School: Teacher Helps Students Cheat Because She Says They’re ‘Dumb As Hell’ « CBS Atlanta
bush and teddy kennedy's nclb tied school funding to student performance
i was there, it changed the yearly emphasis in every school district in CA away from pushing global warming and cooperative ed to a breakneck effort to get test scores up
i have never seen teachers work so hard as i have since the passage of nclb
every year a district establishes an emphasis, a sorta mission statement decided by the supt and her curriculum specialist who mobilize and promote their yearlong campaign thru back-to-work teacher rallies and more pointedly school inservices in an attempt to get educators to buy into whatever is being pushed and employ the district's recommendations in daily instruction
i remember about 1995 when the entire emphasis of a very large school district in the south bay where i worked was all about the promotion of tolerance---that is, our number one goal for the year was to get staff and more signficantly our student bodies to respect and accept our open and still closeted gay fellows
which is all fine and good, except the kids couldn't add fractions, didn't know where massachusetts was, and had no idea what came first, ww1 or the civil war (among many other lapses)
after nclb all these nonsensical and brazenly political wastes of time were abandoned as we all concentrated our efforts to get math and reading test scores into the black so our funding wouldn't be taken over by hostile outside forces (like mr bobb's emergency management of the openly corrupt and incompetent detroit public schools)
"literacy" was a push that lasted several years, it meant teaching kids how to read their textbooks---use the index, follow the graphic organizers, appreciate the purpose and value of the summary boxes...
"literacy," in my opinion, was one outstanding district wide emphasis
i make 80K, i work 181 5-hour days per year
teachers start low on the pay scale and get an automatic 1200 to 1500 dollar raise every year for 12 years simply by virtue of returning to their jobs
my highest stress (i'm in a relatively safe district) these days is mostly hyphy young ladies with "tood," they like to talk back to teacher, they like to "act out"
they remind me of the jerry springer show
compared to real adults and real professions with real performance demands, my job in my opinion is a piece of cake
i sincerely believe public school teachers are overpaid and underworked, my job really is a blast
most teachers i know over the age of 60 are sitting on estates worth close to, even over, a million dollars, we own by now our homes outright, we have fat 401k's on top of our plush strs pensions, we retire early, we spend our summers traveling, rose gardening and engaging in very personally rewarding home improvement projects
in a high school staff of 120 it is remarkable how many experts i know on fascinating topics of esoteric diversity---a friend writes a local column on horse racing, another wrote a 1000 page history of the oakland raiders, another is trying to get on jeopardy, another is a culinary king
these people are fascinating, they are trained physicists and historians, musicians and basketball coaches, it is extremely rewarding to work with such intersting people, many lifelong friends
it is extremely politically incorrect to say, but it is my experience that my industry is dominated by professionals who happen to be female and i have always asserted that ours is an extremely complaining industry
at staff meetings, the men tend to sit together and pass notes about bible history or the greatest middle linebackers the nfl ever saw while the women up front raise their hands and...
if i hear mrs bartlett one more time usurp the time and attention of all 120 of us to regale us yet once more about some fascinating (to her) interaction she had with a special needs student in 1979, i think i'm gonna puke
but i won't, i'm a professional so i will restrain myself
mrs bartlett is a wonderful person, truly saintly, and one outstanding world lit teacher, the kids eagerly respond and thrive in her class, she was teacher of the year
if i were in her class, tho, i'd gag---so much sentiment, so much getting in touch with feeling
more power to her and her kids, whatever works
her husband willy is slowly and tortuously dying of colon cancer, everytime i see her i remember to express my love and concern, their nephew travis was in my math class
for a year i called this strapping young defensive end "honey" in motherly tones like he was some dear little precious
how ya doing, honey, i'd coo, and he'd respond as if i'd called his name---he and one bored to death pre calc class found it very amusing (i did too), but you probably had to be there
i love mrs bartlett, we have worked together for more than a decade
she thinks she's underpaid, she makes a little more than i
of course, she's got her clad
americans want REAL school reform, obama is only more of the same status quo, his education stump must therefore backfire
the guy's an idiot, independent thinkers question how he ever got into columbia (cutting classes and smoking choom, as he says), let alone harvard
why won't he show his transcripts?
mrs bartlett loves obama, she thinks i do too
party on, y'all
