Monday 29 September 2014

SUCKING THE LIFE OUT OF OUR TEACHERS

It's interesting how every new program creates experts like leaves falling from the trees in the fall. Common Core, which has only been around for a couple of years, has more superior experts than you can even imagine. I met one today. Unfortunately, she doesn't use a mike and had her face right in the face of the school board- standing right at their name plates ( I wonder who taught her that technique?).

So I only got to hear a small portion of Janel's schtick because the superintendent, once again, changed the printed agenda. I begin to wonder if this disrespect and disservice and violation of the open meeting laws is planned. But, I did get to hear her, though I had to strain to do so, and I did get to talk to this self proclaimed superior teacher trainer. The first thing that impressed me was her total disrespect for and trust of TEACHERS. You see, our teachers are just not good teachers and they don't make kids college and career ready. I questioned her about this. Was not college and career ready always the goal of our schools? Well--- no, she said. I was astonished. Then what would the goal of schools have been? Well-- the teachers just weren't doing it  or couldn't do it- so she- the expert- is making sure they get in Professional Learning Communities so she can MAKE them do it!!

"Any time you have change there will be push back", she said. Here we go again- if you don't think I'm right all the time it's just because you're afraid of change!! I asked her about her "guaranteed and viable" curriculum . How could she guarantee a curriculum and what made it viable? Her curriculum is guaranteed and viable because it matches the test!! I wonder if she has ever heard of "garbage in garbage out"? Well, she said, students were dropping out before, but now everyone will leave school college and career ready, and that will prove the viability of Common Core.

Do you think 100% of students will walk out into this world and be successful under any curriculum? If you do, I have a bridge to Hawaii to sell you. This is nonsense. It makes about as much sense as Obama being able to settle all our foreign affairs problems just by talking to people! It's about as destructive too. She said when these (inferred inferior people afraid of change), come up to her with objections she just says " What can I do for you?". Let me answer that question for all these misused and frustrated teachers-  Lady, you can quit being so damn superior and try working in the trenches yourself!! You can quit wasting our time and let us do the job we know how to do and you don't!! YOU CAN QUIT SUCKING THE LIFE OUT OF OUR TEACHERS!!

I went to what I, and many others , call the "dog and pony" show at one of our schools the other day. This is when the school board forces schools to show them their stuff every year. This is an advertisement for school reform-makes the board feel good- even if most of it is wrong, mischaracterized or just plain terrible. The board is told everything is wonderful and THEY FEEL PROUD OF THEMSELVES. They are suckers. This presentation was so bad, I would have cried or laughed, if it just didn't make me so downright mad!! The teachers sat there in a row looking terrified and the principal and one other teacher did the show. This principal, with this very southern accent, that was continually addressing herself  "I said SarahBeth"- you get the idea, was not even in school for at least part of the first week of school!! She was on an airplane going to Texas!! She made sure the kids got their charm for showing up though. Do as I say not as I do. Meanwhile we'll be out 45 minutes early every Monday, but darn it, you take attendance seriously when we are here!!

Meanwhile the students and teachers spent the week doing disaster drills and orientations!! By the way, just to ease your fears about all these starving children, apparently 100% of the kindergarten parents showed up for home visits at school. My, my- they won't feed them but they all show up- hmmm.

But here's the really sad part. I listened to all this crap and I realized why I had to leave that district. I just couldn't be treated like these teachers are being treated. I'm way too much of a self directed proud individual to subvert who I am, humble myself ,and submit to the treatment these teachers are being subjected to. One Common Core video I watched said the teachers had to find their "niche". REALLY? The teachers are just a niche now? I'll show you some of the ways teachers are being put into a little subservient niche.

First of all, this school just got it's vaunted Title I status recently. The superintendent was so proud and he just smiled and practically gave them a medal last year at a board meeting for getting it! Whoopee- the secretary made a mad dash to the phone when she realized that they had over 40% free and reduced lunch -at least for one day!! Remember, they prove income by having the secretary check up on a few, not very exact. So now they are a "poor" school and the teachers are pressured to go to a "book club" !! Yes indeed, they are reading "Framework for Poverty" !! I could get an A+ in that class- we've all done it in college- just tell them what they want to hear folks!! Don't spend your time on your work-like grading papers or doing lesson plans- go to the "book club" so they can tell you what and how to think.Meanwhile one of the board members I really do enjoy, asked if the school had changed now that they are Title. Answer- "no".

