Looking for inspiration? Read about some people putting their money where their mouth is -- or, more to the point, not selling out!
A teaching moment
Pinellas County educators recently rejected a state merit pay plan by a huge margin, saying no to millions. Here's what they want state legislators to learn from their vote.
By DONNA WINCHESTER
Published March 20, 2007
Sherry Brock knows exactly what an extra few thousand dollars could buy.
New wall-to-wall carpeting for her living room. A cushy couch and a matching love seat. Hubcaps to replace the ones someone stole from her '92 Caddy.
Yet when the moment came for her to approve a plan that would bring Pinellas County schoolteachers $6.1-million - as much as $3,100 of it for herself - the district's 2007 Outstanding Educator checked the little box that said "No."
Brock, a math and journalism teacher at Dixie Hollins High in St. Petersburg, wanted the hubcaps. She thought she deserved them. But her years in the classroom have taught her that some things are more important than money.
"I have not been able to see how this can be fair," she said of the merit pay plan state legislators dubbed Special Teachers Are Rewarded, or STAR. "I think it's divisive."
. . .In a stunning display of chutzpah not seen since the teacher walkout of 1968, Pinellas educators stood together last month, rejecting a legislative mandate they considered demeaning and demoralizing. From one end of the county to the other, their votes reflected years of frustration with the FCAT, years of frustration with politicians.
The final tally: 217 for STAR, 4,517 against.
Districts across the state posted similar results, sending legislators back to come up with a new plan they hope educators will find more palatable.
In Pinellas County, the teachers are still angry.
. . .
5 comments:
Interesting connection between this and the illegal 68 walkout -- I was a hardworking star student in school then, who got walked out on by my favorite teachers, for their own paychecks, and I am STILL angry and bitter about that. So I think teachers need to be brutally honest about what they're doing and WHY they are doing it, not buy into the oh-so-noble rhetoric. A principle is a principle is a principle. To reject this kind of divisive evaluation setup for themselves but NOT for the kids who have suffered under John Winn's versiion of NCLB for years, well, we may be breeding the next extremely long-memoried generation of parents and taxpayers right now.
JJ Ross, Ed.D
Formerly of the School Board of Alachua County policy team and the FL DOE political team
How future teachers experience school when they are kids, writes the script in their heads they will take to school as professionals. We know that the story most preservice teachers believe about parents, for example, is dysfunctional for great schools, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary. And apparently it is still dysfunctional as public leadership in education politics too:
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"Maybe the real problem with education politics is coming from the kind of student mind School invariably puts on the top of the heap and sends into the world to teach, chair education committees, etc.? If there’s truth to this, then educating our own isn’t enough, to turn it around before our whole system collapses of its own hubris.
. . .a Columbia Teachers College paper by Professor Elizabeth Graue reveals that teens aspiring to enter teacher education already have developed school-typical negative attitudes about parent involvement, and are steeling themselves against having to cooperate with parents... (wanting) parents in their place, supporting the efforts of trained professionals. Sharing authority and knowledge was not quite in their schema for teaching—it would somehow be subtractive of their own positions as teachers.
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So.
Children will listen!
How about we write some better stories into the school experience of kids now, whole new models for critical thinking, creative problem solving, collective wisdom, community action and conflict resolution -- isn't that what we claim to be teaching already? -- so that when they become teachers, they will approach education as something other than ideological warfare between home and school, competing to claim the very influence they are squandering all the while . . .
"when they become teachers" -- an interesting thought.
I've actually considered my kids being teachers and I just can't see it happening. Not now. Not the way the system works now.
Of course, my kids are unschoolers. . . not the normal experience.
But then I was reading on the Yahoo list for gifted kids and came across a question about handling the neighbor whose kids didn't IQ test into g/t classes when your kid did. What to say when the other Mom bitches that the g/t program is elitist?
Well, I answered that the other Mom may want something for her children that they are not getting in their regular class. And, I asked, what is that?
If the bright-but-not-quite-g/t kid is doing FCAT prep, or something equally time-wasting and mind-dumbing, for a big chunk of the day and the year, why is that OK? Who can blame the Mom for wanting more than that for her kids?
And the same would apply to every single child.
And the same applies to the teachers!
If a big chunk of the day is eaten up with administrivia and test prep and squabbling over bonuses and gold stars, what kind of sad little world is public school? If the content is uninspiring for all involved, if it is disconnected from the real world (I laugh every time I see some news item where a school has discovered those internet tubes and how helpful it is to hook the kids up to them -- like the rest of the world!!) . . . etc. . . .
The inspiring thing, to me, about this bribe refusal was not just saying no to new hubcaps but the possibility that these teachers were actually saying that what they do all day is not good enough. That they, along with their students, have been pushed into tiny little boxes and want out!
Maybe it is just wishful thinking on my part. Maybe it's just all about paychecks and the kids be damned.
But as long as these teachers are looking around, they might notice the rest of the people in their little box. The kids who are the future teachers.
Nance
Nance writes:
"If a big chunk of the day is eaten up with administrivia and test prep and squabbling over bonuses and gold stars, what kind of sad little world is public school?"
Man, I wish we could fit that on t-shirts!! :)
Oprah and Dr. Phil -- a combo in whom most politicians might find something palatable for one reason or another? -- counsel that "we teach people how to treat us." I think in the case of teachers and especially teacher lobbying and politics, this is quite literally true.
The real question then, is how (whether?) today's teachers can un-learn yesterday's teacher leadership and politics, and dare to imagine some whole different answers.
I personally remember at least three major "merit-go-rounds" in Florida, and was myself actively lobbying for public education during one of them. In any decade teachers oppose performance pay not because they just want a different formula that is "fairer" etc etc -- it's because they've been taught (and continue to teach all of us) that all differentiated pay is "divisive" and the school system is out to screw everybody without a strong union to make things right.
Hmmm - but kids will never have a union, guess they're SOL. Is it any wonder the public is finally learning public school is not "for" the public's kids?
(What kind of peculiarly American lesson this is for teachers to be paid to teach, is for another discussion. Despite his defiant leadership of the '68 walkout, for example, it turns out Pat Tornillo was a big fan of special compensation for special performance, for himself anyway. After completing his prison time, when he told the newspapers he still believed everything he did was for the kids.)
So I've stopped listening to the details of any particular pay proposal or working conditions platform, or the specific objections to same, because there is no possible right answer.
I'm reasonably bright and I've had effective teachers all my life in Florida public education and legislative work. I've learned that it's a trick question. I suggest the lesson IS the box.
Oh! You bring up a great thought experiment - what if unschooled kids became the next generation of schoolteachers, for their own follow-the-bliss reasons, all in one fell swoop?
What would schools look like and feel like then? What different lessons would be "taught" and learned? How far down the priority list would pay and conditions drop and what would be come number one?
Could it plausibly happen at all, and if so, what could be the precipitating circumstances? If not, maybe we could learn something useful from examining THAT . . .
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