March 17, 2006

Deconstructing Education

Filed under: Education by Edwize Admin @ 3:01 pm

This post was submitted by a member who prefers to stay anonymous.

As teachers now find themselves walking on eggs, being micromanaged, ever mindful of the Damocles sword hanging over their heads with regard to the pervasive threat of unsatisfactory ratings, or worse, charges of verbal abuse, corporal punishment, or God forbid, sexual misconduct, it’s important to analyze the conditions that have brought us to this pre-Orwellian state.

Only a few years ago, teachers were masters of their own domains.  Seniority meant a permanent classroom with individualized keys to doors and closets.  They could acquire
and accumulate a storage of their tools of the trade, use their bulletin boards as they liked, and write on the blackboard with whimsical abandon.  They diagnosed student needs and worked with or without the parent to educate “the whole child.”

Contrary to popular belief, teachers always practiced standards- based instruction, following a state promulgated outline of skill attacks.  They used textbooks geared toward those standards, and novels, news and magazine articles, poetry, art, and videos to flesh out lessons as well as long and short term projects.  Teachers were considered qualified to do these things as a result of the education programs they completed, student teacher experiences, graduate degrees, numerous city and state competency exams and licenses, and later, years of practice in front of the classroom.  However, in these times under the new regime in N.Y.C., it seems those days are over.

The downturn started with building overcrowding. At first new teachers were required to “travel”, moving from classroom to classroom and sharing space with senior colleagues who were often irritated and unwelcoming to their new roommates who were frequently expected to teach in as many as five or ten classrooms on different floors and wings.  The problem later spiraled as older teachers lost their rooms as teachers were assigned rooms on a rotational basis; taking turns every couple of years.  This was the first step in disenfranchising the well entrenched pedagogues and eroding their power within the building.  They took away their homes.

The second stage involved a combination of academic mandates and vendetta based observations.  The new academic programs try to meld the oil and water qualities of the open classroom and dictatorial bureaucratic style of management (As opposed to the morale enhancing human resource approach).  Administrators began invading classrooms frequently and without notice, clipboards in hand, a practice unheard of  before the dawn of this Draconian age.  Students are expected to be able to function in overpopulated classrooms and conduct independent work and discussions (“accountable talk”) in groups, within strict time limits.  The teachers were handed scripts and  stringent time constraints as well as a plethora of additional requirements to keep records, charts, student notebooks, and work folders, leveled libraries and the like, all of which were declared necessary to be available for administrative inspection at all times.  The plan, it seems, was to build in so many mandates that teachers would inevitably be vulnerable to negative evaluations if the need for “quality control” arose.  The number of observations and unsatisfactory ratings soon increased (90% of which were for the teachers over forty at the high end of the salary schedule) and the Board nullified the contractually agreed upon grievance process by denying close to all appeals.

As all this occurred, Administrators paraded countless numbers of visitors who were allowed to file into teachers classrooms at will to observe us like animals in a zoo.  They would stroll the hallways inspecting an array of hallway bulletin boards like patricians in an art museum.  At the end of the dog and pony show, fancy lunches of gourmet wraps would be provided in the library or the principal’s office courtesy of some pocket in the dark recesses of the principal’s budget.

As the noose tightened and teachers fled the system through retirement or to the suburbs (“Two years and out” is the young teacher’s mantra), the political pogrom became even more insidious.  Loyal novice teachers were co-opted into the new regime and were appointed as coaches.  Suddenly the new pedagogues were the experts while the experienced ones were made to appear to be dinosaurs or out of the loop (The irony is reminiscent of the rule in 2000 when the Board of Ed. declared that only uncertified teachers could be hired to teach in most schools.).

Worse than that, teachers suddenly find themselves in serious danger of administrative and student allegations to an extent never known before in the history of education.  Interpretations of the regulations governing verbal abuse, sexual misconduct, and corporal punishment leave employees open to serious allegations based on trivial, trumped up events (Message to employees: Don’t mess with the man).  Teachers have been removed from their buildings for “Causing a student to feel humiliated”, making possibly vengeful female students feel “uncomfortable,” or clapping erasers too close to a child’s face.  Students now know they have an equal chance to get the teacher in trouble.  The remedy for the D.O.E. is to go after teaching licenses, and attempt to ruin dedicated careers or cut short the aspirations of struggling newcomers who spent years and thousands of dollars on their altruistic debuts.  It seems that the policy for new teachers is to “Churn ‘em and burn ‘em”.  In kinder and gentler times, a principal or AP might call the teacher into the office, discuss a problem and see that it didn’t happen again.  For now at least, those days are gone.

