Live Long and Prosper...

I only have four articles to share today. I had dozens, but most dealt with the ongoing problem of teaching during a pandemic. I also found that I had a lot to say about each of the four articles I chose, so fewer seemed better.


GUILT AND LOSS IN RETIREMENT

To Teachers Contemplating Retirement

I read once that the most common cause of death for men in America is retirement. Since I've made it ten years past my retirement date, I think I'm relatively safe, but retirement isn't always easy and, for some, it's hard to let go.

Peter Greene, who blogs at Curmudgucation, has been retired from teaching for about three years. In this post, he discussed the guilt he felt about not being in the classroom...leaving unfinished business when he retired...and some implied feelings of abandoning his fellow teachers.

For me, as an elementary teacher, there was something else, though the guilt he talked about was surely a part of it. As an elementary classroom teacher, each year was a new start. Everyone started fresh. At the end of the year, we said goodbye to our kids knowing that we did what we could; we'd taken them as far as they could go. The end of each year came with a sense of loss for the students who moved on.

I felt the same sort of loss when I retired, which is why I returned to school the following school year as a volunteer. I missed working with children. I missed reading to them. I missed the daily problem solving and the challenge of dealing with students' learning issues.

The emotions brought on by retirement don't always fade away.

This is a must-read for those teachers who are thinking about retirement.

One of the hard parts of retirement is managing the guilt. You're leaving your friends and colleagues to continue the work. And it's important work, work you value. And they're going to keep doing it while you walk away.

This is unavoidable, because the work in schools is never done, ever. Every year some stories end, and some other stories begin, and most of the stories continue somewhere in the middle. There will never be a moment when you can brush your hands together and declare, "Okay, everything's wrapped up, so this is the perfect moment for me to peace out." Never going to happen.

So to retire, you have to shake the notion that you should really stick around and help (it took me months to shake the notion that I should run for school board). You know, intellectually, that you are not indispensable or irreplaceable. You moved into someone's spot, and someone will move into yours. In the meantime, your actual legacy is out in the world. You taught a bunch of students, and now someone else will teach another bunch 

PROFILE IN COURAGE

I saw myself in Brayden Harrington’s story of stuttering. He showed us the power of sharing it openly.

I saw myself in Brayden Harrington's story of stuttering, too.  As a child, it was hard for me to talk without blocking, especially if I was excited or upset. I was, like others with similar problems, mimicked, teased, and bullied and told things like, "spit it out," or "c-c-can't you t-t-t-talk?"

I had speech therapy when I was a child for dysfluency and articulation problems and that helped. When I was in college, studying to be a teacher, I came across and purchased a textbook on stuttering for speech and language pathologists in training. I wasn't in the SLP program, but I read the book carefully and learned a lot about what stuttering was, who is affected, and how it's controlled. I also got help from the speech and language pathologists I worked with during my thirty-five years in the classroom.

The teasing doesn't always end in childhood. The last time it happened to me was by a co-worker after I had been teaching for 20+ years...a person who dealt with children every day...who never would have teased a child with a stutter...who probably doesn't remember the incident at all. I remember, though. Being humiliated is traumatizing no matter what your age. It helped a little that I was old enough to call her out on it...though I doubt it sank in.

If you can read this article (it's behind WAPO's paywall) you'll learn that there are "covert PWS" (people who stutter), like me, who hide their dysfluency by avoiding certain initial sounds of words, or who pause before speaking, as if thinking of a response to a comment.

When I watched the video of Brayden giving his speech...the video of him continuing even after getting "stuck," I was impressed. Dan Rather called it "pure unvarnished courage." I agree. Stuttering is frustrating and can be embarrassing and humiliating. Cheers to this young man for having the courage to speak so that the entire world could hear him.

His was by far, the best speech at the 2020 Democratic Convention.

My favorite part of this year’s Democratic National Convention was 13-year-old Brayden Harrington speaking about how former vice president Joe Biden helped him with his stuttering.

For me, it was deeply personal. I cried as I watched Brayden tell his story. Growing up as a person who stutters (PWS), I never imagined that I’d ever see someone stuttering openly and comfortably in front of millions of people.

