Blog Envy

Apparently, rumors and speculation are still flying fast and furious around my old school that I am the author of “Fast Times at [my old school’s name spelled backwards] High,” the blog in which a teacher vented his (or her) frustrations about teaching in a soul-sucking, hope-destroying environment.

Let me make this clear: I WISH that other blog were mine; it’s not. That kind of publicity is a book or movie deal waiting to happen. I always figured I’d turn my blog into a book sooner or later, and I suppose I still could (I could title it: “Driven Crazy: Why I Quit Teaching in an Urban School After a Year and a Half”) but whomever this other blog author is has got a leg up on me: his (or her) blog has stirred up amazing amounts of conflict, and, as I used to teach my students, conflict is what makes stories interesting. In fact, it was THAT conflict which generated news, NOT the blog itself. The blog only became news when it infuriated students and teachers alike (although for different reasons, as I pointed out before). To my understanding, the other blog author only leaked his (or her) involvement in the blog to other teachers at the school, NOT to the media.

If I’m wrong about this, someone please correct me.

And for anyone who would like my old school to continue making the news: PLEASE give this blog address to the media. I would love an increased readership.

Also, anyone reading my blog has to admit that, despite my frustrations with my old school and the educational system in general, I have always taken pains to be as fair in my comments as possible. I mean, my blog never stirred up the kind of resentment “Fast Times at X High” did (in fact, as far as I know, it never upset anyone at all), and I’m sure part of that has to do with my writing style. Maybe the Trib could do a story comparing my blog to the other one, and maybe then the Trib (or some other media outlet) could do some kind of investigation into how many CPS teachers blog. And why stop with just CPS teachers? There are plenty of other teachers who blog from the trenches. Just google “teacher blog” and you get about 51,400,000 hits.

We’re not alone, we just work that way

I love getting comments on my writing, especially like this one from my March 20 post (“I quit”).

You very well may be my new hero! I've been teaching in an urban school in Kansas City, Missouri, a notoriously dysfunctional school district. I left a good job as a computer programmer to "save the urban students" but have had the same experience as you -- babysitting apathetic students in a hostile environment, where every problem and low test score is blamed on the teachers. As I've tried to make it through to this June, reading your weblog has encouraged me, if for no other reason than I have seen I'm not alone.

This just suggests to me that more teachers—if not every teacher—should blog. Teacher are the only professionals who really know what is going on in the nation’s schools. Most parents don’t. Politicians certainly don’t (No Child Left Behind has its heart in the right place, but fails to address the real social issues that are the real cause of failing students). Students know, too, but by and large they are too apathetic to do anything about it—I know when I was in high school, I vowed that when my four years were up, I was NEVER going to return (a vow I, of course, broke when I started teaching in high school).

So that leaves teachers.

Teachers need to let the public know what goes on in public schools. Part of the faculty and staff reaction to that frustrated teacher’s blog (see the previous post) was a feeling that this teacher had violated some kind of code by airing his grievances in a public forum. No one is disputing that the things he says happen, happen at that school. They’re just upset that it’s now public fodder.

But why shouldn’t it be? This is a public school, after all. Maybe if people started hearing about what public schools are really like, on a daily basis, politicians would realize that No Child Left Behind isn’t the solution it’s supposed to be. What we really need is total systemic change.

Take, for example, Teacher Man.

My father, himself a 32-year veteran of public schools (first as a 6th-grade teacher, then as an elementary school principal) recently lent me his copy of Teacher Man, Frank McCourt’s memoir of his 30 years teaching in some of New York City’s toughest schools. I’m stalled on page 59. It’s just too depressing. McCourt dealt with the same problems and issues teachers are still grappling with today. Reading Teacher Man is like being back in those situations again, something I fervently never want to do again. Granted, McCourt fought through his tough beginnings to become a highly esteemed and successful teacher, so I’m hopeful the book eventually gets more upbeat. But for now, it’s just too much of a reminder of what I went through.

