly enough, nearly all of them did.

But COVID was the proverbial straw on the educational camel’s back. Teachers are getting out while the getting’s good.  How many? Depends on who’s asked, and whether they can continue to work at a career that doesn’t support a middle-class CONTINUE READING: The Great (Unemployed and Underpaid) Transformation | Teacher in a strange land

Ken Futernick: Teacher Stories about Life Today | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ken Futernick: Teacher Stories about Life Today | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ken Futernick: Teacher Stories about Life Today

About a decade ago, when policy elites were bashing teachers on a regular basis, Ken Futernick was writing about the challenges that teachers face every day, including lack of support by administrators and poor working conditions. Recently, he has been creating podcasts in which teachers explain how they teach about important issues of the day, like teaching about racism and the Black Lives Matter movement, teaching during the pandemic, and teaching history in a way that is relevant to all students. He shared these three podcasts with me.

Brown University Psychology Professor Malik Boykin Teaches about Prejudice and Invites us to Dance for FreedomMalik Boykin (aka Malik Starx) is an accomplished musician and a professor of psychology at Brown University where he teaches a course on stigma and prejudice. Boykin shares two transformational teacher stories–the first from second grade when he was sent to the principal’s office for raising questions about Christopher Columbus. The second is about Dr. Jaia John, his social psychology professor at Howard University who carved out time at the start each class for students to share a poem, a personal story, or even a musical performance that had some relation to the course content. 

Inspired by Dr. John, Boykin became a social CONTINUE READING: Ken Futernick: Teacher Stories about Life Today | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ending the year with hope | Laura Bradley

Ending the year with hope | Laura Bradley

ENDING THE YEAR WITH HOPE

Usually I’m a planner. I like to-do lists and calendars and vision boards and check boxes. But I’m also fond of those lightbulb moments when an idea pops into my head and I can see an entire project unfold that my students could start tomorrow. And that’s what happened when I read this article from Edutopia: In Schools, Finding Hope in a Hopeless Time, by Nora Fleming.

I have worried so much this year about my students, 7th and 8th graders I have never met face-to-face. We have been learning on Zoom all year, and while I have seen lots of growth, creativity and community in our Zoom classes, I know there has been plenty of pain and struggle that I haven’t been able to see or respond to online.

But now we are on Spring Break, and in a couple weeks we will return to a campus that will be brand new for most of my students. We will finally see each other in person! The sun is out, the CONTINUE READING: Ending the year with hope | Laura Bradley

Joel Westheimer: Three Essential Lessons That COVID Taught Us About Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Joel Westheimer: Three Essential Lessons That COVID Taught Us About Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

Joel Westheimer: Three Essential Lessons That COVID Taught Us About Education

Joel Westheimer is a professor of education at the University of Ottawa. He wrote this article for The Ottawa Citizen and shared it with me. This is a good time for me to mention that I strongly believe in content. In the mid-1980s, I was involved with a large committee that wrote the California K-12 History-Social Studies Framework. We realized that whatever we wrote had to be feasible from the point of view of teaching and learning. We selected the key events and developments that teachers would focus on. When we finished our draft, we sent it to teachers across the state. We received more than 1,000 reviews and read each one carefully. We made many changes. We sought in-depth learning, not a swift canoe ride across the centuries. Depth matters more than breadth.

Westheimer wrote:

Three essential lessons COVID-19 has taught us about education

During the pandemic, we rediscovered what teachers and students have always known: that schooling is about relationships, learning is a social process, and a deep-dive into a topic of interest is worth more than a stress-filled endurance swim in the shallows.

When did the Assyrian empire’s reign over Mesopotamia begin and end?

If you don’t know, you have a lot of company and you’re CONTINUE READING: Joel Westheimer: Three Essential Lessons That COVID Taught Us About Education | Diane Ravitch's blog

DIARY OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER!: Head, Shoulders, No Knees and Toes. Teaching Virtually.

DIARY OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER!: Head, Shoulders, No Knees and Toes. Teaching Virtually.

Head, Shoulders, No Knees and Toes. Teaching Virtually.

I miss my class. :( 

I miss being with my class. 

I see them every day, cameras, on, cameras off. A glimpse here, a glimpse there.

I saw them once, some of them, when they met me at the school to pick up their "gifts" I got from DonorsChoose. 

We saw each other in "real life!" So exciting!

I miss getting up and going out the door, fighting traffic, road raging at those who wish to make me late.

I miss rushing to get ready because I am not the teacher who is there an hour before school starts.

I miss chatting with my colleagues.

I miss high-fiving my students and teaching them that saying "Good Morning" when someone says it to you is normal.

I miss my planning time that moves at twice the speed of light.

I miss small group at the kidney table. Small group in class vs. Breakout rooms? Small CONTINUE READING: DIARY OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER!: Head, Shoulders, No Knees and Toes. Teaching Virtually.

COVID online school hits 1 year: Teachers, kids share powerful quotes - USA TODAY

COVID online school hits 1 year: Teachers, kids share powerful quotes

A year after COVID shut schools, students and teachers share what shook them — and what strengthened them

From grade school to graduate school, developing young minds in close physical proximity halted abruptly in mid-March 2020.