Stuttering affects approximately 3 million Americans. It’s most common in kids, with 5 percent of children struggling with this speech impediment at some point in their childhoods.

CLOSING CHARTERS IS A FEATURE, NOT A BUG

Charter School Experiment FAILURE Documented Again

For the charter industry, failure and closures of schools are a feature, not a bug. When a school is bad it will attract fewer students and then close. The market rules all.

Unfortunately, students from closed charters get bounced around from one school to another as parents try to find one that will stay open. This can be traumatic for students. They become an "outsider." They miss their friends. The academic requirements might be different.

Frequently, children from closed charter schools end up at the local public school (and no, I don't consider charter schools, paid for with public tax dollars, to be public schools).

Public schools are the only schools mandated by most state constitutions. Diverting public money to support privately run schools wastes taxpayer dollars and shortchanges the vast majority of students who go to public schools.

The current Republican Party platform (unchanged from 2016) calls for increases in school "choice" -- meaning more charters and more vouchers -- more tax dollars into private pockets because, to them, the private sector does everything better (it doesn't).

The 2020 Democratic Party platform is against vouchers as a violation of the separation between church and state. It also calls for banning for-profit charters. Unfortunately, there's not much difference between "non-profit" charters and for-profit charters.

Marketing and lack of oversight have obscured the failure of the charter school industry. The latest research reported by Carol Burris and her team at the Network for Public Education (NPE) documents the atrocious going out of business rate among charter schools.

The United States Education Department (USED) has invested more than $4 billion promoting the industry but has not effectively tracked the associated fraud, waste and failures. After 25-years of charter schooling, Broken Promises is the first comprehensive study of their closure rates.

IT'S TIME TO FACE OUR WHITE DISCOMFORT

In Praise of Discomfort: An Open Letter to White Educators

Talking about race can be uncomfortable. As a white male, I will never truly understand how it feels to be a Black man in America. As a white teacher, I was never able to know what the world looked like to my students of color. Open discussion -- at a level appropriate to students' maturity -- is important for students and teachers. It's especially important for white students and teachers. It's time we faced the discomfort and listened.

Let’s take Lee’s lesson — and my professor’s — to heart. Let’s not just accept discomfort as part of the educational process. Let’s create the structures that encode discomfort into the educational process where necessary — doing so, of course, with the emotional (and physical) safety of young people in the forefront of our minds.

There is a huge body of research that demonstrates that learning is impeded by feeling unsafe. But feeling uncomfortable is not the same as feeling unsafe. Schools are often among the most psychologically and emotionally “safe” spaces in the United States, for their white teachers and students. It is people of color who are far more likely to feel and be unsafe in our schools. We white educators have to demonstrate our willingness to make ourselves — and, yes, our white students — uncomfortable if we want to do anything tangible about that fact.

How, precisely, can this be done? Any given department or division must ask that question in the context of its students, faculty, and program. I’ve worked for more than two decades in literary and cultural studies, so the first examples that come to my mind are in that arena.

...work across the curriculum to create the kind of discomfort that breeds thoughtful self-awareness. So often, we talk about finding ways to engage our white students with whiteness without, you know, making them “feel bad.” This is a mistake. In an educational context, discomfort is a powerful tool.

“I don’t like eating,” he often said. "I only eat because I have to."

I ordered quesadillas. He ordered a tuna salad sandwich that came with a dish of fruit and a big bowl of chicken soup. He always ended up packing half of his meal in a take-home box because it was too much. He didn't like eating.

When the food came he would pull out his syringe and give himself a shot of insulin. He was proud of how well he did in managing his medication. The need for insulin had come later in his life, but he studied, learned how to take care of himself, and felt confident that he knew what he was doing.

We changed restaurants every now and then. The last change was because he had moved and the previous places we had gone to were too far away from his new home. We also switched from breakfast twice a month to lunch twice a month. He did “stuff” in the morning.

