"Tuesday Night Revisited," Leslie Turner Minarik
Awful. I'm not talking about the fact that Minarik's students were transient, in foster care, unable to read, malnourished, or that the conditions of the school were so poor, I'm talking about the superintendent telling her, "Teachers don't make decisions."
It should be a prerequisite that all administrators have classroom experience. My dean at SWIC, Paul Wreford, was a history teacher. This man is a tireless advocate for his faculty. He understands the stresses, pressure, and long hours teachers endure, even if all that is required of them is 5 classes and 5 office hours. This superintendent is mistaken; teachers make decisions in their classrooms minute-by-minute, and they are exactly the resource that should be making decisions about policy.
No wonder Minarik couldn't sleep.
"Student Advocacy"
Minarik speaks about the ethics of following district mandates, or hoeing her own road and choosing text and curriculum that she knows is best for teaching her students, in her class. This doesn't really have to do with ethical issues in research, right? It does, however, illustrate how teachers power can be stolen from them. Again, it is the teachers who should be making curricular decisions because it is they who know what's best for their students.
This is appalling. The more I pay attention, the more I see a systematic derogatory and condescending attitude towards teachers. It might be interesting to do a study of the rhetoric surrounding teachers and teaching, at all levels. How could I do this? Jane, How could I do this? How could I look at the all the characterizations of teachers and schools, positive and negative? My guess is that the negative would far outweigh the positive.
I think, again, it's all about the dollar, and people see schools and teachers as a perpetual drain on the economy, local and national. But, what's more important than educating ourselves?
"Doing the Right Thing"
Minarik, "This is even more true now as some people argue that those of us who are white cannot research children of color."
???
What do I think? I agree that in terms of experience, it is hard to empathize with someone who is growing up without food on the table, some stability in the family, a role model, and values completely different than my WASP teachings. It's not impossible though. And I do think teachers have to understand something of who their students are as people in order to teach them best.
I'm sure that I do and say things in my classes, make assumptions about topic or pedagogy or language, that alienates some of my black students, but I've also had some success as well. I few semesters ago I had a student, William, from Caseyville, who sat in the back of the room, and early on, he played on the computers, never looked at me, and didn't do any of the work. He couldn't be bothered. As is my tact, I left him alone. He did, however, turn in his first paper. I read the words on the page, and responded to him. There was a great deal of non-standard usage, but there was some thinking underlying it all, and I told him so in my comments. I think this was the first time a writing teacher had listened to his words, rather than just writing him off because of his language. He perked up; he finished my course, and he did well. Still, when I see him in the hall, he says, "What up Lund."
I guess what I'm saying is, we may not be able to understand, we may even not be able to research, but we certainly can still teach, if we're open and earnest with our pursuits.
"Systemic Reform?"
"Classroom-Level Reform Through Action Research"
"The University Connection"
"Will you gather data on your normal educational practice and on changes in curriculum, instruction, and assessment that you could make . . . according to your own professional judgement?" Yes, means minimal IRB review?
" . . . anonynimity offers protection from many ethical risks."
"How ethical is research when teachers' experiences and interpretations are excluded from analysis? Multiple perspectives / data triangulation = validity.
It should be a prerequisite that all administrators have classroom experience. My dean at SWIC, Paul Wreford, was a history teacher. This man is a tireless advocate for his faculty. He understands the stresses, pressure, and long hours teachers endure, even if all that is required of them is 5 classes and 5 office hours. This superintendent is mistaken; teachers make decisions in their classrooms minute-by-minute, and they are exactly the resource that should be making decisions about policy.
No wonder Minarik couldn't sleep.
"Student Advocacy"
Minarik speaks about the ethics of following district mandates, or hoeing her own road and choosing text and curriculum that she knows is best for teaching her students, in her class. This doesn't really have to do with ethical issues in research, right? It does, however, illustrate how teachers power can be stolen from them. Again, it is the teachers who should be making curricular decisions because it is they who know what's best for their students.
This is appalling. The more I pay attention, the more I see a systematic derogatory and condescending attitude towards teachers. It might be interesting to do a study of the rhetoric surrounding teachers and teaching, at all levels. How could I do this? Jane, How could I do this? How could I look at the all the characterizations of teachers and schools, positive and negative? My guess is that the negative would far outweigh the positive.
I think, again, it's all about the dollar, and people see schools and teachers as a perpetual drain on the economy, local and national. But, what's more important than educating ourselves?
"Doing the Right Thing"
Minarik, "This is even more true now as some people argue that those of us who are white cannot research children of color."
???
What do I think? I agree that in terms of experience, it is hard to empathize with someone who is growing up without food on the table, some stability in the family, a role model, and values completely different than my WASP teachings. It's not impossible though. And I do think teachers have to understand something of who their students are as people in order to teach them best.
I'm sure that I do and say things in my classes, make assumptions about topic or pedagogy or language, that alienates some of my black students, but I've also had some success as well. I few semesters ago I had a student, William, from Caseyville, who sat in the back of the room, and early on, he played on the computers, never looked at me, and didn't do any of the work. He couldn't be bothered. As is my tact, I left him alone. He did, however, turn in his first paper. I read the words on the page, and responded to him. There was a great deal of non-standard usage, but there was some thinking underlying it all, and I told him so in my comments. I think this was the first time a writing teacher had listened to his words, rather than just writing him off because of his language. He perked up; he finished my course, and he did well. Still, when I see him in the hall, he says, "What up Lund."
I guess what I'm saying is, we may not be able to understand, we may even not be able to research, but we certainly can still teach, if we're open and earnest with our pursuits.
"Systemic Reform?"
"Classroom-Level Reform Through Action Research"
"The University Connection"
"Will you gather data on your normal educational practice and on changes in curriculum, instruction, and assessment that you could make . . . according to your own professional judgement?" Yes, means minimal IRB review?
" . . . anonynimity offers protection from many ethical risks."
"How ethical is research when teachers' experiences and interpretations are excluded from analysis? Multiple perspectives / data triangulation = validity.
posted by CA Lund at 7:52 AM
1 Comments:
I can hear your outrage here. It's been my experience that the less power the children and parents have, the more likely it is that the teachers' power will be "stolen from them" by the so-called district "leaders" as well.
I've spent more than a few hours in recent weeks meeting with new admins in SLPS. I can sympathize with their desire to come up with a coherent, district -wide curriculum (in a district where 50% to 75% of the kids in a given school may move in an average year, site-based management didn't work very well). But as in so many poor districts, they've gone for "scripted" lessons in which teachers are supposed to "deliver" the curriculum and make few decisions. We are trying to respond in a way that says, "OK, this program for teaching the formula expository essay can be helpful for your many teachers who don't really know how to teach writing well; it can also help prepare all your kids for timed writing tests, and that's a necessary genre in today's world. But we'll also show you how you can embed this program in a wider and richer array of writing experiences with varied purposes, audiences, forms, voices."
I hope it works, because in a situation like this if you simply turn your back (and turn up your nose at the district initiatives) you wind up abandoning the children and losing any chance to influence what is happening. The danger is that in an effort to stay involved and help, you wind up selling out, supporting programs that don't fit with your own values.
Re your idea at the end, to analyze the discourse of teachers and teaching -- wow! this would be a neat study (a text analysis rather than a field study, but interesting and worthwhile). I believe that you could go about it by first gathering a variety of texts (deciding whether you're going to limit yourself to a single school district or a varied set of districts) and then looking for patterns, repeated words, themes. They call it "discourse analysis," and it's similar to what you've done in a zillion literary analysis papers.
Jane
Post a Comment
<< Home