BLOG 2.0

The Journal of the Colorado Education Association carried an article about this blog in the last issue. The article mentions that discussion has focused on moving the blog one step further forward by offering a community platform for members to help tell their stories about the daily classroom reality that we face as teachers and support staff from day to day. I also encourage members to comment on daily posts and make that a forum for discussion about particular topics.

Here is the original mission statement of the blog:

Our national dialog on education, and especially public education has taken a decidedly political turn over the last two decades. It also, for the most part, lacks the depth, complexity, and frankly reality, required for productive discussion. That reality of life and living inside the classroom, in concert with the larger issues, brings real meaning to the table. And there are immense stakes in the outcome of that discussion. What kind of culture are we? What are our political values? How is knowledge accountable to society? What is a citizen? What kind of people are we going to be? Is education a commodity? Do we believe in equal access, or what people can buy? Do we value teachers? We still struggle with segregation. We still deny the hard questions and grasp for simplistic answers.

I would like to thank the Colorado Education Association, which has kindly provided a forum for this kind of communication and dialog. To boldly blog and, well, see what happens. It is risky, innovative, and exciting. (It is worth repeating that the content here is solely my responsibility and does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of CEA.) This is the story and reflection of that surreal classroom where reality blends and jumbles with outside pressures, fads, ideology and power struggles. It is where I live almost every day. It's why I teach. The cast of characters includes students, teachers, staff, parents, guardians, professional associations, unions, politicians, school boards, corporations, huckters, and many, many surprises. I invite you to join me in that surreal class and, maybe, come to some answers for the hard questions. Nobody gets voted off the island, and there is no final exam; the final exam is what kind of public education--what kinds of schools--we choose to have.

In that spirit, I would like to invite the almost 40,000 members of the Colorado Education Association, and any other reader/teachers or support staff to submit your posts about the daily goings on and battles that we face daily in the classroom. The goal is to help us, and the public at large, understand the reality of the classroom and move beyond the simplistic view of public education as a "broken" problem. The reality most often counters well the inaccurate and error-ridden public media reports about education and education policy.

Please send your ideas, or a fully written post, focusing on events, personalities, issues, etc., that you deal with in the classroom. I will moderate the forum, and post whatever I can.

Thank you in advance for participating. Send to ceablogger@inbox.com

Film at Eleven

"I would say, with all due respect, you have some teachers in your schools that have children spending more time watching movies than taking tests," the governor [Bill Owens] said in his first-ever speech to the group. Many of the 800-plus administrators in the audience responded with a gasp.*

This is some of the worst of the worst assumptions about what teachers are doing in the classroom. But it is a complex issue underneath the simple surface of "showing movies". After all, where do most adult Americans get their history? From television or film?! If Oliver Stone's version of JFK is the only one someone has experienced, how do they know what is historical and what is fiction?

Like readers of good literature, adults should have the literacy skills to analyze, criticize, and be skeptical of history as presented in the media. And if we don't practice that in the classroom, with of course, relevant film, where and when do we practice it? The movie theatre is too late. And for more than half of all Americans still believing the fiction that Sadaam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11, we have a problem. I haven't heard complaints about all the time spent in English class with all that "literature" that students are spending time with, instead of taking tests. How many adults get their history from David McCullough's 1776, versus Mel Gibson in The Patriot?

The image of teachers showing Snow White and Shrek in class to entertain kids and avoid teaching is a damaging stereotype similar to the all cops eat donuts, and ambulance chasing lawyers. But that stereotype has an unfortunate impact.

I now have paperwork to fill out before showing a film in class and have to justify its educational value. Ok. I can do that. But does that mean a supervisor decides whether or not I show the film? Bottom line: distrust of my (teacher's) professional judgment; cya for parent complaints and lawsuits; responding to public pressure to a problem that isn't actually there.

And for me, instead of spending time coming up with good questions for discussion, analysis, and evaluation about the film, I'm filling out paperwork. Or? Just forget it.

ZeroTolerance gets an F

Luckily, we're well over the peak of the zero-tolerance solution to school misbehavior and violence. The problem, as often seems to be with flawed human rationality, is taking the concept far beyond its logical limits. So, the second grade girl with plastic knife gets suspended. That "news" story makes the whole world of education look mightily out of touch. That a principal could forgo good judgment to a "zero-tolerance" dogma is beyond me. But it happens. Often. The latest that I have run across is a recent news story that follows:

October 25, 2006
Texas: Art Teacher and District Reach Settlement

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

A veteran art teacher has reached a settlement with the North Texas school district that had suspended her after a student caught a glimpse of nude artwork on field trip. Under the settlement, approved Monday by the school board, the teacher, Sydney McGee, gave up her job but will be paid the balance of her $57,600 annual salary through next May. Ms. McGee, above, and the Frisco Independent School District agreed not to “disparage” each other, and the district agreed to add to her personnel file a 2004 letter of recommendation from a previous principal. The agreement ended a dispute that broke out after Ms. McGee led 89 fifth graders from Wilma Fisher Elementary School on a visit last April to the Dallas Museum of Art. Ms. McGee was berated the next day by the principal, Nancy Lawson, who later complained in a memorandum that “students were exposed to nude statues and other nude art representations, and time was not used wisely for learning during the trip.”

Holy hand grenade batman. Kids saw a nude work of art in a museum. So are parents who take children to museums now subjecting their kids to abuse? Pornography? Ok. I'm just going to stop here because the whole thing so flies in the face of any sense of . . . well, just any sense at all.

The whole zero-tolerance mentality needs to be thrown out with the rest of the educational trash that is a result of a lack of a good dose of solid judgment, panic, and lawsuit paranoia. It's been so stained by stories like this that we need a very new, and very rational new model.

Moving on.