Moving right along, the teachers are forced to give up their classes to psychs and social workers teaching "empathy" skills. They used to do this when I taught too- a real barf session. Just teaching the kids what the teachers are supposed to be learning in the "book club". I guess parents can't be trusted to teach their kids not to be sociopaths.

Now, when the teachers do get a little time to teach- that will be directed too. Not only do they have to teach to the test, teach the units in the order proscribed by their "professional learning community" and report, and teach in the manner proscribed by said community, they have to give their teaching over to para professionals who are usually not even college graduates much less credentialed!! That's right, the teachers will work with a student or two who is struggling and the para will take over the teachers" class!! If that isn't bad enough, the school is working on empowering the paras to grab kids out of class if they think they are misbehaving!! The teacher's authority over the classroom is being undermined.

We are all individuals with different teaching styles and different ideas about classroom discipline. Just as we are individuals in our parenting we are different teachers. Teachers are not robots. There is no panacea in this world. Common Core is SUCKING THE LIFE OUT OF OUR TEACHERS AND SUCKING THE LIFE OUT OF EDUCATION!! This unproven experiment is single handedly DESTROYING EDUCATION in America - just as the teachers union president Randi Weingartner predicted.

I went away from this meeting sad and mad- it appeared to me that every bit of joy in teaching- from personal motivation, personal ingenuity, personal creativity, personal pride, individuality, spontaneity, and originality, was being sucked out of these teachers and the teaching profession. The bureaucrats, who do nothing, have taken over.

And if you want to see how these government programs work out, look no further than the military's RCI program ( we don't have enough forces in the field but we have troops to be nannys to wayward youth). I saw them up close and personal at the skateboard park by the YMCA where I work out. Some were skateboarding, some were making out with their girlfriends, some were smoking, and the military personnel in charge of this mess (soldiers) were in the lobby of the YMCA chatting with the desk clerk. Hey Janel, these are not "guaranteed and viable" curriculums. And one last shout out to the teachers union- what are you getting paid for? Have you ever heard of ACADEMIC FREEDOM?!!


Tuesday 16 September 2014

TRUST

Trust, an interesting thought. Whom do you trust? Do you trust your government? Do you trust your school superintendent not to lie to you? Do you trust that your school board is doing what's in the best interest of your child? When you think about it, there's not really a lot of trust out there anymore.

Why can't you trust your superintendent of schools not to lie to you? Maybe it's because this country was FOUNDED on TRUST and the superintendent is trying to pretend that nothing has changed, but it has. This country was FOUNDED TO PUT TRUST IN THE PEOPLE. That is why we have a vote. Many people at the time did not trust that people could govern themselves. If you think about it, liberals, still today, do not believe that people can govern themselves. They TRUST the government, not you. So, your superintendent has to lie to you. He has to tell you that the building programs he is representing are a LOCAL idea. He has to tell you that Common Core does not take away LOCAL CONTROL. You see, our Federal Government is not supposed to be involved in Education at all. They have no mandate to do what they are doing so your superintendent has to lie to you, AND in most cases, to bring the school board along with those lies ( Believe it or not, there actually are many school board members that don't realize they are being directed from the Federal Government).

As the programs go forward the LACK OF TRUST IN THE PUBLIC gets worse and worse. We are told that schools need 100% free and reduced breakfast, lunch and snacks because "People just won't feed their children". Do you believe that, or do you think this is a MANUFACTURED CRISES to get you to support FEDERAL TAKE OVER OF FOOD AT SCHOOL? I can tell you that I went to school in the 50's and no one was starving. I can tell you that I never, not even one time, had a student pass out from hunger at school in all the 30 years that I taught.

