I don’t trust this guy. He looks like he means to make mischief of one kind or another. Photo by M. Severson

Any good parent will tell you they can’t make their children behave, but what they can do is make them want to behave. They can make them imagine the consequences of not behaving in a certain way and choose to do what is safest for their continued happiness.

Teachers will tell you teaching is not like that.

This is where teaching and parenting part ways. Teachers can develop dire outcomes to aberrant behaviors in many faceted forms and children will still choose the wrong path, no matter our resistance.

So that’s it, fine, we have no recourse, if children don’t want to learn, we can’t make them. It’s over, give up.

No, that’s why we have teachers.

What teachers can do, if fact what many teachers are really good at, is they can make children ready to learn. This is the penultimate divergence between parenting and teaching. Teachers check to see what skills children have before they try to teach them something. They evaluate student learning styles to see how the child processes new concepts and how best they internalize new ideas and teachers strive to make the learning of the material understandable and interesting so that the child is intrigued by the thought of pursuing it further.

Teachers spend most of their time preparing children so they are ready to learn, it is what they do.

Ready to learn. What an epiphany!

Our focus in education over the last few years has been directed at setting the curriculum (read test) and forcing the child to learn it or else. “Learn this or fail!” has been a hollow mantra that has resulted in increased frustration and growing despair among students and teachers alike.

Imagine if our cynosure was the child, themselves. What if we chose instead to ensure that the child had all they needed to be ready to learn before we demanded that they do it?

If you are working on your car would you get up in the morning and throw up the hood without first gathering tools, identifying the problem, making sure you had parts and perhaps even fixing yourself a cup of coffee to help ameliorate your mood at being forced to pursue the activity in the first place? No, you want to be prepared.

We owe our children at least this courtesy. Make sure they are ready to learn before we ask them to learn. Provide the stability and security of the freedom from hunger, disease, poverty or fear and then offer the enrichment of exposure to all the developmental prerequisites necessary to make the child feel confident they are prepared and yes, even eager to learn.

A few days back I got use an old skill that I thought might have been lost forever. In my new semi-retired state I have left behind many of the day-to-day techniques that had become second nature over the last few decades. But as I was sitting in the cafeteria at the elementary school where I spend four afternoons a week corralling miscreants and practicing educational psychology, I happened to notice that one little boy, two rows away from me, was having issues.

As a professional educator when faced with a roomful of adolescents I habitually scan the enclosed area looking for behavioral malfeasance wherever it may occur and upon encountering it I have no choice but to act. After so many years it is automatic. And it is a talent or possibly a bad habit, that sometimes makes me unpopular at venues like Chuckie Cheese and Toys R Us. Mea culpa, but there is nothing I can do to prevent my interference, for a career teacher  it’s like breathing.

So it was when I saw two children taking another boy’s lunch bag in tag-team tandem just to torment him, and in spite of the fact of my being two rows away in a massive, very loud, high-ceilinged room, I clearly heard him say, “Stop it!” I had to respond. I decided to call up the old skill and put it to use.

I stood and taking one step towards them, said, “Did you hear him?” using my TEACHER VOICE.

I was rewarded with immediate and absolute silence falling upon the hundred or so formerly voluble progeny. The two tormentors in question turned to look towards me immediately and meekly nodding as the smiles left their faces, they handed the lunch bag back. Somewhere from the other end of the room, amid the surprised hush I heard a small voice say “Who? Me, teacher?”

Satisfied I had made my point, I sat back down and slowly conversation resumed and eventually regained its former decibel level. But the two chastised 8 year olds stayed quiet and minded their P and Qs for the remainder of lunch.

The boy who I had interceded for looked at me and mouthed “Thanks” and I nodded. A female colleague moved closer and said, “Well that was impressive, I wish I could call up that deep voice.”

“Yeah I replied,” finally smiling, “I guess I still have it.”

Teacher voice is a necessary skill for all who seek to instruct children, or teach anyone, for that matter. Every good teacher has one and it is not simply an issue of volume or tenor. It is an attitude that comes through their words and says, “The nonsense is over! I am serious and you don’t want to pursue this behavior any further.” While I employ my “basso profundo” some teachers rely on an even quieter than normal voice to effectively get their point across. As a teacher you use whatever works best for you.

Sometimes I wish I could make my writing echo with my ‘teacher voice’. While reading Joy Resmovits’ recent article about charter schools 1) I had one of those moments. The premise of her article is that despite the fact that charter schools are demonstrably no more effective than public schools 2) some states are rushing pellmell to encourage still more charter school development at the expense of public school.

If I could just stand and say in a clear ‘teacher voice’ that would be heard by all rank and file: “Stop fooling around and get busy working to save public education in the United States! It’s critically important to our collective futures.” I would. All the rancor and greed would dissolve; the politicians posturing to control something they do not understand would stop; the would-be entrepreneurs seeking to recreate public education as a growth industry would shrivel in their seats nodding in temerity and from somewhere a small voice would say, “Who? Me, teacher?”

Yes, all of you.

1) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/charter-schools-growth_n_2125286.html

2) http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG869.pdf

“But we don’t fund it.”

