Teaching: No 'Fallback' Career

AJ hits a few basic truths in his response. He finds
"the great majority [of teachers] to be extremely hard working" and
"The ones most critical of their colleagues, often from the get-go, are often the very ones who seek to escape the classroom from very early on. Unfortunately, many of these end up as administrators or union hacks, or else find a comfortable niche from which they can continue to pour disdain on their own peers."

NY Times OPINION | April 19, 2009
Room for Debate: Teaching: No 'Fallback' Career
By The Editors
Teacher "shortages" may not mean that jobs exist.
As private sector professionals lose their jobs or suffer cutbacks in pay and benefits, more and more of them are thinking about second careers. Public service is suddenly popular with all generations. Teaching may not pay a lot, but it comes with relatively good benefits and, in public schools, job security in the form of tenure after three years. But this fallback fantasy may be unrealistic, despite reports of a possible teacher shortage in the next several years. Does such a shortfall really exist? What does it take to become a teacher, let alone a good one?

• Pam Grossman, professor of education
• Patrick Welsh, teacher
• Tom Moore, teacher
• Michael Podgursky, economist
• Kenneth J. Bernstein, teacher and blogger

Response from AJ:
You can see a majority consensus on some matters -- such as the experience (around 3 years) needed, by most, to achieve competence in teaching, & the extreme difficulties of the initial (& even subsequent) years. However, once again, even from teachers (such as Patrick Welsh) one finds a negative, condescending opinion towards their own colleagues. In my experience, although I have found teachers unduly submissive to authority (often misused & unwarranted authority), I have also found the great majority to be extremely hard working. Indeed, the nature of the profession makes this inevitable.

The ones most critical of their colleagues, often from the get-go, are often the very ones who seek to escape the classroom from very early on. Unfortunately, many of these end up as administrators or union hacks, or else find a comfortable niche from which they can continue to pour disdain on their own peers. But another remarkable fact is this view of teachers as being almost to the profession born -- they either have it or they don't. This is eerily similar to the view of students as either "being able to do math" or not -- or the view that kids will either "get it" right away or never. While familiarity with subject matter, as well as a modicum of compassion & patience, are clearly necessary, as also a belief in human potential, the role of experience & learning and the possibility of the basic tenets being teachable, appears to be lacking -- even among teachers. The fact that far too many teachers leave within the first few years, is mentioned -- but not highlighted. Doing so would have led to the question, "Why?" -- the very thing that no one publicly wants to face up to. It's not the money, although that used to play a part.

Facts About GED–Plus

The PEP meeting tonight, there will be an update on GED similar to the one offered to the City Council by Cami Anderson, the Superintendent of Alternative Schools. Anderson is a Teach for America alum and fits the usual profile of people at Tweed. Many people view her tenure as a disaster. We're not surprised. She's part of the Joel Klein version of FEMA. You're doing a great job Brownie - er - Cami.

Here is some background on GED Plus from Marjorie Stamberg and Jeff Kaufman.

Marjorie:
GED -Plus is a multi-sited program, with more than 80 sites across the city and 6 "hubs". The teachers are extremely dedicated and hard-working, but we are laboring with very deep problems of financing, lack of resources, and loss of many students and teachers from the program. This in part stems from the disastrous "re-organization" of the city's GED programs in June 2007. There were city council hearings on that closing, and the UFT testified there at that time.

Here are some questions to ask at the PEP:
1) Consequences of the "reorganization" of the city's GED program, in June of 2007.

The program was "reorganized" in June 2007, and involved closing five GED facilities in the district*, and reopened as "GED Plus. All the teachers were excessed in masse at the time, and GED Plus then opened in September 2008 with only 1/2 of the teachers and the loss of hundreds of students whose sites and programs were closed over that summer. Teachers with PhDs in literacy were let go, as were bilingual English-Chinese teachers -- I know many of them personally, and we have been struggling to place these extremely talented and dedicated teachers and get them out of the city "ATR" pool every since.

Importantly, there is no record of what happened to the students who had been in the previous programs when their sites closed in June 2007. Literally hundreds of students simply "disappeared." One of the closed schools was the "Program for Pregnant and Parenting Teens." Meredith Kolodner in the Daily News recently published an article reporting that the DOE had very few records on what happened to these students.

2) Loss of arts and enrichment services. Previously, there were a number of arts programs, partnerships with the Metropolitan Museum, musical programs, and others. Now, to my knowledge all arts and enrichment programs at "GED Plus" are no longer available.

