Why This Teacher Is Marching in Washington

I am your child's history teacher. You may know me from the Ancient Egypt mummification project your child did in 6th grade when we did a comparative study of beliefs of the afterlife of ancient civilizations. That's a fancy way of saying we mummified a chicken in the classroom, a sneaky way to engage students in analysis and evaluation.

Or you might have heard your child talking about the fascinating way the Mongols conquered Asia in the 13th century with their amazing equestrian skills, but failed miserably to subjugate Japan when the Kamikaze wind sank their armada two times in failed attempts. That was the project where the students researched a primary source scroll depicting the invasion and worked in groups to decipher it.

But that was many years ago. That was before the standardized testing movement resulted in schools giving more time to English and math classes by deducting time from science and social studies. The time is no longer there to explore these fascinating cultures with your children. In some schools, social studies is relegated to summer school, in schools lucky enough to still have funding for summer instruction.

In the English and math classrooms, students must now learn lessons from scripted curriculum geared toward improving test scores, tests designed to measure the lowest levels on Bloom's taxonomy: knowledge and comprehension. If schools don't test high enough, they are placed on the dreaded failing schools list because federal education policy calls for punitive measures such as closing schools or replacing entire staffs if they score poorly. For this reason, many principals turn to test preparation and a narrowed, focused curriculum to keep their schools open.

As a teacher, I know what good education looks like. It's what I would seek for my own child: small class sizes, deep content knowledge by an accomplished teacher, a robust and diverse curriculum and a school that instills the love of learning in all students who walk through the door.

Unfortunately, good education has not resulted from the federal education policy of today and teachers can stay silent no longer.

Today I am marching because I believe in the innovators of our past, the Alexander Graham Bells, the Wright Brothers, the inventors of Google and Apple, the artists, the creators and the geniuses. I'm marching because our brilliant past must not become a footnote in the very books we use in class. Teachers can color our future brightly if given the authority to inform education policy. Thus, in the very finest tradition of our democratic heritage, we are marching to demand a seat at the table. Parents, will you support us?

For more information on the Save our Schools March click here.

 

Follow Martha Infante on Twitter: www.twitter.com/avalonsensei

Comments

[antaeus]

01:28 AM on 08/03/2011

And still we have a "Democratic" president who has adopted the Republican anti-teacher stance.

[mlaiuppa]

05:22 PM on 07/31/2011

We mummified a fish, dressed up and had a funeral having made a tomb in the library with wall paintings, furniture and a book of the dead.

For India they dressed in saris (the boys shared the one vest I had), built a 3D Taj Mahal and eat food with different spices.

They painted terracotta pots with authentic Greek designs, tried flint napping for ancient man and tried Chinese calligraphy and making paper.

They wrote persuasive essays on the pros and cons of restoring the Sphinx or Parthenon.

They wrote comparative essays on Hammurabi's code and the ten commandments.

Not any more.

[Seven Teenatheart]

01:57 AM on 08/01/2011

We had "Japan Day" where we "flew to Japan" in a classroom, took tours, went to the tea houses, etc.
49'er day.
Camping trips to Death Valley and Yosemite, where we studied those areas for weeks in advance.

Those programs are no longer a priority for the schools, and it's very sad. We excelled in school because we loved the approach.
Not anymore.
Now it's work and if they are lucky they get a jumper at the school or "cupcake day".

[jimhmercier]

11:48 AM on 07/31/2011

It seems to me that washington is the problem. Dump the dept of education and give that money to the local schools, stop regulating them and let the teachers do their job.

[mlaiuppa]

05:24 PM on 07/31/2011

That won't happen. There will always be someone telling teachers how to do their job. If not politicians then administrators.

[angelcakesinc]

02:00 AM on 08/01/2011

Schools will always need regulation. Just look at the kind of foolishness that goes on in conservative areas without proper supervision. Not teaching evolution, teaching lies about the Civil War, ignoring civil rights, teaching creationism. The problem isn't regulation, it's who's doing the regulating. Educators should be the majority makeup of the regulators. And doing away with all this stupid standardized testing. That should be priority number one. I can assure you that in my 16 years of schooling I never once learned anything useful from taking a standardized test other than if you fill it in long enough the little circles can get really smooth and shiny. Even college level bubble tests were laughable. Fortunately I was an English major so the majority of my classes taught me how to think about and interpret information rather than to just memorize and regurgitate it.