It’s hard for me to believe that school starts in a less than a week. Summers go so quickly. Especially this summer.

Many parents and children are seriously thinking about school again. It’s about time they caught up. Most teachers have long since started working. My indefatigable wife has already worked four full days, though not alone, having also drafted at least one of her long-suffering daughters each day to go with her.

Of course she was never really done with school. It’s just that during the summer teachers can decompress, reflect and plan. A good friend of mine who has returned to Tucson from Texas has spent much of her time looking for a new position though because she is a skilled Special Education teacher her fate was never in doubt. Our ranks of teachers trained to work with special needs students are sorely depleted and the coffer has never been full.

Much of that has to do with the asinine edict that says Special Education students will be tested in their grade level rather than in their ability level. A severely mentally-handicapped eleven year old who has just successfully completed a self initiated toileting objective and can write their first name and the first letter of their last name is tested as a competent fifth grader. Surely there is nothing wrong with that?

Of course the other option is just to refuse to have special needs students in your school. This is happening in Minneapolis. Last year a public school that was failing was closed and a new charter school replaced it. They had a one year agreement that the Special Education students would also be allowed to attend the new school. That school has now told parents of special education students that they will not be attending the new school. You can read more about this situation in an article by Allean Brown in the Twin Cities Daily Planet. 1)

Starting a new school year has a very different meaning for those children and their families.

Meanwhile I am struggling with my first year of semi-retirement watching this flurry of activity with my jaundiced eye and realizing that there are some things that I feel need saying.

First, I want to offer an invitation. For the entirety of my classroom career I had a standing offer. I invited anyone who wanted to, could come and spend a day as a teacher. I would write all the plans, prepare all materials. I would even sit in the room. Just come do my job, for a day. No one ever took me upon it.

I can no longer make that offer now that my role has changed, but I can do this. If you are a legislator, vested with the responsibility of determining the fate of public education in Arizona, come to my school. I will take you around, I will let you go wherever you like. I will personally escort you to each classroom that you would like to see. I will answer every question you have. I am at your beck and call.

Here is the caveat. If you are not willing to actually see what goes on in public school then get your hands off public education and let us work. I am sure you can find things to work on that are more endemic your field of expertise, let teachers decide what is best for education.

Finally, fund education, not just some pet money-making scheme of education but real, public education. You know, for everyone.

There is too much to do, there are too many working extraordinarily hard to do it and we in public education police ourselves much more diligently than any legislature can. If you are among those who think teachers are ever satisfied with their results then you are among those that are wrong.

This is how it has always been. While I am not nearly as persistent as my wife, in years past by now, I would have spent at least a dozen or so hours preparing in my room for what I know is looming. It’s what teachers do.

Our public schools do not need meddlers. If you want to work, fine, volunteer or at least contribute your $200 to your school and get it all back at tax time. If you want to be part of the solution we will welcome you with open arms and put you to work. If not, get out of our way, we have important things to do.

1) http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2012/07/24/cityview-leaves-north-minneapolis-special-education-students-behind

Teachers love the big bucks!

Yes, like most teachers, I’ve been greedy all my life. The Republican candidate for President was just doing his civic duty when he pointed it out.

To quote Mitt Romney:“He ( President Obama) says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”1

He was of course speaking about Obama calling for more teachers and other public servants to be hired or those to be rehired who had been laid off. Romney points out that in his belief more government jobs do not help the American people.  To me it’s as if he is saying, “Haven’t teachers acquired enough wealth already off the backs of the American middle class?”

Granted I was using Barack Obama as my proxy in thinking this, asking the president to proselytize for the retention of public employees. I admit that in this I am culpable. But someone has to make sure we teachers stay among the moneyed elite.

Of course, I am being absurdly ironic. But I have also been a registered Republican most of my adult life. Many people who know me find this hard to believe. I answer that there has to be one progressive in the GOP so I volunteered. Yes, it’s a dirty job (filthy, actually) but I do get to look at the absurdities of what has become the Republican Party and point them out to anyone I please. Most days I lose count, there are so many.

The growth of that list is one of my worries and I worry about many things.

I also fear the Republican Party is about to commit political suicide. I believe that a government by the people cannot exist without viable choices being offered to those people and what the GOP is offering leaves me wondering what they are thinking. Without the Republican party we lose the two-party system and a surprising number of teachers identify themselves as Republicans. At least it is a surprise to me because most teachers are also members of the middle class.

Traditionally we have had highs and lows in our economy and this current phase represents one of those lows. Also traditionally people have sought education to help them rise up out of economic distress. Education is what drives growth. It also drives democratic and republican principles (as opposed to Democratic and Republican principles which may be an oxymoron in duality). Education is critical to growth and prosperity. Without an informed, active constituency, freedom has no chance. To say that fewer teachers is ever a good thing is patently counter-intuitive. It is also really a bad idea in an economy already reeling from unemployment.

But I believe there is a greater danger here than simply people being out of work.