We used to TRUST teachers. If the English teachers at a high school gave a student A's in English we believed that that student could write and the colleges accepted that. We believed that our elementary and middle school teachers were able to teach writing without Federal intervention. Today we have Common Core and writing programs and tests because there is no TRUST that the teachers can do this on their own. Under the TRUST system (otherwise known as freedom), we built this great country that people from around the world want to come to and that the "dreamers" from Mexico and Central America enter illegally. We went to the moon and developed an amazing industrial complex. We didn't need a Federal Department of Education to do these things. Freedom actually does work.

Our grand experiment with freedom is being destroyed by people who put their TRUST in the Federal Government and can't believe that we don't need standardized health (government controlled) and standardized curriculums and standardized welfare and standardized child rearing and standardized everything else. These people just can't believe that our states, counties, cities and school boards can operate without the Federal Government controlling them. They can't believe that parents and teachers can do their jobs without the help of the Federal Government. We are on the road to tyranny because we are letting these nonbelievers turn our successful nation into huge bureaucratic interventions that never work and always destroy.

The schools have not improved under Federal Government Reform that started with Goals 2000 in the nineties. Our test scores are flat. In my hometown of Helena our scores have deteriorated. FREEDOM actually does work folks. Put your TRUST back in yourself and your local governance and maybe we can begin believing and respecting our representatives once again. Maybe school boards and school superintendents will begin doing what is right for their local district again, instead of what the Federal Government wants, and they won't have to lie to you. The Federal Government is a wasteland of ineptitude and their march to control you has got to be stopped. STOP THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND YOU CAN STOP THE LIEING. WE CAN START TRUSTING ONE ANOTHER ONCE AGAIN.

Sunday 7 September 2014

F O C U S

Thomas Jefferson had F O C U S when it came to our country. He had a VISION. He knew what he wanted for America and how he would get there. He wanted a strong and free America. To this end he wrote the Declaration of Independence, participated in the Constitutional Convention and, as president, accomplished the Louisiana Purchase. Many of America's leaders had this kind of F O C U S. George Washington fought the Revolutionary war against all odds and Abraham Lincoln never gave up on the Civil War. General Dwight Eisenhower fought his way across Europe. These people didn't lose their
F O C U S  in what they wanted for our country. They weren't distracted by every faction, every squabble, every problem, every special interest group. They fought for our American ideals and built a great nation.

Today our Common Core educators mock anyone wanting to teach an accumulation of events and facts. They claim that students can just look things up!! This is the kind of distracted learning that leads to a lack of  F O C U S. I wonder, how can anyone have any clarity of thought about events, when they do not have the continuum of historical facts IN THEIR MIND. You might be able to bake a cake by referring to a recipe, one step at a time, but you can't think that way. YOU HAVE TO KNOW THINGS. The Common Core folks love to say that they are teaching "higher level thinking skills" and "critical thinking". Yeah right, critical thinking by children who do not have an accumulation of events, facts, and information in their brains. This is indoctrination, not "higher level" thinking.

Our great nation is under attack from these non- thinkers. They have broken our country into a  thousand special interests and factions and in the process our leaders have lost all F O C US on what is in America's interest, what we need to do to protect our country and our future. From terrorism to open borders to financial crisis, this country goes forward with no F O C U S on what is right for America. We are supposed to care more for the needs of the illegal immigrants than for the security and defense of our own country. 

It's my suspicion that the great propaganda artists somewhere have a design to dismantle the American dream by turning our people into factions that lose all vision, all F O C U S of what we need to do to protect, maintain and build our great country which is built on FREEDOM- THAT MEANS PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS AND FREE MARKETS.

Any thief in the night knows that they have to distract the guards to get to the compound. Let's quit being distracted. Let's quit electing leaders that have no F O C U S on America's interests. Let's get rid of this ridiculous education philosophy and centralized Common Core that is distracting our schools from teaching full curriculums of real information that builds real knowledge. Our children will only be able to F O C U S  on what is right for our great country when they know REAL PROVEN SCIENCE and FULL HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDINGS. Let's F O C U S on what we want and need , let's F O C U S  on our nations vital interests and make a better tomorrow for all of the citizens of this great land.