Education Matters: Voluntold to sub

Education Matters: Voluntold to sub

Voluntold to sub

voluntold
voluntold: The exact opposite of volunteering. Always used in reference to an unpleasant task to which you have been assigned by your boss.

Teachers all across the district are being voluntold to sub for absent colleagues, give up their planning and lunches, and the system is set up so teachers cannot say no. Not if they want to keep their jobs, their teaching assignment, or their standing that is.

Did you know you could be a 12 year veteran of teaching, TWELVE YEARS!!!!!, and you can be let go at the end of the year for any or no reason. It was a decade ago that teachers lost job protections.  Principals know this and use it to their advantage too. 

Oh, you can't cover, okay make sure all your paperwork is perfect, or don't expect that highly effective evaluation, what's your thoughts about being a traveling teacher or having multiple preps? How about I just single you out at every opportunity?  

I think it sucks that we don't have enough subs, but that's a district problem that they should solve. Mrs. McGuilicutty at P.S. whatever is already overwhelmed and doesn't have enough time or support. She and thousands of others need every second they can get.

From time to time, you hear that district staff will teach a class, well its time they stepped up, and if they feel they are too busy, welcome to the world of every teacher in the district.  

It's a shame what is happening in many of our schools and shame on the super and school board for letting it CONTINUE READING: Education Matters: Voluntold to sub

RQILA Recommendations For Nov20 General Election: VOTE. Now. – redqueeninla

RQILA Recommendations For Nov20 General Election: VOTE. Now. – redqueeninla

RQILA Recommendations For Nov20 General Election: VOTE. Now.

Below please find a compilation of RQILA recommendations and thoughts on this year’s election. They are centered on AD54, Sydney Kamlager’s state assembly district stretching across LA’s westside and south-central. RQILA represents AD54 in the LA County’s Democratic Committee.

The recommendations reflect a leitmotiv of education, schools and the money bubbling up from underneath to privatize it. Turns out this ideology so evident in the realm of education politics — and its money — is not as tightly focused as all that. It takes something of a step-back to see this thread weaving through many of the general races. It results in some conclusions surprising to some, but please consider the whole.

First, I’m urging you to vote like your life depends on it. As America’s president struggles for his, you know it’s true. In evaluating whether you can afford the risk of a third-party vote, please consider the risk of the alternative. No matter how distasteful you may consider neoliberals or corporate Democrats, there is no economy if their peasantry dies. Killing that goose which laid the golden egg appears to be no problem for fascism or aristocracy. Plutocracy keeps its base alive. As the sponsors of so many imperfect bills urge: we can fix this later. But right now our democracy is facing a chokepoint before reaching the luxury of fighting imperfection.

There are 28 races addressed below, 26 are on Mar Vista’s ballot (90066). A different constellation of races appears depending on where you live.

To find your sample ballot go here or use the County’s here. You may register or ask for a mailed ballot until October 19, 2020. It will take some time to transit through USPS mail so best to do this as early as possible. You may register and vote (provisionally) in person at the County Registrar in Norwalk through election day itself.

Locate your vote dropoff box here. You may also vote by mail or in person.

President and Vice president

I’m as unhappy as the next by our electoral state of Check that forces a vote for Joe Biden. But when necessary to avoid Checkmate, move we must into Check.

State Measures

Many (if not all) propositions are considerably more complex than their simple name label. I believe any initiative too long (and therefore complicated) for a tweet, ought not to be. The concept is as a fail-safe, not a legislation substitute. When voters must invest hours of research to even superficially understand a proposition, we are being marked as gullible; our vote is being exploited. This is unfair. To make these complicated decisions is the job we voted our politicians undertake when we elected them to represent us.

The pdf below can be opened in a separate window here. But the links can only be reached through the text of that table which is reprinted at the bottom of the article, specifically to enable the urls. Use scroll bars to view the length of that table.

Some voters’ guides of possible interest:

CalMatters ~ https://calmatters.org/election-2020-guide/
League of Women Voters ~ https://lwvc.org/vote/elections/ballot-recommendations

LA Community College District Trustees

Seat 1:  Andra Hoffman (incumbent)

Seat 3:  Anthony Danna

Seat 5:  Nichelle Henderson

Seat 7:  Nancy Pearlman

   It is important there be African-American representation on our Community College board. Particularly given the current intense concern with policing and equity and issues of social justice.  The spectacle surrounding the appointment of Kamlager’s replacement revealed biases it is essential to rout out. The incumbents in seats 3, 5 and 7 should not be reelected. The above listed three candidates have expertise in educational matters and eagerness for the job. They deserve your support along with the terrific extant trustee and only incumbent, in seat 1, who voted without disgrace in this controversy.