3) Many students at GED Plus are not ready to take the test, and are placed in literacy classes at the five GED Plus "hubs" across the city. There is a paucity of age-appropriate books, lack of computer services (out-dated and broken down computer labs, if any), "smart-boards" or any modern technology for these students.

4) Cami Anderson will state they have brought in an outside vendor of literacy specialists called "The Aussies" (at great expense). They have virtually NO experience dealing with the multi-lingual, multi-ethnic older teenage population we work with in New York City. Their idea of basic "literacy" instruction is far more advanced than that needed by students reading on a 3rd or 5th grade level. Many students simply cannot read the books in the classroom libraries.

5) What special services for Special Ed counselors, testing, and special materials, Wilson training, access to VESED occupational training is going on? To my knowledge, students are still able to participate in an excellent partnership at "Co-op Tech" but this again is limited.

6) What special counseling services, partnerships with CUNY, participation in literacy and ESL programs available at CUNY are being offered? Much of this was also lost in the reorganization.

*The five closed schools were Auxiliary Services for High Schools, Career Education Services, Vocational Education Services, Off-site Educational Services and the School for Pregnant and Parenting Teens.


Jeff Kaufman:
Since the D79 reorganization in 2007 Anderson has stated that her intention was to reduce GED referrals and to streamline the process so less students would “fall through the cracks.” While I don’t have statistics I do know that students who were formerly incarcerated continue to be dissuaded to return to their schools and still do not make it to alternative programs like the GED. In fact they are terrible in tracking students despite the fact this problem has existed for years.

Marjorie:
Ms. Anderson and the D79 superintendency are sure to talk about the "low" attendance rates in the GED programs. GED Plus is where students go who have dropped out, or been pushed out of their high schools and are now trying again for an education. So it's not rocket science that many have attendance issues. But outrageously, students often are counted in as being in GED -Plus and parallel programs when they are pushed out of other schools. In fact they may never have shown up, but it is a manuever used by the DOE to lower the drop out rate from the high -schools. I.e., if a student was "transferred" to another program, it doesn't count as a drop out.

Furthermore, if you look at success rates of the program, how can one possibly judge GED-Plus which is only in it's second year of running. It takes many of these students a number of years to get their literacy skills up enough to pass the GED.

They're in a Snit at Mimi ....

...at must read blog It's not all flowers and sausages over how she dealt with a disruptive child who she calls "Big Boy."

Today, he yelled at another kid to "shut up." (The child at whom he was yelling was not making any noise, by the by.) The other child looked up and said, " you're telling ME to shut up??!? You NEVER shut up!"

And I knew it was time. We had an emergency class meeting, with Big Boy, in which we talked about how his behavior made everyone else feel. There was no pointing, no tattling, and no name calling allowed. My friends were only allowed to say how Big Boy's behavior made them feel.

....Big Boy ended up having the best day he's ever had. It was kind of amazing (although I'm not sure how appropriate).

Well, there was some reaction for the holier than thou crowd. Poor kid was embarrassed. You know the drill. Even a principal chimed in chastising Mimi (make sure to read the comments, which are mostly supportive of Mimi.)

I did plenty of the same stuff. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do to get some kids to cut the crap. Teachers of self-contained classes where you live with these kids all day all year have to use unorthodox means for the kids and them to survive in their little communities. When one kid is abusive to others, something must be done, often on the spur of the moment. Teachers can't afford to think deep psychology at these times. Soliciting comments of peers in a public setting when handled by a teacher like Mimi is perfectly legitimate.

Mimi points to how immature this kid is. The class meeting was probably the best thing that has happened to Big Boy in a school setting. He will still regress at times, but he is on the road to being able to work in a class setting. Hey, isn't school really about getting kids to to learn to function in menial jobs without complaint?

Bravo, Mimi.

Note: Flowers and Sausages and Have a Gneiss Day are currently my favorite blogs for their descriptions of the day today stuff that goes on in schools. That they seem to teach in such different settings and have such different backgrounds makes reading both blogs so intriguing. Both are deeply anonymous. If they weren't, they would each need a food taster.

A Yankee Memory - and a Parade

In 1978 when the Yanks won the series I had a trip scheduled to the Museum of Natural History that week. It was not easy to change trips on short notice. I tried to think of a place to go in the financial district and came up with the American Indian Museum and pulled all the strings needed to get the change.

