In March, the TUSD board voted 4-1 to hang the flags of the Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui nations in the board room next to the U.S. and Arizona flags. Mark Stegeman was the only No vote.
Ernesto Portillo, in a column in the Star, criticized Stegeman for his vote. Stegeman, never one to allow a criticism to go unanswered, wrote an op-ed defending himself.
Portillo is right. Stegeman is wrong.
I guess I could have said I respectfully disagree with Stegeman. But the reasoning which led Stegeman to his No vote is the same cold reasoning which so often leads him to take destructive educational stands on the school board. So, no.
My respect goes to all the students in the district who deserve a better board representation than Stegeman offers them. My respect goes to the district’s Native American students and members of their community who worked hard to have their flags in the board room, and won despite Stegeman’s objections. No respect for Stegeman on this one.
It’s not just that Stegeman voted against hanging the flags. It’s the argument he leaned on to support his vote: that placing the flags in the board room is mere symbolism and has no substantive educational value. It’s not just this one vote. After ten years of serving on the TUSD school board, Stegeman continues to act like he is incapable of understanding that K-12 education is about more than factual knowledge and academic skill building.
Let’s take a look at what Stegeman wrote in his op-ed. In explaining his No vote, Stegeman complained,
“TUSD too often focuses on symbolism rather than substance.”
He criticized a board member for saying that hanging the flags in the board room is related to education.
“I respectfully disagree. Education means teaching facts and skills.”
The two statements encapsulate why Stegeman gets so much wrong when it comes to K-12 education. He believes “substance” in education is synonymous with “facts and skills.” Other parts of schooling — symbolism, emotional responses, personal interaction — are peripheral.
He’s wrong. K-12 education has an essential emotive level. Our schools should be helping students grow as people at the same time they learn facts and skills. In a functioning education system, the two realms reinforce one another. Often, the best way to promote academic learning is for teachers, administrators and school districts to create an emotional connection with the young people they are striving to educate, making it clear they respect who the students are and what they are capable of becoming.
I’m a veteran of more than 30 years in the high school classroom. I taught plenty of students who listened to what I said and did what I asked them to do whether or not I connected with them emotionally. I didn’t have to work very hard to get those students’ attention.
But I had plenty of other students who needed to feel a connection before they thought it was worth their while to pay me much mind. They were the reluctant students who couldn’t be bothered with school unless you convinced them it was worth the effort. They were the students who felt like failures inside and outside the classroom, who felt it was safer not to make an effort than to put themselves out there and risk yet another failure.
I had to earn the respect and trust of many of my students before they were willing to take the academic and emotional risk of listening to what I said, participating in discussions and making an honest effort to complete the work I assigned. A large part of earning their respect was demonstrating that I respected them as human beings and potential learners.
There’s no formula for earning students’ respect. Teachers have to do it in their own way.
I’m a sucker for those Youtube videos showing teachers standing outside their classrooms greeting each student, one by one. I get choked up during videos showing teachers welcoming each student with a unique handshake. The students line up expectantly, waiting for their turn to participate in a symbolic bonding ritual which belongs to the teacher and that one student, no one else. When those teachers continue the connections in the classroom, they’re likely to get the most out of their students, and the students are likely to maximize what they get out of the class.
I couldn’t pull off that handshake ritual. It wouldn’t be me. But I could listen to every student like he or she was the only student in the room. During a class discussion, I could take a break from my planned lesson to follow a student’s tangent, especially if it was a reluctant student, to demonstrate respect for what that student knows and cares about, then use the tangent to lead us back to what we were discussing. I could interact with the class with smiles and raised eyebrows and humor and sympathy. I could make comments on their papers which showed I cared about what they wrote, not just their grammar, spelling and organization. I could let them know by everything I said and did, I was there in the classroom for them, not to burnish my ego, not to punch a time clock and pick up my monthly paycheck.
Feedback I received from students, parents, counselors and fellow teachers led me to believe I managed to earn the respect of most of my students. I like to believe they left my classroom better readers, writers, thinkers, and, in a small way, better human beings because of our personal connection.
So Mr. Stegeman, you’re wrong to say, “Education means teaching facts and skills.” Education is much more than that. The emotive and academic are interconnected parts of the learning experience.
Which brings us back to why hanging the Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui flags in the board room has more than a symbolic significance.
I’m guessing here. But I’m guessing Native American students who know that TUSD hung their flags side by side with the U.S. and Arizona flags enter their classrooms each morning feeling a bit more like they are part of the district, feeling a little prouder of who they are, holding their heads a little higher. If their teachers demonstrate respect for their cultures and heritages as well, they will be more likely to show their teachers respect in return. When they realize it was the hard work they and their communities put out that led to those flags hanging in the board room, they may decide it’s worthwhile to work a little harder in their classrooms.
Will the students’ classwork and test scores take a leap upward because of the board decision? In most cases, probably not. But I expect there will be a positive influence on many students, even though it may not be quantifiable. We’re dealing with human beings who are shaped by their experiences. They’re not learning machines the schools are programming to be more successful test takers.
Positive actions tend to have positive effects on students even when they don’t lead to a quantifiable result, even when they don’t add measurably to the “facts and skills” students learn. If Stegeman ever learns that lesson, he will be a better—possibly a quantifiably better—board member.
This article appears in Apr 4-10, 2019.
What next David, the Mexican, Guatemalan or Honduran flag? It is always fluff over facts with TUSD. Which school is next to close? TUSD has worked at being so inclusive that everybody left.
Turn out the lights when you’re done.
“Our schools should be helping students grow as people at the same time they learn facts and skills.”
I respectfully disagree that school is really for this. Plus it almost never happens in any meaningful way and the destructive effects of mediocre and poor teachers, added on to the basically impersonal nature of the institution itself, typically negate any benefits of the few great teachers that manage to transcend the institution. The institution is designed to use reward, punishment, and authority and most classes function that way. it’s a rare teacher that will have their authority questioned or genuinely want a child’s opinion. Plus one year of a great teacher is simply too little time to make any lasting effect on the vast majority of children.
Teachers can be positive role models, but we should focus on the only real place for emotional connection and learning: the family.
On the flags issue, why not hang those flags? Tohono and Pasqua students attend TUSD, they are sovereign nations and this is their historic land.
Why not just “readin’, ‘ritin’, and ‘rithmatic”, taught to the tune of a hickory stick,” there, Mark!
Tusd is such a bad example of a school district,
I guess a little more “feel good” bs can’t hurt them, but it won’t help either!
Frances, I would disagree with that position, in several respects.
David, I probably should have said that education is primarily about teaching facts and skills. Socialization is an important part, and one of the main arguments for preserving the traditional districts is the advantage students gain from interacting with students from a wide range of backgrounds.
Evidently David Safier has nothing better to do than castigating the one board member who votes against a popular measure that passes, a measure about the hanging of flags in the Board room.
This is all you notice, David, when looking at the operations of the TUSD Board? Nothing else to comment on? Or you only bother to write a post when you get a call from Kristel and / or Adelita highlighting yet another opportunity to kick Stegeman on an issue where he has already received plenty of public abuse?
All in all, you have provided here an excellent illustration of how the local Dem network works and how substantive we can expect its messages to the public to be.
Try analyzing the budget some time, David, with a view to whether funds are being allocated in ways the support the delivery of sound educational services.
That is exactly why TUSD has died. More worried about political posturing than educating children. They must have taught that at the JFK School of Government at Harvard. Everybody comes back with that mindset. Please be gone.
Nice response, but almost as superficial as Stegeman’s original response. Please accept a transfer to Johnson or Lawrence 🙂 (bring some counselors and additional full-time teachers with you) and explore and write about the disparities that exist in resources and outcomes for Native American students. Also, please investigate the impact of Native American students not being included in desegregation and the long -term impact. Look at dropout rates, discipline, and graduation rates as well. Also, explore how the closures of Richey, Wakefield, and Hohokam have impacted Native American communities/families and how that may contribute to additional problems and/or the flight to charter school alternatives. Finally, explore any initiatives or programs, especially under Stegeman’s leadership, to determine what the Board has done to responsibly address the underlying issue. -fred
There you go, David. That is what SUBSTANTIVE looks like. Note the part about bring some full time teachers and counselors with you; something that relates very clearly both to the examination of conditions on the ground, in the schools AND to the analysis of TUSD budgeting practices and their relationship to classroom conditions and educational outcomes.
Thank you, Mr. Urbina.
I agree with Alfred Urbina’s comments and insights, as I said to him earlier on Facebook where he wrote a similar comment. The next comment, which is criticizing me by praising Urbina, is reasonable as well, though, to use a term that’s being bandied about here, not very substantive.
This is one of those impossibly complex, thorny topics. I admit my lack of background and understanding of the subject of recent Native American education. I would not know where to begin to discuss the larger national and historic issue or situation at TUSD. I’m pretty clear on the limits of my knowledge. I stand by what I wrote in the post, both about the board decision and Stegeman’s vote, but I know it’s only one tiny corner of a much larger issue.
It is not impossibly complex. It just requires knowledge of what is happening in the schools and knowledge of TUSDs budgeting practices and how they relate to what is happening in the schools. When commenters point out that much if not all of your commentary, David, and much if not all your political affiliates messages to the public are lacking those two key data points, that is a SUBSTANTIVE (and accurate) critique of your praxis and theirs. Your tribe likes to appear in the guise of defenders of public schools, but very, very few of you are doing the kind of observation, reporting and advocacy work necessary to keep public institutions of education healthy.
I would say, Former Dem, that if you are not overwhelmed by the complexity of our society, either drilling down into a specific aspect or looking at the larger picture, you are far more sure of yourself than I am. Which may mean you have a better grasp of things than I do. Or it may mean you just think you have a better grasp of things than I do.
The key difference between you and me, David, is that when I comment here I am writing about local institutions of which I have had direct and extensive experience, institutions that have determined and / or affected the quality of education available to students I taught and to my own children. You do not.
Nor do you make the kind of effort some advocates make to directly observe and comment on local education governance or to understand conditions on the ground in the schools. You seem to be a POLITICAL animal, donating, schmoozing, and blogging the party line on education policy, promoting initiatives that have a grave impact on the lives of local families without being affected by them yourself.
This is not about the COMPLEXITY OF OUR SOCIETY. It is about straightforward, clear issues like whether desegregation funds are applied for the benefit of minority students, or whether some minority groups have supplementary funding and others do not, or whether closure decisions affect some cohorts more than others, as Mr. Urbina points out. During the period when I was most directly involved with the schools, these kinds of issues almost never got the kind of coverage, either here or in the mainstream media, that could unite the community behind advocacy for student benefit. Instead, the characteristic distractions and excuses were hauled out and given much exercise here, including shopworn, rabble-rousing villifications of Stegeman. (See above.)
I do not comment much these days, but when you promote a funding initiative without providing key facts about what it includes or prod and bully the local partys favorite scapegoat while failing to track and report on governance and funding applications, I may drop you a line.
The key difference between you and Mr. Safier is that he’s a person that understands the importance of public education vs. everything bourgeois and beyond which you seem to whole heartedly support. Also, another key difference is the fact that he backs up his opinion columns with one name. You have used so many damn names that you probably have forgotten your own. Because of that, your opinion is not taken all too seriously.
Seems like David has made it clear that he is too baffled by the complexity of our society to support public schools. Genuine support of them would entail investing the time needed to learn more about local governance than the latest excuse to abuse Stegeman. But no doubt attending board meetings and reporting on conditions in schools is too bourgeois an activity for some…