Leslie T. Fenwick: All Students, Especially The Most Vulnerable, Need Certified, Well-Prepared Teachers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Leslie T. Fenwick: All Students, Especially The Most Vulnerable, Need Certified, Well-Prepared Teachers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Leslie T. Fenwick: All Students, Especially The Most Vulnerable, Need Certified, Well-Prepared Teachers

Leslie T. Fenwick is Dean emerita of the Howard University School of Education. She is an eloquent critic of efforts to deprofessionalize teaching. She believes that teachers need more, not less, preparation for the classroom. This post appeared in Politico.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated harmful educational inequalities in the preK-12 public education system. The nation’s poorest students, Black and Latino students, and our disabled students have been the most negatively impacted by school closings necessitated by the pandemic. Black students in high poverty schools have been especially hard hit because of the racialized, historic and ongoing disinvestment in the education of Black children and youth.

One of the most obvious — and dangerous — ways this inequality shows up is by channeling a proportionally larger share of less qualified or alternatively credentialed teachers to schools with higher percentages of Black, Latino and disabled students. Black and Latino students are more likely than their white peers to be taught by CONTINUE READING: Leslie T. Fenwick: All Students, Especially The Most Vulnerable, Need Certified, Well-Prepared Teachers | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: Teaching Legacies

CURMUDGUCATION: Teaching Legacies

Teaching Legacies

It's easy as a teacher-- particularly if you've taught in a single school for a lot of your career-- to think of your legacy being in the building or in some program that you created or nurtured. But that's not it.

As you approach retirement, you may notice (if you haven't already) that no matter how ever-present and plugged in you may be, no matter how many invaluable extras you provide, once you are gone, every trace of you vanishes pretty quickly. Your room is redecorated, your furniture gets divided up by your former colleagues, and as for your standing within those four walls...

The year you announce your retirement: The Legendary Mrs. McTeach

First year you're gone: It's so weird without Mrs. McTeach here.

Second year: Yeah, I sort of remember a Mrs. McTeach

Third year: Mrs. McTeach? Didn't she used to teach here?

Fourth year: Who?

It's the nature of schools-- students pass through pretty quickly, even though they feel like they've been there for a thousand years. 

Actually, your legacy has left the building long before you have.

Right now I'm in the middle of overseeing a local writing competition, operated for twenty-some years now in honor of Margaret Feldman. Let me tell you about her.

She was born and raised in this small town. Her father made a smallish fortune by inventing and CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Teaching Legacies

Black Reconstruction 2.0 Begins With Great Schools For Black Children - Philly's 7th Ward

Black Reconstruction 2.0 Begins With Great Schools For Black Children - Philly's 7th Ward

BLACK RECONSTRUCTION 2.0 BEGINS WITH GREAT SCHOOLS FOR BLACK CHILDREN

One morning during my junior year of high school, I remember my homeroom teacher saying to me in a dismissive tone that Malcolm X was a bad person. I am unsure how we got on the topic of figures in Black history, but I mentioned his name and that was the response.

That evening, I told my mom. After her phone conference with my grandmother, which was customary whenever something happened, she decided to call the school the next day. As per her rules, I called my mom when I got home from school the next day and I asked if she had spoken to my teacher. In her best Clair Huxtable cadence, she said that she did and that she promptly laid her out.

My mom then said, “It’s a shame that I had to do that. I thought that was a good school.”

The idea of a “good school” and/or a “good education” is subjective at best; such phrases are often ambiguous and open to interpretation.

I can’t help but think that a reason my father’s parents migrated from Attapulgus, Georgia to Camden, New Jersey was to find good schools and a good education for all of their CONTINUE READING: Black Reconstruction 2.0 Begins With Great Schools For Black Children - Philly's 7th Ward

NYC Educator: The Teacher as Living Martyr

NYC Educator: The Teacher as Living Martyr

The Teacher as Living Martyr

That's the idealized version of what we do, and this is a great piece going into chapter and verse as to why. Who hasn't seen Stand and Deliver and decided, wow, that's what a real teacher does. Of course, if you get into the story a little deeper, you learn that not everything was quite as the film portrayed. This program didn't, in fact, materialize out of thin air with a bunch of kids who didn't know arithmetic. And it didn't last once Jaime Escalante left the picture either.

