teachers

Urban Schools And Slavery

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

Who knew they had many of the same racial ideals embedded in their systemic structure–keeping people in their appropriate place.

Now before you start getting mad at me, education and urban education are my passion and my daily work.  All of my teaching has happened in urban schools with a majority black population.  My kids are black.  But Jada Williams has said what I have been saying, so honestly, that it breaks my heart to be right.  I cried as I heard her speak of how “teachers actions speak volumes”

I am tired of the achievement gap being about the students.  I am tired of teachers who don’t teach kids.  I am tired of administrators who don’t know what teachers are doing in their classrooms.  I will always be a teacher at heart.  I believe teaching is the most noble and most important profession. I also know it is one of the hardest (it comes in a close second to parenting toddles and teenagers). I am disheartened when I hear the first year teachers I teach (TFA teachers) talk about how students can’t do x or y or z.  I ask “What gives you the right or authority to decide what a student can and cannot do?”

I am not looking to bash teachers.  I love and respect teachers.  I am tired of teachers (some not all–but too many) so clearly not doing their jobs (especially in urban schools). I am tired of administrators who allow teachers to not do their jobs.  Jada’s teacher was offended by her essay and made it impossible for Jada to stay at her school and at her next school. You can read the rest of the story here and here.  Go Read It (then come back…also, just a note–I do not share the same political views that the Frederick Douglass Foundation of NY does–but they have the story).

This story makes me sick. This story epitomizes everything that is wrong with our educational system and our society.  It also highlights that the issues are systemic.  Jada should be applauded for her voice and apologized to for 8 years of being failed by the adults in her schools.  She and every student in America deserves better.  Every. Student. Yes even the poor and minority ones.  EVERY. STUDENT.

It is the little things that we do that send the loudest messages. Messages our students internalize about us and themselves.   Jada (and generations of other minority students) has taken in the rhetoric that she and all black students are deemed “unteachable.”  That just floors me. That makes me sad.  Skin color has no link to IQ or academic potential. Kids are smart and intuitive.  Just listen to Jada read her essay–how can you argue that she can’t learn or is unteachable?  Kids who are called unteachable are usually called that by teachers who can’t and don’t teach.

Students will internalize whatever message gets sent.

Teachers who show movies every day send the message “I don’t think you deserve an education or my time.”  Administrators who allow students to slack off send the message “I don’t think you will amount to anything.”  Student who misbehave in class are sending the message “Your lessons are boring and you aren’t teaching or engaging me.”

Students want to learn.  Students want to be successful.  But students know when teachers don’t want them to be or even worse, don’t care if they are successful.  If you are a teacher–what message do you send to your students?  All of your students.  Think about it.  A teacher is the most important indicator of student success.  So, do everyone a favor–TEACH or get out.  Because Jada and every (especially minority) child in this country, mine included, deserve more.  They deserve everything.

 

The “C” Student

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 4 Comments

With the great debate going on that has polarized the education world with the mentality of “us” vs. “them,” it is important to be honest about who many of our teachers are.  I know right now that this post is going to ruffle some feathers, but I speak from personal experience in many ways.  I was and still am a teacher.  This isn’t the voice of an outsider.

A larger percentage of students in teacher education programs are C students.  Most A and B students don’t go into education.  They just don’t.  There I said it.  Teacher colleges (aside from the elite schools) are filled with mediocre students.  I notice this in the work I do with student teachers and pre-service teachers. I know this from the work I do as an NCATE reviewer for English Education programs.  I know this because I was a teacher.  Who we are as teachers is how we see our students.  It is how we judge our students and compare them to others.  When teachers see students who are trying as hard as they can and are still only achieving at the average level–that level becomes the A level.  I know there are those teachers of you out there saying “no,” “why not reward growth?”  Well I am here to call you out.  Really you don’t do that?  If you don’t do it now, didn’t you do it in the beginning?  I will admit that I did.  I would see students grow and change and put in so much effort without real gain and I would empathize with them.  I would want to reward them for their hard work.  All I was doing was making myself feel better and setting them up for failure.  It took me a year of teaching and researching to realize what I was doing and that it wasn’t about rigor or good education.

Most teacher prep programs have a required GPA of 2.5.  Really?  That is so low.  I know it’s okay to have a C student as president, but I certainly don’t want one as my doctor nor as my child’s teacher.  Shouldn’t our classrooms be staffed with the brightest teachers we can get?  I really think this is why TFA (Teach for America) has been so successful.  While many of their corps members don’t teach a subject they have a degree in, they are smart.  Smart is important.  Smart is what creates ideas.  Smart is what challenges beliefs and the status quo.  Our educational system (public) was not created to build intellectual capacity of the citizens in America.  If it was, uneducated women (no offense) wouldn’t have been the first teachers in public education.  I have always felt that our teacher education admission requirements were too low.  If we have low standards for our teachers, how can we expect them to have high standards for their own?

Education for too long has accepted mediocrity and perpetuated it.  I’m not sure how to change it or fix it.  I do  know that we should let just anyone who wants to be a teacher be one.  I’m sorry if that is politically incorrect, but it’s true.  We don’t let anyone who wants to be a doctor be one.  We should have high standards.  If a person wants to work hard and is smart enough then of course let’s train them to be a teacher.  These are our kids lives at stake.  Three years of having a bad teacher increase exponentially the chance that child won’t finish school.  Aren’t our children worth the demands and rigor?  I know that mine are.  I know that everyone’s are.  It’s time for a change and it has to be systemic.  If we want our children to succeed we have to have teachers who know how to succeed–not just get by.