We talked while we ate...often about how the technology that we had understood so well in the mid-80s had passed us by. He’d pull out an index card with questions on it. “How do I fix this?” “Why isn’t that working the way it’s supposed to work?” More often than not I’d have to Google the answer, and I always reminded him that he could do the same and figure it out that way. Still, I’d get the answer on my phone and he’d write it down on his index card to take home. The next day he’d email or text me with another question...or tell me how my idea worked...or didn’t work. Sometimes we'd talk on the phone. Now and then a problem would come up that needed immediate attention and I would help him over the phone. Every couple of months I’d go to his house after lunch and we’d work together on his latest tech problem. Other times he'd tell me that he figured out what was wrong and we'd just sit and browse the net together.

We’d also talk about religion, economics, politics, world peace, or personal issues. We both agreed that the world would be a much better place if we made him our benevolent dictator. He promised to make health care available for everyone. That got my vote.

Our politics and philosophies of life were similar. His quirky sense of humor would be the catalyst for jokes about certain public figures. We laughed so we wouldn’t cry.

We were friends for a long time before we adopted the routine of eating together twice a month which only began after I retired. Before that, while we were both still teaching, we talked less often... usually through email.

We'd meet each other at the full system staff gathering at the beginning of each school year and find a place to sit together...now and then we’d spend the time backstage watching the speakers from there. We traveled to the state teachers union Representative Assembly together. The ride to Indy was like the lunches we were to have years later...uninterrupted time to share. During the Assembly, we'd comment about the speakers, have lunch, and enjoy the ride home.

We discussed our students and shared what we did in our two, very different classrooms. If something entertaining happened in his classroom I'd read about it in an email the next day. If I needed help of one kind or another I would email him. There was a period of time in the early 2000s when I needed help fairly often. I could always count on receiving his insights and suggestions.

In later years he would frequently remark on how much he liked working with his students. We both liked being able to help kids “become human.”

When he retired I remember thinking how amazing it was that he had taught as many years as he had. And I noticed how the teachers union Representative Assemblies weren’t as much fun after that.

When I retired we started our twice-monthly meals -- the first and third Tuesdays of each month.

We sometimes missed our meal together. I spent some time in the hospital during the last few years, (though I could always count on his visit)...one or the other of us went on a trip...there were doctor appointments and the like. But most of the time I'd email or text him on Monday and say, "Lunch tomorrow?" He would invariably reply, "Can't wait. Lots to share."

Now that he’s gone, the first and third Tuesdays of each month aren’t going to be as much fun anymore.

"Kindness is the foundation for peace and happiness."

In this era of tweets, texts, emails and blogs it's easy to forget that there is another means of expression still available to us as citizens -- Letters to the Editor. Here are some letters to various newspapers around the country dealing with some current educational issues.

Stephen Krashen on Tests

Stephen Krashen is a prolific letter writer frequently sending his thoughts to various newspapers throughout the country. The federal and state departments of education insist that teachers and schools use research-based programs and interventions with students. Krashen cites real research, by real researchers to make his points. Unfortunately his work isn't always published (From SusanOhanion.org).

Submitted to Baltimore Sun but not published
02/09/2012

To the editor

We should all worry about overwhelming students, schools with tests (2/7/12).

As the Sun points out, the new testing will be extremely time-consuming. There is no scientific evidence, however, that increasing the amount of testing done will increase student achievement.

As the Sun points out, the new tests need to be given online, and schools don't have the technology needed to administer the tests. Not to worry, the test publishers and computer companies will be happy to sell it to them, as well as sell them costly new equipment as the old equipment rapidly becomes obsolete.

As the Sun points out, the tests will be used to evaluate teachers. Study after study, however, has shown that this kind of evaluation does not produce reliable results. It also encourages pumping up test scores without real learning.

We all understand the need to assess students and evaluate teachers, but the brave new online tests are not the way to do it.

— Stephen Krashen

Books Before Bytes

Technology has always lured educators. Like the general public, administrators and teachers alike are enamored with the latest bells and whistles. Technology is also a way of acquiring grant money for schools. Tech companies, too, enjoy the tax write off that comes with "helping schools into the 21st century." So it's significant that a tech company entrepreneur is the one who suggests that new technology can wait. Libraries and student health come first (From SusanOhanion.org).