[banana republican]

08:02 AM on 07/31/2011

Maybe the solution to our education problem might be to create a commission to study why Catholic schools can produce better educated graduates for a fraction of price, and without relying on taxpayer dollars. (No - I'm not a Catholic)

[mickeyfrombuffalo]

12:41 PM on 07/31/2011

No commission needed...they pay their teachers poorly, accept only the students they want, close schools that may drain the diocese of too much money, are not required to educate students with special needs, and charge tuitions that can be modest or extremely expensive. They can make a profit, but pay no taxes. And yes, I am a Catholic, but I don't believe this is a model we want for our public education.

[angelcakesinc]

02:01 AM on 08/01/2011

Exactly. It's easy to appear as though you have a good record in educating if you just kick out the ones who are performing unsatisfactorily. Public schools do not have this option.

[lacy41]

03:37 PM on 08/01/2011

FANNED AND FAVED!

[cerebrogasm]

06:38 AM on 07/31/2011

Do any of you believe there is no link between intelligence, education and the problems we are facing in this country, especially in our political arena? Do you think if we had been taught, early on, during adolescence, and then, for the more fortunate, in further education - that we would generally be a brighter, more reflective, more rational society - with an understanding of economics, history, governmental philosophy, or even the advantages we can have, the better life we can live, only have if we learn basic civil discourse - and reject manipulation by media and propagandists? Or are we doomed to be upright, warlike, dull minded primates that will always opt for conflict if we're ever asked to give to the "commonwealth" of our nation? Or will we always go through life, with one part of our minds attempting to keep the other in check, and often losing that control? I have a hint: take a look at all of the countries that now surpass us in education and civility - are their citizens enjoying a generally higher quality of life than we are? If you answered "yes" - then it's not a stretch to deduce what our priorities should be, if we really do want a higher quality of existence during this pitiful short time we have on this planet.

[corwin]

10:43 AM on 07/31/2011

I hate to throw cold water on your imaginings,but there's no program in early childhood,adolescence,,senility,menopause, anything else that has increased intelligence or shown long term gains.Time recently had a cover on Head Start showing no effects past first grade.Study/work can increase knowledge and skills,but your best bet is to be born from very bright ancestors Marina Whitman is a very accomplished,bright person. Given her father,she was bound to be very bright You're attempting to promulgate soothing superstitions that remind me of creationism.
ANd,before you decide I'm too harsh-some of my best friends were Liberal arts majors. I don't condescend to them

[cerebrogasm]

06:41 PM on 07/31/2011

Creationism? You got Creationism out of what I wrote? You may want to re-think that.

There are both studies in Psychometrics & in Piaget's studies of development that correlate: very early, stimulating environments - of all kinds, contribute to higher IQ's. This is a generalization. Intelligence has also been correlated by neuroscience biologically - ex.: greater dendrite neuronal populations in the neonatal brain - & their topological relation to each other - the greater the computational ability - pattern recognition - spacial awareness - & so on - all markers of higher intelligence. How the brain creates more "connections", during gestation, is still debated - but its generally held that genetics & early environment, contribute. And - there all kinds of "intelligences" - Mozart wrote his 1st symphony at age 5, but could he also comprehend quantum mechanics? That's nature. Then "nurture" takes over.

But I wasn't arguing for a nationwide effort to increase the intelligence of its citizenry: this is not Nazi Germany. (But, educationally, NCLB should be abolished). I was arguing that people that vote with their "gut" (emotionally), dismissing reasoning, without significant vetting of a candidate, often cast votes that are not in their own best interests. There's no "superstition" in that assertion. Reactionaries are easy to manipulate - and its not done through an appeal to their intellect.

By the way, "senility" (dementia), is about brain injury or disease, etc. - & not a part of normal aging. I don't know where you got "menopause".

[dloitz]

04:18 AM on 07/31/2011

If you can’t make the march please join us at the Cooperativ­e Catalyst and voice your support via blog post or twitter feed, or facebook post! Use the tag #bloggerma­rch and add your comments or links to

http://coo­pcatalyst.­wordpress.­com/2011/0­7/17/blogg­ermarch/

There are already a handful of post on this growing list!

-Cooperati­ve Catalyst!

[cerebrogasm]

01:05 AM on 07/31/2011

I got lucky in that I received a full merit scholarship to a really tough, private, Catholic college prep school in Boston. Nearly all of my teachers were Jesuits, but with degrees in the fields they were teaching - often Master's degrees. Many of my teachers used the Socratic method - a kind of teaching by interrogation - as far from No Child Left Behind as you can imagine. Though this was a Catholic HS - religion was taught 4 days a week for no more than 50 minutes - never about memorizing Biblical passages, but often about philosophy. We studied hard. All of my 217 graduating class went on to Ivy League coleges, MIT, BC, CalTech, etc. Most are now business owners, doctors or lawyers. SAT scores in the lower 700's per area were considered outlandish. Flash-forward to today. Teens I've tried to hire - good kids, just can't cut basic skills. They live in a kind of iPod/Facebook bubble and are consumed with how "hot" they are - not what college or career path they want to pursue. Ambition is gone. They've all been "taught-to-test" (i.e., memorize) but have not developed reasoning skills, inferential thinking, deductive thought, etc. - they've been dumbed down & yet hold a sense of entitlement - because they managed to graduate HS. I shudder at the thought that these are the people our future rests on. NCLB has destroyed creative thinking and produced a class of automatons - exactly what the Right wanted.

