Ed Notes Online: Veteran Newark Teacher's Descent into "The Tyranny of Sight Words"

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Veteran Newark Teacher's Descent into "The Tyranny of Sight Words"

My sight words for the upcoming week are "is, this, no" for my kindergarten ESL unit on transportation... Abigail Shure, Newark teacher

There is no need to create works of fiction related to the particular hell so many teachers are subjected to in the world of Aggressive Monitoring by clueless supervisors. It seems the more experience a teacher has the more aggressive the monitoring, inversely related to the amount of actual teaching experience the monitor has.

You see, these supervisors really don't need to interact with children, since they see teachers as children, the more experienced these teachers are, the more they are treated as infants.

Our Newark teacher correspondent comes up with yet another tour de force.

The Tyranny of Sight Words

On Friday, I met with my vice principal for the umpteenth critique of my lesson plans. The slow learner child buried deep inside of me can never seem to get it right. The focus of the latest iteration of lesson plan torture is sight words.

I can hear you all saying, "What? Really? She doesn't know what sight words are? How long has she been teaching?"

You may breathe a collective sigh of relief. I do know what sight words are. I merely did not understand their centrality in the nightmare of lesson planning. I am now cognizant of the fact that sight words must last for the duration of one week and the presence of those particular sight words is required in all intentional read alouds for that particular week. My sight words for the upcoming week are "is, this, no" for my kindergarten ESL unit on transportation. The words were conveniently gleaned from the confluence of the book Is This the Bus for Us? and the list of 114 sight words.

A problem emerged, however, when I naively attempted to add Iggy Iguana's Trip to the reading list. I favor Iggy's trip because he flew in an airplane. Unfortunately for my charges and me, "is, this, no" make no appearance in this sacred text and the book has been relegated to the maybe read later pile. Due to my ineptitude in locating enough books with the week's sight words, I am scheduling the hideous practice of repeating a read aloud of Is This the Bus for Us? albeit with a new focus of instruction. I managed to squeeze in Curious George because that classic contained "is, this, no" and George traveled by car, row boat, ship and balloons.

As part of my district's wise initiative of Aggressive Monitoring, I am expected to assess my children three times each net forty minute period. It was suggested by my administrator that I vary the assessments to include word writing, arranging magnetic letters, labeling and circling the correct word type activities. I spent five and a half hours yesterday devising two weeks worth of sight word central lesson plans for my kindergarten and first grade charges. Did I mention that I already have 49 students? I live in terror that my top favorite books will not be replete with the appropriate weekly vocabulary as I enter the realm of the Tyranny of Sight Words.

Abigail Shure

Next week's sight words for Abbie's principal of vice: are, you, an, asshole.

2 comments:

Susan O said...: Insane enough to be funny if children weren't involved. The sick part is that "Iggy Iguana's Trip" is a phonics reader so it looks like teacher is supposed to use only phony, formula texts for read alouds. Sick. Sick. We used to wait until 7th grade to ruin school for kids. Now we start early.; Monday, October 24, 2016 at 6:51:00 AM EDT
Anne G. said...: is = hope
this = imagination
no = perseverance
When nothing makes sense, I just play with words to find sense. Abigail Shure makes total sense.; Monday, October 24, 2016 at 5:32:00 PM EDT

"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/cory-booker-clear-and-present-threat-public-education

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

This chapter looks interesting:

Class struggles: The UFT story, part 3

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Of course for another view, check out the review at New Politics of the Kahlenberg Bio on Shanker by Vera Pavone and me: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:
http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/
I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You can sign up for this free series at :
http://act.bcfed.ca/online-campaigning-for-union-activists/

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

Ex-HSA Teacher has left a new comment on your post "Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire ...":

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy Tyson
Professor of African American Studies and History
Duke University

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.
- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Full article with charts here.

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

More at Substance

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.
Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/on-growing-use-of-corporate-test.html

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

SEE MY VIDEO ON HARLEM SUCCESS RALLY 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Ed Notes Extended

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Veteran Newark Teacher's Descent into "The Tyranny of Sight Words"

2 comments: