All kinds of people out there think our classrooms are filled with rotten teachers doing a lousy job with their students. If teachers knew what they were doing, these folks say, if they were anything like what a good teacher should be, they’d get those kids whipped into shape in a hurry. Everyone would work hard, everyone would succeed—NO EXCUSES! Achievement scores would soar. “If I was a teacher, man, things would be different.”
Sometimes I wish some of those folks could spend six weeks teaching. Not as student teachers under the watchful guidance of the classroom teacher, not as classroom assistants, not as guests who come in for a day and leave. As the person who runs a class of 30 to 40 students for six, on-their-own weeks. I’m not cruel. I wouldn’t make them do it for a full day. Maybe in an elementary school, they’d work from the beginning of the day until lunch time. In a middle school or a high school, they’d teach two classes with different curricula needing two separate preparations. I’d not only pay them a full teacher’s salary for their efforts, I’d pay them double to make them think they were making out like bandits. And if they could do what they think they could do in the classroom, if they were as good as those “real teachers” they dreamed up in their heads, if they could take low achieving kids and teach them, really teach them, how to read, write and do math—NO EXCUSES!—hell, I’d beg them to stay on as full time teachers at twice everyone else’s salary. They’d be worth it, and maybe they could show all those other deadbeat teachers how it’s done.
If a few of the blowhards took me up on it, they’d come out at the end of six weeks with different attitudes. They’d find out there’s no magic teaching formula that turns every kid into a whiz kid, or even most of the kids into whiz kids, unless they started out with a class full of whiz kids. If they went into a school where most of the kids were a few years below grade level, they wouldn’t figure out some amazing way to make those students “get it.”
At the end of those six weeks, when they saw they hadn’t turned their students into world beaters, some of them might leave cursing out the kids who wouldn’t pay attention and all those teachers and parents who gave those kids bad attitudes. “It’s not my fault someone else screwed those rotten kids up so bad. Give me a year, and believe me, I’d get them in shape. They may not like me, they may not think I’m their best friend, but by God I’d make those sons of bitches learn!” But if they were honest, they’d think back on their own efforts which didn’t yield the results they’d hoped for. They’d remember dragging themselves home at the end of a teaching day—even half a day, even just a few classes—tired and confused, wondering why things didn’t go better. They’d think back on the evenings they lay on the couch staring at the ceiling with the television in the background they weren’t listening to, asking themselves, “What the hell am I going to do in class tomorrow?” And they’d admit, “OK, this is tougher than I thought it was. Much tougher. If I wanted to be a good teacher, it would take time, effort, commitment. And even then, there’s no way I’d work those miracles I thought any competent teacher should be able to work without breaking a sweat.”
Sometimes I wish I could get those cocksure teacher bashers into the classroom for six weeks. But then I think about what would happen in those six weeks, and I reconsider. No, it would be a bad idea. I wouldn’t want to do that to the students.
This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2015.
With all due respect, you are absolutely wrong, Mr. Safier. Sure the is “….no magic teaching formula that turns every kid into a whiz kid,…”…but with Competent/Dedicated Teachers, an Effective Classroom Instructional Program supported by a Modern Instructional Infrastructure…and most importantly, that Students and their Parents/Guardians know that chronically disruptive Student Behavior will not be tolerated; that such Students will be removed from the Classroom (Arizona Revised States 15-841); with the foregoing in place and implemented, Academic Skills will necessarily improve!
Five years ago we blamed the AIMS Test, now it’s the new test. When 98% of students fail grade level aptitude testing, there must be a bigger disconnect than “it’s the test writer.” Me thinks thou dost protest too much.
Mr. Safier is absolutely correct. Only someone with experience in the classroom can know how correct he is.
Without support from parents/guardians, administration and adequate teaching tools and equipment, the teacher can only do so much.
Francis Saitta in her comment above identifies many of the missing elements in today’s classrooms: an effective classroom instructional program, a modern instructional infrastructure (these cost money which is not available in our state due to the State Legislature) and a follow through with the students/parents on discipline issues. Francis misses a few more critical issues, particularly: parent commitment to the student learning process and the effects of society and the media on student learning, expectations and behavior.
Teachers should be applauded for taking on such a difficult job with such little support from the state and the community.
This guy should be counting his blessings he was able to have a career and pension for being a loser in Oregon. In any other profession/location he would have failed and been thrown to the curb.
What a horrible representative for professional teachers that take pride in their accomplishments.
David, this piece is spot on. You know you’ve penned a gem when the venom from the right wing troll crowd gets this intense.
As someone with three degrees from one of the best private universities in this country who experienced a complete change of opinion about many things relating to education once I got behind the desk and taught for a few years, I’ve considered the problem of how to “educate” the teacher bashing crowd, too. I wonder if having a required “practicum” in high school which involves supervised assistant-ship in a master teacher’s classroom with a few guided learning experiences designed to illustrate the difficulties of getting content across to a diverse group of learners would do the trick?
Everyone in this society needs the humbling experience of, after expending blood, sweat, and tears pitching content to a group of students, seeing some kids “get it” easily and others fall far short of understanding. The same instruction, exactly, was delivered to the group. Every kind of support was extended in small groups or individually to those who you had reason to believe would have a hard time mastering it. The evaluation comes: some kids haven’t gotten it, others have not. Why is it so hard for some people to understand that what this proves is not that teachers are lazy and incompetent, but that there’s more than the teacher’s effort and ability level at play here?
The entire model is faulty. The poster above touches on it when he or she talks about “pitching content”. Learning isn’t about pitching, that’s softball or used cars. Learning is an activity that children do.
The lecturer/class model in use for 200 years goes against everything in human nature. With all of the billions spent on education you’d think we could find something better.
Also, different kids have aptitudes for different things, but the current educational model treats them like machines, each to be manipulated by the teacher to some completely arbitrary “standard”.
Until the basic model is changed we’ll keep going round and round. Teachers will be frustrated. Students will be unhappy and not learn to their potential. Politicians will point fingers. And people on the internet will make snarky comments about the “good old days”.
What,Again is down to his usual – posting personal attacks rather than offering even a smidgen of intelligent insight into the issue.
Way to go, sweet fellow!
Is education in America so broken it can’t be fixed? I have never seen such a miserable attempt at resolving long lasting deficiencies. Everybody has tried. Local, state and federal. But, to no avail. Are public school on their last leg?
“Sometimes I wish I could get those cocksure teacher bashers into the classroom for six weeks. But then I think about what would happen in those six weeks, and I reconsider. No, it would be a bad idea. I wouldn’t want to do that to the students.”
Changing hearts and minds I see.
Demonizing his readership, disregarding their opinions and grouping them into a negative set, then smugly recaptures his position of supposed superiority.
Can everyone else see why he would want to censor/”moderate” his comments?
Perhaps the teachers are just beating their heads against the wall that should have been a higher fence:
54.4% Hispanics enrolled in Special Education in California
http://www.kidsdata.org/topic/97/special-n…
These are their parents:
Nevada saw 90% of immigrants flunk the written test in the first few weeks a new driver authorization card was offered. The California DMV (90% failed) is also concerned that immigrants might not have the literacy proficiency needed to pass.
http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nevada-a…
You are exactly right Splick. The frustration level amongst teachers got so high that all the union could do was to whip them into a frenzy over supposed low pay. Truth is,…if education worked correctly the teachers would be happy and the union would be out of business.
But instead everybody suffers. And most of all the students who are ill prepared.
I wish someone who is so sanctimonious would follow me around for just a few hours, well in my old job. They would be out of bed early for PT before dawn unless there is a jump scheduled. Then it would be to the rigger shed to supervise the issue of parachutes, proper donning of that equipment, inspection, load up and then flight to the drop zone.
Or maybe be ready when a phone call comes in early in the AM to report NOW. To leave town within four hours without being allowed to phone home, absence at the dinner table being the only indication you would be gone.
There is no one job on the face of this earth more criticized than the military as has been evidenced by the lack of vocal support from this president for OUR mistakenly shooting up a hospital in Afghanistan. But I suppose a lapse in consideration for teachers outweighs how those of us in the military feel about this lapse by the president.
I feel your pain.
So Harold, you were a public employee. You are so cute with your sanctimonious crap.
That’s right, Tonya, no less sanctimonious than the author here but far less public.
Thank you for your service Harold. Some will never know. I tried to explain Pear harbor to a 30 year old on Monday. He doesn’t even know who John Wayne is.
What happened in Afghanistan, Harold, was a tragic mistake that can and does occur during military efforts. Unless it can be shown that what happened was due to poor planning and incompetence, no one, I repeat no one, can hold the military accountable.
Mr. Safier, and his incessant carping about Standard Assessment results, is, however, is another issue!!
Well, Francis, it is the incessant carping that makes the topic impossible to digest. Teacher advocates could not do worse with this messenger.
Harold: Mr. Safier is NOT a Teacher advocate. He is, however, an advocate for the status quo in TUSD. He is, and has been, a staunch supporter of the failed TUSD Academic Policies and Programs as implemented by the Majority Board Members, Administration, and Tucson Education Association.
I stand corrected, Francis. Education in general could have no worse advocate.
“He is, however, an advocate for the status quo in TUSD. He is, and has been, a staunch supporter of the failed TUSD Academic Policies and Programs as implemented by the Majority Board Members, Administration, and Tucson Education Association.”
Is this a “paid” position?
Would education work better if the tests were given to teachers and parents rather than students.
We pay the teachers almost the least and fund the schools almost the least in the whole nation. We have more charter schools in the whole nation and this incessant complaining about the schools started a long time ago … about the schools are not doing well…. worse since the changes( charter schools, Tom Horne are 2). It was and still is about privatizing all education and bashing people of lower socio-economic means. Do you think the attitude(lack of support), lack of funding and not demanding accountability with taxpayer funds( as well as segregation) at all charter schools could be the problem? No ….. you want public education closed down and more charters and then we could very well be the most ignorant state in the union. These bashing responses to David’s article are great examples of that. Bashing is not a discussion nor problem solving.
Money, money,money. That’s not the problem. The process has become inherently flawed.
People like punting the public education football, but the point that I see here is that the job is not easy, and that has gotten tougher. The problems that many kids today bring to school (often the only stable, nurturing and informative environment they have) can be complicated and very difficult to manage. Any one of the disgusted and angry commenters here has no idea how anger and disgust backfire in today’s modern classroom. Without professionalism and purpose, it can even be dangerous.
Contrary to what many might think and no matter how you calculate time on the job, I also submit that few who so easily complain about teachers in public schools would have neither the patience nor the professionalism required to stick it out for the long term day to day calendar grind – complying with all the demands of board policies, state guidelines, administrative oversight, curriculum sequences, testing/measurement, out of control behavior from students, and sometimes out of control parents as well.
Guardians, you ask, “Do you think the attitude (lack of support), lack of funding and not demanding accountability with taxpayer funds( as well as segregation) at all charter schools could be the problem?”
No, I think the application of sadly limited and insufficient funds within TUSD to the wrong targets (e.g. $10K bonuses for the Superintendent’s cabinet and his absurdly inflated compensation package and the expensive hotel rooms he has been reported to treat himself to on the district’s dime), not demanding that TUSD be accountable with taxpayer funds and not requiring that they desegregate are among the biggest problem we have locally.
It is comical the way you continue turning every discussion to lack of funding for public schools and lack of fiscal oversight in charters. There is $60 million in supplementary deseg funding being spent in TUSD every year that is not suitably accounted for (take a look, some time, at what passes for budget reporting in this district). After 40 years of receiving significant funding supplements of this sort, the district is still unable to show enough progress with actually integrating the schools to satisfy the courts.
On top of that, from what I’ve been able to observe during the last two and a half years, the district has an institutional culture that does not respect, value, and support teachers in the way they should be valued and supported. I saw it any number of times with absurd and often downright abusive top-down policy implementations at the TUSD school with which I had the most experience. Sadly, it’s not just right wing commenters who “bash” teachers. Sometimes it’s those who make decisions in the institutions where they work, and that’s part of the reason we have a “teacher shortage” — not a shortage of qualified people residing in the area, some experts remind us, but a shortage of qualified people willing to work for pay in the profession, given the conditions they face here.
To anyone who really wants to understand what I wrote, there has been continual fraud found nationally and in our state in charter schools and nothing gets done. Some states are doing some investigating but I fear there is none done in our state. THere are misuse of funds alleged continually in TUSD. Nothing has been proven. I have seen allegations made in the media and Dr. Sanchez confronted… nothing… no problems that are stated. Yes there is this new auditor but let’s put at least 1 auditor on the payroll for the charter schools( If there is one in the charter system, I am unaware and that person cannot be doing his or her job). With this new auditor, TUSD will have 5. So there is the hypocrisy. Also, I happen to know nationally what superintendents and people around them get paid and many get much, much more. Because of the size of TUSD and many other factors, Dr. Sanchez and the people around him are not overpaid. They work very hard in a district that no superintendent has been able to handle as well as Dr. Sanchez in a very long time. We need a superintendent who is willing to wade through the plethora of difficulties in TUSD from the Deseg order to the lower socio-economic level of our families as well as the growth in segregation that is happening in TUSD, as David S has pointed out, because many children in that economic strata cannot provide their own transportation to get to the charter schools (that’s only one reason).