It’s wonderful that McCourt is being frank about his experiences teaching in New York city. But I think most people will read his stories and think “Well, that was 30 years ago.”

People need to see how little things are changing in the world of education. Sure, there are some success stories, but the cons of our antiquated educational system far outweigh the pros. And in case you don’t believe that our current system is antiquated, consider this:

The original reason schools don’t meet in the summer months is that parents would keep their children home then, anyway, to help bring in the harvest. I don’t know exact statistics for the rest of the country, but I do know that the total percent of the population that works on farms in this country is quite low-probably less than 10 percent. And I know that of all of the students in Chicago Public Schools, that percentage has got to be either zero or awfully damn close.

I loved my summer off, but that structure is archaic, as is so much of American education.

So teachers, start blogging. Start showing America what is wrong with its schools, and start suggesting ways this broken system can be fixed. If enough teachers speak up, someone’s bound to listen eventually.

Bloggers, Bloggers Everywhere

It seems I wasn’t the only teacher at my school who knew how to blog.

During a conversation with a former co-worker about computer stuff (I’m still the school’s back-up tech guy, it seems) she asked me if I had seen the article in the Chicago Tribune about the teacher who had been airing the school’s dirty laundry on a blog much like mine.

I can’t believe I missed this, but thanks to the Internet and the Tribune’s searchable database of old stories, I was reading the story in minutes. Here is an excerpt:

He labeled his students "criminals," saying they stole from teachers, dealt drugs in the hallways, had sex in the stairwells, flaunted their pregnant bellies and tossed books out windows. He dismissed their parents as unemployed "project" dwellers who subsist on food stamps, refuse to support their "baby mommas" and bad-mouth teachers because their no-show teens are flunking.

He took swipes at his colleagues, too—"union-minimum" teachers, literacy specialists who "decorate their office door with pro-black propaganda," and security officers whose "loyalty is to the hood, not the school."

The author never identified himself or the school, but he apparently told some colleagues about the blog in hopes that word would get around. It did.

According to both the Tribune article and my former colleague, no one has openly admitted to authoring the blog, but most teachers and students have been quick to point fingers (my friend said that my name was brought up, until someone pointed out that there had been posts that occurred after I quit). The teacher those fingers pointed to has taken several days off school because he “fears for his safety.”

Whoever the author is, he or she took down the site this past week because of the fiercely quick and vitriolic response from students, faculty, and staff. Apparently, the one or two hard copies floating around are about 30 pages long.

That’s a lot of job dissatisfaction.

An excerpt from the blog, and some teacher reaction, courtesy of the Tribune story:

"Do you not realize that many people go home and CRY to their loved ones about what they experience here? Do you have any idea the psychological and emotional trauma that is inflicted on those who suffer because of the daily injustices and wrongdoings here? To fear for your own safety? To know that you will likely be unemployed, hated, spit on, punched, and have property destroyed? This is not a one person blog. This is a building speaking for the suffering it sees every day."

One . . . teacher publicly challenged this view, both in a signed posting and in numerous conversations with her English classes.

"Although many of our students adopt tough facades and insist they are grown, they are still children: sensitive children who still crave guidance, encouraging words and positive reinforcement. . . .Was the author present when students, having read the blog, dejectedly hung their heads with pained, angry tears stinging their eyes?"

Wow. I almost wished I still worked there. Then again, I hear that the teachers are forming into camps, taking sides on the issue of this blog. And I know hostile glances would be directed my way: about three months ago, someone put hard copies of my blog in everyone’s mailbox. At the time, I got nothing but positive comments about it (although only three fellow teachers came forward to say anything). I learned later that my authorship was pretty much common knowledge around the school.

But back to this other blog. I gotta agree with this last excerpt I’ve posted here. And even the students, faculty, and staff all agreed that the incidents described in the blog do, unfortunately, happen at this school. But what really set people off was the perception that the blogger was making racist comments when he described his students as “project-dwelling welfare cases” or something to that effect.

