Lessons from Chicago schools

11 Comments:

• 1 Bklynteacher
  · Oct 14, 2005 at 8:32 pm

  This post is not about this thread. I was just wondering where three or four of the other popular threads disappeared to?

• 2 Persam1197
  · Oct 15, 2005 at 7:46 am

  The principal of that school is somewhat unique. I don’t think that there are any of that sort in the NYC system. From what I’m seeing, too many are not seasoned teachers themselves and have bought into the Kleinberg philosophy of finding that one size fits all system. When supervisors gave up tenure, all bets were off with regards to allowing teachers to teach.

  Bloomberg and Klein both believe that there are corporate-style solutions to the problems facing education today. The idea of collaboration between administrators and educators died years ago. Since this is a top-down management system and we as teachers are factory piece workers, the very idea of principals without tenure advocating for us is moot.

  I feel that our job is to educate our kids despite the nonsensical policies du jour that’s spewed in our direction. We’re the buffer between educrats and our children.

• 3 Lucy2024
  · Oct 15, 2005 at 8:45 am

  I agree with Persam1197.

  I do believe that NYC had, (pre Bloomberg and Klein), strong principals willing to stand up to the BOE and their nonsense. As long as they produced they were left alone.

  The Bloomberg, Klein, and Welch form of management has forced these principals into compliance with the nonsense, retirement, or into a school systems outside of NYC.

  Now, they credit themselves with improving the schools. Perception is obviously more important than reality to these people. Which may work in the business and politics but extremely harmful in education.

  I do believe that principal from Chicago would have been encouraged to retire or move along years ago if she worked in NYC.
  Bloomberg, Klein, and their cronies would have been far too embarrassed to admit that success is actually possible when they don’t interfere.

  Another point: The success of the schools would no longer provide an excuse for the nepotism in the DOE. A lot of Bloomberg’s and Klein’s friends would have to start looking for jobs.

• 4 R. Skibins
  · Oct 15, 2005 at 2:41 pm

  Everything went downhill when the soon-to-retire principals sacrificed their young in voting to give up tenure. Now they can’t even go to the toilet without the LIS’s permission. Things will never get better because once you surrender a right, you will never get it back. That is also why you should vote NO on Weingarten’s sellout contract.

• 5 shouldhavegonetomeds
  · Oct 16, 2005 at 12:30 am

  Yes we can learn a lot from what happened to the principals!!!! Vote NO!! why give up rights for a “raise” that doesn’t cover the cost of inflation.

• 6 redhog
  · Oct 16, 2005 at 3:08 pm

  In today’s New York Post, there is a report that 79% of cardiac surgeons admitted that they avoid doing risky ( in other words, life-saving) procedures, for the simple reason that they don’t want the mortality statistics to make them look bad when things don’t work out.
  What are our options when we have students who are educationally at death’s door? First, we properly don’t recognize such a diagnosis. Second, we see a higher calling than our egos and our status. But just imagine what a gift it would be for the DOE if we could pull the plug on our neediest kids so that the numbers spin pretty!

• 7 Jackie Bennett
  · Oct 16, 2005 at 9:54 pm

  Maisie, thanks. It’s so nice to see evidence of what all of us know: that one way of doing things can’t possibly be right for 1 million children in twelve hundred different schools.

  I have never understood Klein’s urge to homogenize the NYC’s schools.

  In the years before Klein, professional development days used to be different. Teachers from several schools used to get together at one site and exchange ideas. Workshop presenters were all from different places, physically, pedagogically, and psychologically, and they shared the best of what they knew, the things that worked for them in class.

  Every presentation was different. In one I learned about scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, which provided teachers with intensive intellectual summer programs. As a result, I spent a whole lot of summers doing a whole lot of scholarship all over the country. At another presentation, I remember a teacher with over 30 years of experience showing how he used photography in English classes (no one would be interested in him today), and someone else presented a collection of his ten favorite poems to teach. One woman with a fascination for the Great Depression shared sources and materials involving WPA projects, and I remember — well the list goes on and on and on.

  And once, Mel Glenn, a poet from my school, presented his own poems, and how to teach them. I liked that too.

  And it wasn’t just that the presentations were diverse and from the classroom. It was that we had a chance to speak to people from other schools, to find out how they did things. Little things – how they kept their seats arranged maybe, or how their school dealt with cutting. And even if we all did things pretty much the same, we also did things a little different. That’s what used to happen. Teachers at one school would find out how they did things down the block. Then they’d take home what worked for them, and try it out.

  Now, when professional development includes several schools at the same site, everything’s the same, and there’s no point in even getting in the car and driving over. Not only is it likely that the same presentation is going on all over the city; it is also likely that that presentation is remarkably similar to the one you went to last year, and the year before that, a presentation that uses the workshop model (sticking teachers in groups) to teach the workshop model (sticking kids in groups).