?
“Guardians” writes: “THere are misuse of funds alleged continually in TUSD. Nothing has been proven. I have seen allegations made in the media and Dr. Sanchez confronted… nothing… no problems that are stated.”
Wow.
Did you read these articles, Guardians?
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/two-members-of-tusd-audit-committee-resign/article_8a89d380-8791-5d12-977a-3fe0c08aa53c.html
http://tucson.com/news/opinion/who-allowed-family-members-to-serve-on-tusd-audit-committee/article_47d27a9a-ffc8-5c4a-a514-61723c3dc396.html
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/family-ties-plentiful-in-independent-tusd-committee/article_67b807c1-1b37-5870-8255-c8fbd50aa0d6.html
How about these?
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/grijalva-s-mother-in-law-hired-as-tusd-principal/article_4bf2a3bd-0f4d-53a9-bdd1-a7bcae17ea8e.html
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/new-details-emerge-in-grijalva-kin-hiring/article_674695dc-d25c-5912-936a-c6bd531d1bbb.html
http://tucson.com/news/local/column/tim-steller-tusd-s-grijalva-should-have-disclosed/article_a3084963-4544-5800-a2b5-4a9ae79c4fc2.html
Or this one?
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/tusd-s-strategic-planning-consultant-got-prior-insight-into-district/article_2295b396-2caa-5c85-ac91-e460819bc40e.html
Or, on the subject of respecting and supporting the professionals in direct contact with TUSD students and improving their morale in a very tough job (what Safier wrote about in the above post, in case you’d forgotten) how about this one?
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/tusd-moves-to-outsource-its-substitute-teachers/article_a6cf8196-558b-5d26-a5bc-0e45a54345cc.html
Why is the recruitment of the substitute teachers delivering instruction in too many TUSD classrooms being outsourced, while functions like maintenance and janitorial services are not? Might it perhaps have something to do with the fact that some functions within the district are backed by unions and others (including substitute teaching) are not?
Commenters keep asking you about this link, but you never respond.
http://threesonorans.com/?s=elders+hearts
Did you ever watch the linked video? If so, how do you explain it; how do you EXCUSE it?
If you can consult all the above material and still believe that there are no leadership problems in this district, you know absolutely nothing about public institutions or what public education should properly be. Your commentary is one of the most depressing spectacles in the district, and that’s saying a lot in an institution where depressing spectacles abound: a professional teacher in a public institution who cannot see or understand what is happening in the school system where she teaches, slavishly following AEN talking points about districts, charters, and the Koch brothers, and failing to acknowledge that the young, inexperienced, soap-opera-star-handsome chief administrator in the district is inexcusably bungling the management of the schools and taking the district to the $$$ cleaners with his ridiculous compensation package while he does it — and while teachers get by on starvation wages and students’ needs go unmet.
What a sad shame it all is. When will it end? WILL someone finally put an end to it? Or is public education, as Rat T keeps asserting, really a dying beast?
Unfortunately, these days Orwell’s essay “Shooting an Elephant” reads more and more like an allegory for the deliberate destruction of an institution this democracy needs in order to survive.
My comments regarding public education are directed at TUSD as I have little knowledge of public ed on the national level. But most left wing cities with left wing school boards are suffering the same fate. They have tried to immerse their students in Progressive agenda driven education rather than those skills needed to maintain gainful employment.
And the public has caught on to the scam. Leave your politics at home and go back to church on Sundays. You would be amazed at how well things would work.
Rat T:
So now you’re prescribing the opiate of the masses? We should go to church and ignore the fact that the public institutions serving almost 50,000 students in the greater Tucson area — and still more than 80% of our students nationally — become more and more unable to meet the needs of the young people who are enrolled in it?
Sorry, but some of us don’t believe that’s a proper use of religion. “Church” should be the place where we find the strength necessary to care about the common good and find ways to act to forward it, not a place to escape “politics.”
What’s going on in TUSD, Rat T, is not “progressive agenda driven education.” The experience you had in TUSD 20 years ago RE the accessibility of gifted programming was not “progressive agenda driven education either.” Then as now, it’s standard-issue laziness, mismanagement, and malfeasance: politicians who are “progressive” in name only presiding over things that are not justifiable either from an educational or from an equity perspective, putting lipstick on a pig and advertising it to the public as a beauty queen.