State Assembly District (AD) Representative

AD54:  Sydney Kamlager

   While I may not be completely comfortable with some of her positions, she is very present and approachable, thoughtful and transparent. In contrast it is hard to discern her opponent’s positions at all. She works very hard to represent us truly and deserves reelection.

United States Representative

D37:  Karen Bass

   We are lucky here in West LA to be so well represented by such an effective politician in Washington. Her presence is a relief.

LAUSD Bond Measure RR – YES. Unequivocally, undeniably, unavoidably Yes.

   Uncontroversial is that our schools need more funds. Controversial could be that it is hard to materialize new money under pandemic and economic distress. Fortunately, the bond will phase in gradually to replace old bonds as they are retired: no one’s property tax bill will increase. We will pay it all off over more years but there will be no pinching. Far from dictating austerity, Covid mandates a strong governmental support that requires this crucial bond now. Don’t even think about starving our schoolkids in this time of emergency.

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors

District 2:  Holly Mitchell

   Senator Mitchell has been an amazing representative in Sacramento, keeping an eye out for what is happening back home in her neighborhood and in the city’s Neighborhood Councils while leading the Senate as finance chair. She is very accessible to constituents and full of good ideas for strategy and process. She is a teacher as well as a leader and a clearly honorable citizen. These are not qualities particularly evident among her opponent. This is an easy choice.

Superior Court Judges

Office No 72:  Steve Morgan.  I voted for Myanna Dellinger during the primary but her inappropriate campaigning at events such as a memorial service, and frequently intemperate expression during campaign events caused hesitation surrounding “judicial temperament.” Steve Morgan is a fine second choice and I am disappointed Dellinger’s diverse experiences suggest some impediment to stolidity.

Office No 80:  David Berger.  A seemingly lovely and compassionate person from his campaign appearances. If so the legal system will be better off for his leadership.

Office No 162:  Scott Yang.  It is a wonder he did not win his primary outright. So many of his colleagues speak so highly of him. Yet his opponent seems a fine choice as well. Reasonable minds can differ.

Now for the controversial choices: CONTINUE READING: RQILA Recommendations For Nov20 General Election: VOTE. Now. – redqueeninla

LAUSD School Board

Board District 3:  Scott Schmerelson

Board District 7:  Patricia Castellanos

   LAUSD’s school board has been under assault by external political ideology that would privatize our public school system in favor of personal wealth and gain. The struggle is framed, erroneously, as between teachers’ unions and “education reformers.” It is in fact a struggle to wrest control of a public education system and render its public funds available to private interests.

   This is a narrative parallel to that of the “unliberal” law enforcement choices I’ve outlined above. The skepticism stems from a “deeper” concern with motivation and ends.

   I believe in democracy and the power of a statistician’s revered “big numbers” to flush the “right answer” out in the wash. The plutocrats underlying the push for LAUSD would sever our public elected school board from we its people as they successfully did in New York. That plan was pushed here in LA unsuccessfully by the acolyte of republican former Mayor Riordan, the Democrat Mayor Villaraigosa, and it succeeded in Chicago only to be recently reversed there.

   Loss of public, people-elected control in our public institutions is the ground-breaking issue at stake here.

   The former district school principal, Scott Schmerelson, is a formidable incumbent with a commendable voting record for all kids, not just those served by allies within this political arena. His opponent is a white collar support staffer in a charter school, cynically portrayed by privatization lobbyists as prepared in a manner that she is not, who represents a fringe religious group completely at odds with her would-be stakeholders at that.

   The mom, labor leader and political staffer Patty Castellanos is revered by her coworkers as astute, effective and well-prepared to represent issues of public education policy. Her opponent is another tool of a political ideology that is underwritten by, and more about finance and personal opportunity than public education or opportunity for all.

   Neither candidate is running in my district and likely not in yours, my AD54 constituents. But if you have friends who vote in BD3 or BD7 please consider commending the public candidates to them. No less than the democracy of our public school system is at stake. It is that important. With the plutocrat financier Eli Broad’s BFF, Austin Beutner, as superintendent, selected when last the board was controlled by these forces, there will be a significant shift in policy should either of these seats be lost. Please keep public education public. Vote Schmerelson and Castellanos.