Naturally, I didn't include the fact that the main purpose was to attend the Yankee parade. So I took my 6th grade class to the parade route where we waited for the Yankees to pass. We had to wait for about 2 hours. The kids interacted with the people around us (which weren't enormous) as paper came down from the buildings.

Managing a class of almost 30 kids as the lone adult in those conditions is a good test of certain teaching skills. (They should give merit pay for this.) Especially since this was early October. But this was pretty much the same class I had in the 5th grade the year before and we were very comfortable with each other.

Finally, we saw the floats. "Reggie, Reggie," as the kids saw their hero (not mine, as Reggie was not one of my favorites.) They went by quickly - not many trucks. They were gone in about 30 seconds. The crowds disappeared quickly. The streets were loaded with paper that had been thrown from the buildings. The kids were rolling around in it and having a blast. They kept playing for a while and then we went to Battery Park for lunch and those great views of the harbor.

We never did get to that Indian Museum.

In 1998 when the Yankees won the Series, I was no longer at the school and working for the district. I took the day off and went to the parade - alone. The size and intensity of the crowds were enormous compared to 20 years before.

On the way into the city, I stopped to visit my old school. Ironically, one of the students on that trip had just completed a 7 year prison term and came to visit me just as I was leaving. I told him I was going to the parade. "Just like you took us," he said. Holy Cow! I had forgotten all about it.

"Mr. Scott, that was one of the best experiences of my life," he said. "I'll never forget it."

Sol Stern misses the boat...

...in his Marshall Plan for reading in K-3 as he turns to a narrow view of reading methodology as a solution to whatever gap is being discussed. He talks about decoding and pushes his beloved "Success for All" program, a rigidly defined program that allows little flexibility for teachers.

I mentored Teaching Fellows who used this program and what it was really about was reducing class size by taking the entire school's resources - all out of classroom teachers - and for an hour an a half a day cutting the size of reading groups into more manageable chunks.

Reading doesn't just start with phonemic and phonic awareness but with speech - lots of it. And having stories read to kids an an early age.

The concept of balanced literacy which he is so critical of, actually has some sound theory behind it in addressing some of these issues but was implemented by Klein's non-educators in a destructive way. It also requires small, manageable classes, something Klein doesn't believe in.

Another factor was their rigidity - kids that did need phonics were denied it in the early years. I was in one class where one of the children was not able to function in the BL program and kept the teacher preoccupied while she was clearly needed to be circulating to make it work for the rest of the class. As her mentor I recommended she give him some kind of workbook so the other kids wouldn't lose out. "We're not allowed" she said. Okaaay!

I agree we should have a Marshall Plan for the schools. But covering only up to the 3rd grade (don't we see the enormous slippage between 4th and 8th grade scores) will be a drop in the bucket.

It is good to finally see Stern acknowledge the benefits of lower class size, which he used to pooh pooh. But if he thinks starting a reading program in kindergarten will do the trick, he is mistaken. By that time many kids need one to one assistance (Reading Recovery addresses some of this).

Open up schools for parents to bring their 2 year olds to be read to. Strengthen local libraries and run programs for very young children. Arrange for trips. It is the bigger bolder approach to the whole child before they enter school. Any Marshall Plan should attempt to diminish the language gap by pre-school.

The key ingredient in reading improvement is getting kids to enjoy reading. No easy task, especially when programs like Success for All and test prep often end up making the reading experience akin to taking a daily does of Castor oil.

Teacher Quality and Working Conditions

I have issues with the very expression "Teacher Quality" because people all too often view TQ as digital - either you are or you aren't a QT – while I view it as analog - on a scale of say 1-10 that can vary depending on school conditions, the year, the time of day, a particular kid that bugs the hell out of you, a butterfly flapped its wings in Brazil, and who knows what else?

I also object that the phony ed reformers only want to look at TQ in terms of results on narrow high stakes tests. They have recently changed the vocabulary to "teacher effectiveness."

In the great debates with Teach for America teachers that we had here and at Chancellor's New Clothes, I noticed how so many of these newly minted current and already gone TFA teachers use the "teacher effectiveness" expression. TFA's certainly have all the jargon down.

I've been reading comments on various blogs from Nancy Flanagan, a long-time teacher, now retired, who thinks out of the box. She works with teachers on teacher quality issues and I promise to take a closer look at some of the work she is doing with the Center for Teacher Quality. Take a look at the link to working conditions.

Nancy recently left a comment at this Ed Notes post "Teacher Quality in Context".