What happened next to schools and families was devastating and electrifying, thought-provoking and quieting, unifying and isolating. Homes became entire worlds. Working parents juggled daytime teaching. College students studied from childhood bedrooms. Millions of kindergarteners started school in a format previously unfathomable: on Zoom.

Teachers shifted to nurturing and encouraging through screens — with little training. Many hunted down students in person to ensure they were safe, fed and outfitted with resources to learn.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a set of real-world lessons too close and too fresh to be captured by textbooks: How does one manage lives lost? Calculate the damage of lost income? Measure new levels of mental fatigue? We interviewed more than 30 students and educators, of all ages and experience, about how they grew and changed in 2020 — or just made it to the next day.

On the anniversary of this extraordinary year, here’s what they learned. 

What surprised you the most about virtual or hybrid learning?

“The mask environment — having to teach through that, having to work with students through that and communicate through this barrier was a struggle. I couldn’t quite tell if they were getting it. My dad jokes just didn’t land.” — Josh Montgomery, 43, associate professor of computer science at Southern State Community College in Hillsboro, Ohio

When personal protective equipment was scarce at the beginning of the pandemic, Montgomery organized about 200 volunteers, most of them local educators, to create and assemble face shields for first responders. With the help of 3D printers, the educators distributed more than 4,000 face masks to 51 medical organizations. CONTINUE READING: COVID online school hits 1 year: Teachers, kids share powerful quotes

NANCY BAILEY: Questions About The AFT and NEA’s “Learning After Covid Vision”

Questions About The AFT and NEA’s “Learning After Covid Vision”

Questions About The AFT and NEA’s “Learning After Covid Vision”

Teachers are the most important individuals in a child’s schooling, and during the pandemic, they have gone above and beyond to reach out to students.

AFT President Randi Weingarten and NEA’s Becky Pringle are to be commended for speaking out about Covid-19 in support of student and teacher safety. The teachers’ unions have been criticized unfairly for trying to do what’s right for the safety of students and teachers.

But why does their new post-Covid-19 guide tip a hat towards nonprofits and groups that are not friendly to teachers and public education?

How exactly will schools change after Covid-19? Are teachers aware of the union connections and what they mean by words like restructuring schools? Is it about online learning? How involved will teachers be in that restructuring process and is it for the betterment of students?

Learning Beyond Covid: A Vision for Thriving in Public Education at first glance might seem positive and it makes some good points. But many of the links raise CONTINUE READING: Questions About The AFT and NEA’s “Learning After Covid Vision”

You’re Going to Miss Us When We’re Gone – What School May Look Like Once All the Teachers Quit | gadflyonthewallblog

You’re Going to Miss Us When We’re Gone – What School May Look Like Once All the Teachers Quit | gadflyonthewallblog

You’re Going to Miss Us When We’re Gone – What School May Look Like Once All the Teachers Quit

The alarm buzzed at 4:30 am. Time to get up.

DeShaun and his little brother Marco got out of bed and threw on their clothes.

Mom was in the other room hastily getting her work bag together.

“Are you two ready yet? We’ve got to go in 20 minutes.”

Marco just yawned, but Deshaun dared to complain about the hour.

“We didn’t used to have to get up so early,” he said.

“That was when you still had school. Now I’ve got to get you all to the daycare by 5 or they’ll be full up.”

DeShaun frowned but got ready anyway. He didn’t want to have to sit outside all day again. There were older kids in the park who got kids like him to run drugs during the day. He could make some money that way, but the only kids he knew who did CONTINUE READING: You’re Going to Miss Us When We’re Gone – What School May Look Like Once All the Teachers Quit | gadflyonthewallblog

NYC Educator: Reflections on Apocalypse Teaching

NYC Educator: Reflections on Apocalypse Teaching

Reflections on Apocalypse Teaching

I have an accommodation this year, so this picture describes me well. My classroom, since March, has been our dining room. We don't use it much, generally. Our little family can eat in the kitchen.

So our dining room table becomes a storage area, except on the rare occasions when we have company. Since COVID hit, we haven't had more than one outside visitor at a time.

When my students see me, they see a clean area with a painting hanging on the wall. What I see is a mountain of papers, books, and a few violins for good measure. I frequently have to hustle to find the materials on which we're working, as I misplace them religiously. 

It's symbolic, though, of the times we're facing. Everything is fine, we tell or show the kids. But as they know, and as we all know, everything is a perpetual shitstorm. Were that not the case, we'd be in school seeing and talking to one another, as opposed to viewing one another over Zoom, or whatever platform we happen to be using. 

I was extremely lucky this year, in that I was assigned to teach a level up from where I taught last year. This left me with a lot of students I already know well. I have gotten to know some of my new students well, particularly those who are extroverted, but they represent a distinct minority. Those who are shy, and a whole lot of newcomers are shy, take a long time to cross my radar.

There are a lot of people out there advocating for student privacy, and for them that includes the right to no CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Reflections on Apocalypse Teaching