Carol Burris: Back to School—the Good, the Bad, the Ugly | Diane Ravitch's blog

 Carol Burris: Back to School—the Good, the Bad, the Ugly | Diane Ravitch's blog

Carol Burris: Back to School—the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Carol Burris interviewed teachers, students and administrators about their experiences returning to school. As you might expect, she encountered a range of reactions.

The Network for Public Education is following 37 districts in New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut that reopened — either hybrid or full time. Of the 23 districts that responded to our inquiry regarding remote learners, the average rate of students who opted to not attend in person was 21 percent. Percentages ranged from 6 percent of the school population to 50 percent. Larger percentages of students of color are associated with higher remote rates.




Superintendent Joe Roy said he has been carefully examining patterns among the 25 percent of students whose families chose remote learning in his district in Bethlehem, Pa.
For the most part, they are students from affluent families who have academic supports for learning at home, or conversely, are from the least affluent homes. The families of his district’s students of color, many of whom work in local warehouses, were hit harder by the pandemic and, therefore, are more reticent to send their children back to school.
Roy’s neighboring district, Allentown, where 86 percent of the students are Black or Latinx, decided to go all virtual after a parent survey showed a majority were not ready for in-person learning.

One middle school teacher with whom I spoke, who requested anonymity, said he hopes that the schools open soon. Technology for remote learning has been an issue he told me — from hardware to poor connections.
“We are losing kids,” he said. “Our kindergarten enrollment is much lower than it has been in previous years. Of a class of 19, maybe 17 of my students log on to my early morning class. When I meet them later in the day, 12 or fewer show up. A 6½-hour day on Zoom is brutal. Some are keeping their cameras off, and others don’t respond. Many of my students can’t work independently.”


The challenges of in-person learning


Over half of the 37 districts we are following now bring some or all students back full time. Those schools that are using hybrid typically split students into two small cohorts that share the same teacher. Some bring those cohorts back three days one week and two days the following week. Others bring the cohorts back only two days a week — on consecutive days or staggered days with a fifth day when all stay home.




Although those I spoke with are glad to be back, school is certainly not the same as before the pandemic.

My youngest grandchildren returned to in-person school for only two days last week, and they were ecstatic. The schools did everything that was required—masks, social distancing, hand washing. Who knew that children loved school so much?

 Carol Burris: Back to School—the Good, the Bad, the Ugly | Diane Ravitch's blog

Going back to school: The good, the bad and the ugly - Network For Public Education - https://networkforpubliceducation.org/going-back-to-school-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ via @Network4pubEd

Going back to school: The good, the bad and the ugly - The Washington Post - https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/10/06/going-back-school-good-bad-ugly/

Parenting during the Pandemic | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Parenting during the Pandemic | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Parenting during the Pandemic

With the closure of U.S. schools in March of the infamous year of 2020 and the desperation-driven reform of distance learning, Moms have become teacher-in-charge. The cartoon below offers a glimpse of a traditional and familiar style of parenting. Less than a decade ago, a Yale Law professor categorized the Mom in this cartoon as exhibiting one historical patterns in rearing children.

In 2011, Amy Chua wrote an international best seller about her tough-love parenting of daughters in Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. She must have laughed all the way to the bank at the fuss she kicked up about her tough-love parenting of daughters.  Time magazine reported that her Wall Street Journal op-ed garnered over a million readers and 5000 comments.

For educated, financially comfortable non-Tiger Moms, however, the thought of giving up “Baby Mozarts,” chants of “well done” to build self- esteem, and, yes, CONTINUE READING: Parenting during the Pandemic | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

What It’s Like to Be a Teacher in 2020 America - The New York Times

What It’s Like to Be a Teacher in 2020 America - The New York Times

What It’s Like to Be a Teacher in 2020 America

Teachers find themselves at the heart of the national crisis — responsible not just for children’s education and well-being, but also for essential child care as parents struggle to get back to work.

“It seems very poor policy to pay a man 20 or 22 dollars a month for teaching children the ABC’s when a female could do the work more successfully at one third of the price.”

— A school committee in Littleton, Mass., debating how to source teachers for its classrooms in 1849

In Her Words is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.