It's true, I guess, that there have been children who sat and composed symphonies before they were ten years old. This notwithstanding, the fact that you haven't doesn't precisely suggest your life is a failure. I'm sure Escalante was exceptional. I'm not sure he was as exceptional as that film portrayed. What I'm absolutely sure of is that he's not someone I'd use as a role model.

You're not a criminal because you want a life. You're not a criminal because you want a family. Sure, you may love teaching, but that doesn't mean you need to neglect absolutely every other aspect of your life and do it 24/7. Now there are people who want to be like that, or who at least want to appear like that. 

Maybe you have a colleague who gets up in front of the PTA and tells them what awful jobs the teachers in your school do. Maybe this person is the principal's favorite. Finally someone who will get up there and say exactly how much the staff sucks, and tell what a great visionary the principal is. This is a valuable employee, so naturally there has to be some comp-time job doing who knows what, because how could you let a talent like that go to waste teaching?

Of course, people who walk around tossing their brothers and sisters under the bus are hardly role models. I wouldn't want them teaching my kids, or yours. Of course, they won't be for long. Folks like that are on the administrative CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: The Teacher as Living Martyr

Teachers Who Make a Difference | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teachers Who Make a Difference | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teachers Who Make a Difference

A few years back, Mike Rose’s wrote a post about his high school English teacher. It was a beautiful piece that captures the ineffable moment 40 years earlier that Rose was ready–he did not know it, of course, at the time–to dig deeper into literature and the pushing and prodding he got from Jack McFarland, his young English teacher. McFarland’s teaching, Rose said,  changed “the direction of my life.”

Rose’s post reminded me of letters I had received from former high school students, those I had trained as teachers in Washington, D.C., and from doctoral advisees at Stanford. A glow of satisfaction would come over me whenever I read such  letters that asserted my influence in their lives. I suspect that Jack McFarland might have experienced such a glow when reading Mike Rose’s post. As I read the compliments and how much the student attributed to me in shaping his or her life’s work, however, a small doubt, surely no more than a speck, flashed over me. That doubt had to do with the tricks that our memories play on us in selectively remembering what we want to remember.

For example, I cannot forget many teenagers and young adults who I did not, perhaps could not, reach. That is, students who sat in class (or attended sporadically) and sailed through the course without ever connecting to the content I taught, the questions I asked, the projects I assigned. Seldom did any of those students write me a note years later. So I might have been a fine teacher CONTINUE READING: Teachers Who Make a Difference | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

NANCY BAILEY: PDK Gallup Polls and The Election: The Nation Needs Great Teachers!

PDK Gallup Polls and The Election: The Nation Needs Great Teachers!

PDK Gallup Polls and The Election: The Nation Needs Great Teachers!

If V.P. Joe Biden is elected, there will be a chance for public education to survive and teachers to get the support they need to serve America’s children. Reelect President Trump, and chances are public schools may end. Teachers who have been prepared to teach may leave the field for good.

Gallup Polls show how American’s attitudes have changed and remained the same when it comes to public schools over the years. Saving education in America depends on creating a professional teaching workforce.

The pandemic has made it clear that the country relies on its teachers to help students learn. Even before Covid-19 parents from both parties realized this. Teachers have risen to the occasion during the pandemic with little help from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos or President Trump.

President Trump and his followers are hostile towards public schooling, teachers, and the teacher’s union. I cannot remember President Trump ever visiting a public school. He has been to a private religious school. 

They call public schools “government schools,” but the public owns their schools, or CONTINUE READING: PDK Gallup Polls and The Election: The Nation Needs Great Teachers!