Though retired in name, I can’t stop teaching, it’s been part of my life too long. Let me begin this lesson in politics with a calculated truism. The basis of our economy is the free enterprise system. As a Republican I have always believed in the premise that supply and demand will drive economics. But that is in an ideal model. What we currently possess is considerably less than ideal. When wealth seeks to control what is available rather than allow free enterprise, we no longer are operating in a Free Market system.

Representative government is also a hallmark of Republicanism. Ronald Reagan famously said, “Government’s first duty is to protect the people not, run their lives.” I was never a big fan of the ‘Gipper’; he was too conservative for me, I’m more of a Bull-Moose Republican, but even he would have a very hard time measuring up (down?) to the standards set by the GOP these days. Most Republicans have completely departed from Reagan’s stated principle. They seek to put massive government controls on personal freedoms and greatly restrict the ability of the middle class to exist while at the same time ignoring the pressing needs of the very source of their legitimacy: that middle class.

It is easy to draw allusions from economics back to education.

As a teacher I have seen the disasters wrought on education by interference where it is not needed and the casual disregard of glaring necessities. And I want you to recognize that in this I am not just indicting the GOP. Under Arne Duncan, Obama’s hand-picked education czar, the lot of public education has not significantly improved. While NCLB was a disaster, ESEA offers little in the way of substantive growth of educational policy and only seeks to justify its own existence through punitive action. The number of states now requesting waivers from the mandate continues to increase almost daily.2)

I give kudos to Vice President Biden for the inspirational aspect of his speech to the NEA but it is still just words unless actions follow.

Education is too important to be a political pawn. We risk our future by such malfeasance. It is time Washington recognizes that their perceived short term political and financial gains will destroy our country’s continued growth and significantly alter the future.

A future that is another of those nightmarish worries.

1) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/joe-biden-teachers-mitt-romney-selfish-education_n_1646582.html

2) http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2012/06/five_more_states_get_nclb_waiv.html

As you probably know by now, if you have been following my OpEds (again, fawningly, I say “Thank you!”), I read a lot. I make it a habit to survey as many articles and blogs in re educational issues each week as possible. In scanning the updates a report by the Huffington Post caught my eye today.

“Charter Schools Fall Short On Students With Disabilities” was the headline. 1) The author Joy Resmovits was reporting on a meeting in Minneapolis that brought together many diverse people who were celebrating the charter school movement’s 20 year anniversary. She cites some interesting data.

A recent study by the Government Accountability Office (GAC) has found that charter schools do not enroll special needs students at the same rate as public schools. 2) This is not news to teachers in the public sector, the report only serves to quantify the discrepancy. Overall the report says, charter schools enroll exceptional education students at 8% while exceptional educational students in public schools represent 11% of their populations.

Exceptional education as defined in our district includes both what has been known as Special Education and Gifted Education. If you google (when exactly did that become a verb? How does one conjugate ‘to google’?) ‘exceptional education’ you will get citations for both. I am of the opinion that Ms. Resmovits’ article refers mostly to those students with developmental delays or disabilities. I digress, there is a much bigger problem here.

The government report does not fully address the issue. In the last school year there were several students attending charter schools who accessed services from my own school. Our psychologist was responsible, upon request, for evaluations of charter school students if they lived in our school’s enrollment area. Other services were also provided by our public school district to charter school students as needed.

I am not against this. Also I see nothing wrong with the fact that charter schools are less likely to take special needs students than public schools even though by law they are supposed to take everyone.

Simply stated, charter schools do not have the base of resources that public schools have. Certain children require specific classrooms, ongoing therapy and consistent evaluation beyond the normal curriculum in order to be successful. Only our public schools have all these resources available, as they must by law. Charter schools are able to access those resources but maintenance of all the necessary specialists, resources and materials adequate to accommodate each student would be a daunting task for any charter school system, no matter how competent they are as an educational institution.

Think of that the next time you want to rail against the waste of resources in public schools. Public schools are maintained so that no matter who walks through the door they can be educated to the best of their abilities. Public schools do not cull out students who are unable to maintain normal progress, they do not refuse to serve the specific needs of any student and they do not call upon some other agency to provide the educational services that any single child might require.

Public schools take everyone, and they educate them. If I was a parent of a child with special needs for their educational growth, I would want my child to be in the best possible learning environment.

I am not an apologist. Is there waste in the public schools system? Of course there is! Way too much of it, I might add. But is there waste in our federal government, our state legislature, Tucson City Parks and Recreation, Mr. Kim’s JerryBob restaurant or my grandson’s breakfast plate this morning? Unfortunately, yes, there is. But that inherent waste does not imply that any of these institutions should cease to be supported. I will give my grandson breakfast again tomorrow no matter how much he leaves behind today.

There is waste all around us and we should be trying to limit waste of valuable resources. But our children are our MOST valuable resource and they should not be short-changed because we are concerned we might waste money. It is money. I will balance the future of my children and grandchildren against the monetary cost incurred by providing the best education possible, any day of the week.

In fact, let’s do that.

1) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/19/charter-schools-disabilities-_n_1610744.html
2) http://www.scribd.com/doc/97619872/Charter-School-SWD-Highlights-June-2012