One can only imagine the long term effects of this management approach and these educational programs as the powers that be attempt to erase the organizational memory and professional consciousness from the system. Teachers have been discredited by this process while the media assists with a feeding frenzies whenever they can detect the possibility of a “Perv” teacher.  Needless to say, we are no longer en loco parentis.   On the same hand, students have been reduced to ones and twos and threes and fours, from Special Ed to E.S.L. to  advanced programs all must use the same books and make a showing on standardized tests to document the mayor’s success.  Statistical results rather than compassion rule the day.

Few people can imagine how much humanity has been sucked out of the educational milieu in the maelstrom of the Bloomberg/Klein administration.  We have to become almost robotic in our instruction as well as our interaction with the kids.  The goal now is empower the principals and assistant principals whom we all know gained their positions in large part as a result cronyism and nepotism.  As I become more and more like a Stepford teacher in order to survive, when my clock radio wakes me up in the morning to the Bloomberg owned news station that repeats “Bloomberg!, Bloomberg!” every few minutes, I remind myself that I have to be careful… “Big Brother is Watching”.

4 Comments

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  • Wow it sounds like conditions for teachers used to be great…too bad they weren’t so great for the actual students. Can you remind me why we have schools again?

    Comment by nycparent — March 19, 2006 @ 6:54 pm

  • nycparent;

    If you suck the life out of a talented innovative teacher because of micromanagment, rigid curriculum, and fear of disciplinary action what have the students learned. Nothing!!

    Sure there are poor teachers in the system (as in every business) but when you allow for disrespect of all the teachers and not treat the teacher as a professional, how does that help the student? It doesn’t!

    Good school districts allow the teacher to determine the teaching methods, pay a professional salary, and most of all treats the teacher with the respect. All of these are missing in the NYC public schools.

    Why do you think the parents organization went with the teachers to Albany this year instead of going with Bloomberg/Klein? Give up? Because these knowledgable parents see that the DOE is not doing the right thing for their children. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize a tired, underpaid, and fearful teacher is not the best environment for student learning.

    I would think that an involved parent like you would be applauding the parents’ organization for seeing that the DOE is not just an enemy of the parents and teachers but of your child’s education!

    By the way it was a wonderful article and I’m sure a classroom teacher wrote it.

    Comment by Chaz — March 20, 2006 @ 7:51 pm

  • This is a really great post. It should remind many of us of the world we have lost. NYC Parent seems to think that somehow the changes have made things better for students, but it is hard to see how overcrowded schools (teachers without their own rooms), silly group work, the denigration of intellectually gifted teachers, the obsession about bulletin boards (yes, it’s true, I keep thinking it’s over, but then just this week I saw a U-observation for a first-year teacher whose bulletin board didn’t include the standard), and the manipulation of corporal punishment allegations that place teachers in untenable positions – it is hard to see how any of that is somehow an improvement for kids. Not to mention the turning of teachers into drones.

    So much of this post resonated for me, and I’d like to write a sentence about every sentence because really I just loved it, but that’s silly because all I’d do is repeat what you’ve said.

    Instead then, I’ll echo you in only one thing, something simple and practical: I want to thank you especially for the words about having our own classes. I think about this all the time, and speak of it often, mostly because I am a high school teacher with the very rare privilege of having my own room. The difference it makes in the quality of my teaching is immeasurable. And yet no one ever speaks about that (and it cannot possibly be understood by the fellows running the system right now, who have not come from the schools). Such a simple thing – a room of one’s own, a place to hang one’s hat, sort the papers, meet with students, store the papers and the chalk. When the room is your own, it becomes a home for your students. It is no longer anonymous, no longer a subway platform where the teacher, the subject, the lessons change with the changing of the bell. What a dreary place to work. What a dreary place to learn. Imagine any other professional without their own little space. Imagine a lawyer writing briefs up against the hallway wall.

    But somehow, of course, for asking for such simple things, we are pampered, lazy. Stop whining, shut up, just get in there and teach.

    Comment by Jackie Bennett — March 20, 2006 @ 10:15 pm

  • I’m pretty sure I know the identity of this author. A dedicated, creative, and well respected educator, respected by colleagues, kids, parents, and until recently by his supervisors. If it’s who I think it is I say keep fighting. If it’s someone in a similar situation; same message, Keep Fighting!!

    Comment by xkaydet65 — March 29, 2006 @ 5:24 pm

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