  It’s like a world where everything is painted beige.

  How can this possibly be good?

  I remember Randi Weingarten’s testimony for one of the many hearings last year – possibly for CFE. She talked about the snow falling outside, and the children at the window, and the “spontaneous teachable moment,” that was lost, irretrievably and forever because of the rigid structures of the new pedagogy, which did not allow the teacher to stop the class – and which trained the teacher not to think in terms of the moment, just in terms of the standards, the workshop pedagogy, and the test.

  It seems quite possible to me that not just our students, but we too, as professionals, are losing our “teachable moments,” the moment in the professional seminar when teachers talk about what teaching’s all about.

  Something is being lost here in New York, and it saddens me . We may make gains in literacy and math – I don’t know. But I believe we could have made these gains and more and still retained the vibrant teaching culture we used to have. This is New York, after all, a vibrant city, a city where everything is so alive and textured. It’s a shame to see that bleached out of our schools.

  I downloaded the Chicago report because I know it’ll come in handy for a multitude of purposes – not least to embarrass Kleinberg should he show up here on Staten Island. Always nice to ask the man a question.

  I notice at the Designs for Change site there is a direct link to a shorter summary (the introduction to the full report) that others may find useful:

  http://www.designsforchange.org/pdfs/BP_summ_092105.pdf

• 8 Persam1197
  · Oct 17, 2005 at 5:55 am

  I couldn’t agree more with Jackie. I’m not sure that the product the DOE (or is it DOA?) is really education. My school is one of the so-called 209 exempt schools from the new homogenized one-size-fits-all stuff spewed out in workshop model chunks mandated by the city. We had the test scores they were looking for. We’re now doing the same garbage and this lock-step approach is nonsense. Obviously, the adminstration is under pressure from the higher ups to fall in line. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of music and other programs that provide a real meaningful educational experience in favor of Ramp-up and math blocks. I would imagine our after school activities will be severely curtailed if we ratify the new “contract” with the new 6th period of teaching after school.

  I never thought I would miss the old Board of Education so much!

• 9 Jackie Bennett
  · Oct 17, 2005 at 6:44 pm

  Professional Development under Klein is the source of all pedagogical evil (sprinkled with an occasional good) , and for me, one of the benefits of the new contract is it has essentially eliminated staff development . The new contract, it’s pretty much just the three days, and some of that time has to go for room prep.

  What’s more, with the time going for tutoring, they can’t develop me anymore, and if they can’t develop me, they will have a much harder time insisting I teach a certain way. This is bound to give us much more freedom in class to teach as we professionally see fit – this, along with the freedom to leave my seats in rows since room seating is, to some extent, pedagogical destiny.

  And as far as an “extra class.” – well, it’s anyone’s guess who will actually show up for the tutoring but even in a worst-case scenario 10 kids 4 days a week — with tutoring, not teaching, well, to me, that’s a gain over all that PD.

  But even though I work in a school with very involved parents, I am pretty certain that I will have nowhere near that amount. No where. Last time the DoE tried this (September and October of 03), the students were mandated to stay, and my room was empty. Absolutely empty. This time they weren’t even mandated. I hope some stay — most of my teachers, K-12, will hope and beg them to stay. But the reality is, we don’t expect to have 10 kids, 4 days a week.

  I’m thinking that finally, finally I’m going to have a half hour at the end of the day for all those things I need it for, including a bit of small-group tutoring, but also all those other things I need the time for when I’m in my room.

  And they can’t call me into some silly meeting to sit in little groups and talk about little groups.

  Free at last.

  (I should say, for the record, that my own principal has been very good about PD and has given teachers the kinds of things they ask for)

• 10 Teacher31231
  · Oct 17, 2005 at 7:39 pm

  Randi is a dummy and the contract is bad. If you didn’t think so before just look in the post and see that she is already talking about renegotiating the “letter” part of it, before we even pass it because it will be a major point of abuse. She will “review” this after the contract is signed, so we have to suffer, and she knows this NOW!

  God how bad will this thing have to get for our members to wake up!

• 11 firebrand
  · Oct 17, 2005 at 10:49 pm

  Jackie where is the good? What did I miss?

  31231-
  you say “before we pass it” like it’s a done deal. Be posititve. We voted down a contract in 1995. Maybe we can vote this one down and maybe Ferrar will win….

  If people stop saying Bloomberg has it in the bag. When people say that the fence sitters of the people who usually don’t vote but come out once in a blue say “ah my vote won’t count enough to swing it the other way.” and then they don’t vote.