More than 150 years ago, Massachusetts lawmakers came up with a radical idea: All young people should be educated. The commonwealth passed the country’s first law requiring that children go to school, then was left wondering where to find the teachers it needed to educate all those children.

A school committee in Littleton, Mass., came up with a simple solution. “God seems to have made woman peculiarly suited to guide and develop the infant mind,” the committee wrote, in 1849. Why pay men $20 a month when “a female could do the work more successfully at one third of the price.”

Not only did women appear uniquely fitted to the work of teaching; they also didn’t have competing professional opportunities that would drive wages up — or so the logic went. “The argument was, ‘Look, women will learn to be better mothers by practicing on other people’s children,’” said Richard Ingersoll, a sociologist at University of Pennsylvania. “Proponents made the case it was a win-win.”

As other states followed Massachusetts’s lead, and public schools opened across the country, they filled with female teachers. By the late 1880s, women made up 63 percent of the country’s teachers. The profession has remained female dominated ever since.

In 2017, women comprised more than three-quarters of public-school teachers, in a profession that remains stubbornly underpaid and undervalued.

In 2018, the starting salary for a public-school teacher averaged $38,000. In more than 1,000 districts, even the highest paid public-school teachers with advanced degrees and decades of experience earn less than $50,000. A 2010 report from McKinsey looked at the state of teaching in America compared with other developed CONTINUE READING: What It’s Like to Be a Teacher in 2020 America - The New York Times

Teacher Tom: The Proper and Moral Use of Power

Teacher Tom: The Proper and Moral Use of Power

The Proper and Moral Use of Power

Anthropologists tell us that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were not big fans of show-offs, nor did they take well to being bossed around. For 99 percent of our time on the planet, individuals who attempted to place themselves above others, who behaved arrogantly, who hoarded resources, or who attempted to exert control over others, were ridiculed, shamed, and if that didn't humble them, they were ousted from the band, left to fend for themselves in the big bad world. You see, these early humans knew about the dangers of placing undue power or resources into the hands of any one individual.

Today, of course, the opposite is true. In almost every area of life, we elevate the show-offs, believe that their claim to greater wealth than the rest of us is earned, and permit petty dictatorships to flourish from governments and board rooms to the ranks of shopping mall cops and, yes, even classrooms. When we cringe at the excesses of the powerful, we're revealing our hunter-gatherer heritage. When we protest, rebel, and even riot, we are following an urge as old as humanity. When we rail at the unfairness, the cruelty, and the crime of it all, we are "remembering" what we were meant to be and, whether we know it or not, we are mourning the fact that we've lost the thread and have handed the worst of us, the shameless and heartless, power over the best of us.

When I make these assertions, there are always those who will object. Certainly, the powerful aren't all bad. Some of CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: The Proper and Moral Use of Power

NYC Educator: The Tech Jaguar Catches Me

NYC Educator: The Tech Jaguar Catches Me

The Tech Jaguar Catches Me

 My last class was the biggest disaster I've experienced in decades. It seemed like anything that could go wrong, did. I wrote a multi-day lesson based on a great video on Apple TV plus. They have a series I've just discovered called Little America, and the second episode is called The Jaguar. 



The story is about a young woman, undocumented but absolutely fluent in English, who's clearly spent most of her life in the United States. She is fairly lost in the beginning of the show, but finds meaning and future by embracing squash, of all things. She falls into this almost entirely by coincidence. I thought it might be inspiring to my students, and I saw multiple aspects worth writing about. I figured I'd spend a few days working on this and make it into a project I could grade.

The first thing that went wrong was when I went to grab my lesson plan from the printer. I'd printed it out earlier, I thought, but it wasn't there. In fact, not only was it not there, but my printer was not even on. Pushing the power button didn't help at all. I finally figured out that the little Dyson hot/ cool thingie I have in my home classroom had blown the power.

My wife decided to help, and went to play with the circuit breakers. Unfortunately, she played with the wrong one, and my internet simply dropped dead. I lost my entire class for a few minutes until she switched it back on. My printer still wasn't working, though, so I grabbed my second laptop and pulled up the document. My printer was still out for some reason, but at least I'd be able to continue my lesson.

So there I was, ready to begin my first video segment. I had a few issues screen sharing that precluded my getting to Apple TV plus, but I finally figured it out. When I got there, though, it kept directing me to the next entry in Little America. I'd stupidly watched a few more episodes, and it didn't seem to want me to review ones I'd already seen. For CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: The Tech Jaguar Catches Me