And here’s where I make my own incendiary remarks:

I would be among the first and loudest to proclaim that not every student at this school is on welfare on living in a housing project. In fact, I’m sure most of my (former) students don’t fit this stereotype at all. But their behavior certainly doesn’t allow much room for anyone not familiar with them to have any other ideas about them.

Guess what, kids, the world is a harsh place. This teacher wrote what he wrote out of frustration born of an immediate familiarity with the terrible social and educational conditions at the school. His comments were spurred by emotion. I’ve said similar things in the privacy of my own home many times, and for the same reasons—pure, unadulterated frustration with the situation of that school, and with urban education in particular.

But there are plenty of people out there who make those kinds of observations casually, not based on experiences like the ones the teacher described, but based on habit. And until those upset students start voicing their objections and exceptions in rational, coherent, correctly-spelled, profanity-free, well-reasoned, standardized English, nothing is going to change that.

This is where I almost wish I still taught there. I’d do a whole unit: “Being Black in America.” I’d have the students document their lives with their own blogs, by taking pictures with the school-owned digital cameras, by making short videos (as soon as we got a video camera). I’d have them bring in their music, tape TV shows with black characters, magazine and newspaper articles by and about blacks, and I’d make lessons around the messages these things are sending, the stereotypes they either break down or reinforce. I’d encourage them to show the world what they wanted the world to see about their lives. Of course, this is all easy enough to say now that I’m not teaching anymore. But I’m still enough of a teacher to see the perfect opportunity to get them writing about these issues, to get them seriously thinking about their place in the world.

But still, that’s not enough to make me want to go back to the kind of environment this blogger describes. When I remember how bad it was, I’m glad I’m out, because until the system undergoes major changes, no amount of testing or money is going to make schools like this better.

Financial Incentives vs. Good Work Environment: Which Would You Pick?

Recent data compiled by the Center on Education Policy in Washington shows that many schools defined as “failing” by No Child Left Behind have been doubling the amount of time students spend in reading and math classes. This makes sense: if the students don’t have the reading and math skills, they could use more time practicing them.

There has been an outcry among some educators over this, however: if schools are doubling up on math and reading, they must be getting rid of other programs, other classes. This is the attitude today's NYT editorial takes issue with.

The editorial points out that the data from the Center on Education Policy doesn’t support the idea that music or art classes are getting cut by the score, or that science instruction is somehow falling behind. If the students don’t have the basic skills they need to succeed in other classes, the editorial says, then those skills should be given more time in school. “The real crime is that millions of them are still being passed along without mastering basic language skills.” Amen.

The editorial next puts forth the idea that No Child Left Behind will dramatically change education if it forces schools to stop hiring sub-par, under-qualified teachers and to start finding ways of attracting expert teachers—something that isn’t happening all that rapidly. “In this school year only about a fifth of districts say they have intensified efforts to find expert teachers for high-needs schools and only about 5 percent are offering financial incentives to attract good teachers to those schools. That will need to change if children in poor neighborhoods are to be given the chance to succeed.”

Great idea: pay teachers more money to work in high-needs schools. Financial incentives will undoubtedly work to attract teachers, and NCLB mandates that schools only hire “highly-qualified” teachers. But here’s the reality: teachers who want to work in high-needs schools with high-needs children will work there anyway, financial incentives or no. Many of these people are excellent, highly-motivated and highly-qualified teachers.

Here’s more reality: the more excellent the teacher, the more job prospects that teacher has. For many teachers—heck, for many employees, period—the work environment is as important as, sometimes more important than, the money to be made. Teachers who can get jobs in better schools will get jobs in better schools, even if those schools pay less.

NCLB is a well-intentioned law. It will undoubtedly improve some things about education, if only that teacher-education colleges will have no choice but to start churning out “highly-qualified” teachers. In a few years, every teacher who gets certified from an accredited institution will meet those requirements. But what NCLB fails to take into account is that poorly-qualified teachers are only part of the problem. As long as guns and knives and violence and gangs and all of the other stereotypically bad things are present in poor schools, good teachers will continue to seek jobs elsewhere, financial incentives be damned.