Thanks for your acknowledgment of the excellent work done by the Center for TEACHING Quality, in North Carolina. CTQ is an organization dedicated to the idea of putting the teachers' voice into the policy-making process. That concept is played out in their sponsorship of the Teacher Leaders Network (see TEACHER magazine and EdWeek for lots of TLN teachers' essays and blogs)--as well as some great research (like the working conditions studies). One of their crown jewels is Teacher Solutions, a policy creation model where diverse groups of actual teachers come together to study key issues and issue reports and recommendations.

I emphasize "Teaching" because a lot of the issues you're discussing in this post turn on the distinction between selecting presumably good teachers vs. improving practice--teaching--in the teachers who are already in place in high needs schools. Making working conditions and professional learning better might go a lot further in fixing schools than sorting and selecting in the teacher pool. [my emphasis]

Nancy blogs at Teacher in a Strange Land.

I am interested in the focus on working conditions in many inner city schools. Some of my colleagues in buildings where charter schools have been put in place have pointed to a difference in working conditions. The teachers at Jamaica HS in Queens called it "educational apartheid" when 100 people showed up at the monthly meeting of what passes for a joke of a NYC Board of Ed (known as the PEP, but is actually the PEPLESS) to protest the difference in resources being given to a college prep school being added to their building while they were being starved. (See Gates Foundation Supports Apartheid from our post in May.)

I saw this occur when I did computer support at JHS 126 in Greenpoint in Brooklyn in the 90's when Bard HS took over the 4th floor which underwent a million dollar plus renovation while the junior high school's grades 7-9 were squeezed into the rest of the building. After a few years, Bard wanted the 3rd floor too and when denied, they left to push into a struggling elementary school on the lower east side. JHS 126 was left with a 4th floor full of half classrooms that could not fit a full public school class into them. We told that story back in November.

Here are a some comments on working conditions from a few blogs of young NYC teachers.

A 2nd year NYC teacher comments on working conditions at Miss Brave Teaches NYC:

...while on vacation last week I met up with a friend of mine from graduate school who now teaches at a private school in a wealthy suburb. She teaches for only two and a half hours a day, so the rest of her day is free for planning and grading, which means she never takes work home with her. She has no more than fifteen students in each class. She has an office with a computer provided to her by her school, which also paid for her to fly cross-country to national educator conferences. Her last day of school was at the beginning of June and she doesn't go back until after Labor Day, which means she gets a full three months off. And, most jaw-dropping of all, there is a chef at her school who cooks a delicious lunch for the staff every day! And to think, the teachers at my school are practically foaming at the mouth when we get a bagel breakfast twice a year. I was nearly salivating just listening to her describe those working conditions. When I told her that I'd had 420 students on my roster this past year, she exclaimed, "That's a school, Miss Brave! You were in charge of a whole school!" At one point, I inquired as to whether her school had a security guard; in response, she laughed at me.

As a chapter leader, I often asked my principal to hire a chef.

Mildly Melancholy is leaving a public school for a charter in Brooklyn:

What I do know and love is that the school has adequate facilities, and it has excellent resources. The teachers' room has a free copy machine (at my previous school, teachers had to buy a copy code [cheaply, but still] AND provide paper) and shelves of books, just sitting there (not stashed away in a secret room in a secret stairwell, covered in asbestos dust). Plenty of money for classroom books and supplies. Plenty of schoolwide expectations and reinforcement systems. A longer school day and a longer school year (several mandatory weeks in summer for students and teachers), but also a 10k raise.

Jeez. A copy machine in the teachers room.

I'm sure these gals are high level teachers no matter where they teach. But a career of bad working conditions take a toll. I can't tell you how much time and effort it took to navigate the "system" to get resources. The road blocks take a toll over time. I found myself beginning to wear down sometime in my 17th-19th year, almost totally as a self-contained classroom teacher in grades 4-6, especially with an administrator who had only an interest in test scores and actually discouraged any creativity.

Probably why I took a sabbatical to get an MA in computer science around my 20th year.

When I came back, she maneuvered me out of the self-contained class and into a cluster, which I turned into a computer job. I loved building a computer program from scratch for the next 10 years.

But my best work as a teacher was behind me.

Congrats to NYC Teachers....

... on completing the longest school year in the history of the universe.

The last day of school, is one of the glorious days and one of the things I miss about teaching - the sense of completion, the free feeling that lasts until you wake up the next morning and say, "Damn, 65 days and I have to go back."

Enjoy!