Submitted to Los Angeles Times but not published
02/05/2012

To the editor

Kudos to Michael Hiltzik for his column (Hyping tech will not help students, February 5) criticizing federal officials for overselling the benefits of technology to K-12 schools. As co-producer of the most popular educational podcast in the world (ESLPod.com's English as a Second Language Podcast), I'm no enemy of new technology.

But our students need nutrition, health care, quality teachers and librarians, and (especially here in California) something to read in their near-empty school libraries, the worst in the nation. iPads, iPods, and Kindles are great, but first things first: books before bytes.

The writer is Co-producer of English as a Second Language Podcast, former Associate Professor of Education, California State University, Fullerton, and author of "The Literacy Crisis: False Claims, Real Solutions" (1998)

— Jeff McQuillan, Ph.D.

Poverty matters, and the United States, as Stephen Krashen has so often pointed out (HERE, HERE, and HERE, for example), has the highest poverty rate among industrialized nations. Filling a school with iPads and Kindles might work for some things. Students can read books on them (whether that's good or not is debatable and not the subject of this posting), but they can't replace years of neglect, avoidable illness, lack of resources and malnutrition brought on by the high rate of poverty in America.

Letters: Teacher tenure helps promote good education

USA Today published three letters having to do with teacher tenure. The first hints at the de-professionalizing of public school teachers. Taking away teachers' job protections is a major step in turning the profession into a job. Teachers didn't cause the economic meltdown. Teachers unions don't automatically mean lower test scores (Schools in states with union teachers, for example, out perform schools in non-union states), but the privatizers can't stand unions protecting the rights of their members. Corporations buy politicians who then can't wait to bust unions. Fewer college students are going into Education. Teachers are retiring in large numbers. Nearly half of all beginning teachers still leave the profession in less than 5 years. Who is going to staff our schools?

The security that tenure brings adds to the effectiveness of a teacher's practice. Always worrying about pleasing whoever is in charge at the moment and stressing over one's future would certainly detract from the attention that a teacher gives to her or his studies, teaching and students ("States weaken tenure rights for teachers").

Doing away with tenure for public school teachers, combined with low pay and increased surveillance of performance, would add to the exodus of the best teachers from the profession. And those teachers who persevere would need to stick to the status quo or risk being fired for political reasons. This likely is behind much of the call for scrapping tenure.
Political control is increasing all around us, and the schools are a primary and convenient site for this. Without tenure, harassment could turn to termination of employment, and consequently lead to the hiring of robotic yes-people. This would encourage an increase in the mindless reduced-to-the-test, so-called education that's being forced upon teachers already.

Paula Meyer; San Diego

In the next letter, Stephen Krashen once again cites research to back up his claims. Evaluation of teachers using student test scores is not valid.

Need for better evaluation system

The article "States weaken tenure rights for teachers" emphasizes the importance of evaluating teacher effectiveness. A major problem is that these evaluations are often based on students' gains on standardized tests, called "value-added" measures.

A number of studies have shown that value-added measures are very unstable: Teachers' ratings based on previous years are weak predictors of test scores at the end of a year with new students. A teacher who succeeds in boosting scores with one group will not necessarily succeed with others. Different tests can result in different scores for the same teacher.

Value-added evaluations also ignore the huge impact of factors beyond the teachers' control. Finally, there are ways of pumping up test scores without student learning, including teaching test-taking strategies and making sure weak students don't take the test.

Nobody objects to teachers being evaluated on their effectiveness. Using gains on standardized tests is a bad way to do it.

Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus; University of Southern California; Los Angeles

In contrast, the third letter denounces tenure as an expensive luxury.

A factor in rising cost of education

A major factor in the rising cost of higher education is teacher tenure. Tenure basically means that after several years as a full professor, an individual who meets certain standards is guaranteed that job for life.

Those teachers are granted "academic freedom," so they can teach when and how they see fit. It's very difficult to fire them. A lot of them spend much of their time writing books or memoirs, not teaching our young students.

This is similar to the problem with teachers retiring at age 55 with generous pensions and health care benefits for life. It is unsustainable.

Dickie Benzie; Charlotte, N.C.