Democracies and the public school districts that are supposed to produce informed electorates only work when the constituency is engaged enough, informed enough, and active enough to hold them accountable. The constituency in TUSD is no such thing, but when it comes to urban public education, many enlightened “supporters of public education” both locally and nationally do not act as disinterested monitors of performance and advocates for accountability in these settings, as they should. Instead, they allow the fact that these institutions can be used as power bases for populist politics to become their excuse for looking the other way and refusing to alert the public that from an educational standpoint, this emperor has no clothes.
You misunderstand the church comment. Many do.
“…because you trample upon the poor
and take from him exactions of wheat
you have built houses of hewn stone
but you shall not dwell in them
you have planted pleasant vineyards
but you shall not drink their wine.
For I know how many are your transgressions
and how great are your sins —
you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe,
and turn aside the needy in the gate.”
The prophet Amos. Somehow I don’t think he would have liked the way teachers and students are treated in TUSD, Rat T, and I think he probably had a more vigorous action agenda in mind than just going to church every Sunday.
When people pass the lies of others on without exerting due diligence in using their God-given intelligence to examine whether or not this might be true, and when they persist in public commentary of this kind month after month while significant damage is occurring to students in the institutions being discussed, I agree with “Supporting Public Ed”: that behavior needs to be confronted.
Once again that’s why God gave kids parents and vice versa. Where have the parents gone? TUSD announces publicly that students are #1. You say significant damage is occurring to the students. Is TUSD lying?
Can charges be filed?
Widows and orphans, Rat T. Read your Old Testament, aka Tanakh, aka Hebrew Bible.
God doesn’t give every kid parents, and some kids have irresponsible parents. What is the community’s responsibility in this circumstance? Perhaps to properly tend its public institutions and keep calling for truth and accountability, for the sake of those kids who don’t have parents who can be effective advocates for them?
Let me see if I’ve got this right. You are referencing responsibilities appearing in the Bible, to support an institution that has removed any reference to God, and that teaches evolution as the replacement for creation. OK, I’ve got it now.
No, you haven’t “got it.”
In dialogue with someone who advised attending church, commenters quoted a text church-goers respect in support of having some compassion for the more-than-80% of our children nationally who are enrolled in public schools and for the teachers who serve them.
WWJD, Rat T? “Close TUSD?” Think again.
What Some Learn in Church – compassion and fiscal responsibility are not mutually exclusive.
Go try your Christ-cuck argument for pathological altruism out on some other comment section, maybe in one of your echo chambers on reddit.
WWJD? The way I read it, when he was asked to perform works without faithful instruction, he dusted his sandals at the door. Render unto Caeser that which is Caesar.
Old Pueblo – the point is that compassion requires us to ask for fiscal responsibility, i.e. if we care about the well-being of children served by these schools we will ask for no conflicts of interest on the audit committee, no hiring of board members’ relatives for administrative positions in the district where they serve, proper bidding processes, etc.
Rat T – there are other passages that could be cited in support of a broader view of who deserves our compassion and advocacy, but I’m getting the impression that whatever is said, you will continue to try to have the “last word.”
You can comment again flippantly if you like, but here’s my last word on the subject: many of us who’ve seen the direct results in students’ lives of entirely preventable administrative mismanagement have a harder time writing off the well-being the tens of thousands of young people “served” by TUSD as something the community has no responsibility to care about. The solution is not to close the district. The solution, as “Supporting Public Ed” keeps saying, is to reform it.
No comment was made flippantly and I don’t need the last word. TUSD failings are well documented and theft is ma never be found. I applaud reform efforts but to what end? It has been 35 years in the making. I pray that you are under 30 to see real change. I am not hopeful. It is my short coming, but reality based.
Although the pay was never good, many teachers now retired or retiring soon saw some meaning and purpose in their jobs. But years of teacher bashing, started usually against unions in big cities, have taken a toll. Kids and parents are tougher (even unreasonable) to deal with. The future of positive, human-level interactions in classrooms looks bleak. Fewer and fewer young people, eager for monetary rewards and recognition, want to take it on. It really is a difficult job that is easy to criticize from the outside. I like the proposition in this article except for one thing – I would dare all teacher bashers to enter a large urban middle school classroom in a low-income area as full time subs and show us how it is done – for a whole school year.
I think they’d learn what burnt toast feels like, maybe even get fired or arrested after snapping out when the kids figure him/her out – which would happen by September.