[mlaiuppa]

05:28 PM on 07/31/2011

What kind of class sizes did you have?

Teachers would love to use the Socratic method but it's difficult when classes run 38+ and students have no experience in it.

[cerebrogasm]

07:37 PM on 07/31/2011

Good point mlaiuppa. My class sizes averaged about 28 students in HS. Not all classes used the Socratic method - I remember parents protesting to the "Headmaster" that their sons felt intimidated or embarrassed by some of our more "zealous" clergy teachers: example, one broke my desk in half, with one karate chop, because I incorrectly conjugated a verb during Spanish class. But, there was almost no discipline problems over our 217 student body - if a student misbehaved - he was 1) Immediately physically punished (remember, these were Jesuits), or 2) Immediately thrown out of class - more than 3 such removals would get the student thrown out of the school permanently. The school awarded intellectual prowess and athletic skill - but you had to be able to "cut it" - so there was no time for typical teenage pranking. The emphasis was on excellence - not eroding the rigor of any subject to cater to students that just refused to engage. Side note: My first introduction to the intricacies of evolutionary biology by means of natural selection were taught to me and my class - by a priest. Times have certainly changed.

[Jack Shroff]

12:44 AM on 07/31/2011

The problem with the teaching profession all throughout the world is that it needs to cater to everyone, and it needs to employ knowledgable people. Since the word money was not used in that last sentence, teachers are not very important in a capitalistic society. This results in only a few genuinely knowledgable (and therefore interested) people getting into that profession, while the rest that get in are people that did not fit in any where else in society. This catch22 of getting mediocre people to motivate hard to motivate and easily cynicable (coined that word to mean to make cynical - I had a bad english teach, so please excuse me) youth will plague the world as long as capitalism exists. Please note that I'm not trying to say that Capitalism is a bad system. So madam, to your article, I will say that even if Washington listens to you and gives you the freest hand possible to control the education system, the change you may result will not be substantial.

[Claudia Rose]

11:49 PM on 07/30/2011

I graduated from high school about 38 years ago. I didn't go to college until I started in January of this year. I take all my classes online and we use discussion boards; therefore I see a lot of the other student's writing. The kids just out of high school can't spell (or, apparently, figure out how to use spell check), can't punctuate and their grammar is atrocious. My classes usually start out with about 25 students and end up with 8 or 9 actively participating. I thought I would have a hard time keeping up with the younger students, but so far I have been in the top three of all my classes. I don't understand how some of these kids are even graduating high school.

[pangborn]

10:51 PM on 07/30/2011

When public school teachers shed their NEA/AFT mentality and start putting the same level of passion into their profession as they are asking us as taxpayers to put in, then I will buy your arguments.

[frdafury]

06:47 PM on 07/31/2011

When the public supports my enthusiasm and the right to a living wage, that I am not the enemy but on their side for their kids to have a better life than the one that the parents have, when the administrators actually talk to me and not at me nor second guess my decisions for children that they see for 5 minutes tops and when education "professionals" also spend time teaching classes and when parents spend time volunteering in their children's classes, and blow hards learn how to have a discussion and not a rant...I just might consider respecting your opinion and not just the fact the constitution allows you to share it indiscriminately.

[deebles]

10:17 PM on 07/30/2011

You got my support. When my kid saw an error in his math test in 6th grade and the teacher went nuts I didn't put him in a private school. I moved to a better public school. He's now a PhD teaching Physics in high school. Proudest day of my life was when he left the fracking industry cause he did know what they were pouring into those wells and became a teacher. He could have fracked his way to a Porsche, or been a quant on Wall Street inventing derivatives of derivatives of derivatives, but he likes living life on the important edge. He matters to me and every year he matters to a few kids who make your MRI's and this computer thingy. In a free society teachers should be the first citizens, cause they make all the others.

[loucasa]

09:58 PM on 08/01/2011

I too am a science teacher (chemistry) who came from industry. I like your phrase "living life on the important edge." If more people understood just how important teaching is to our society, then we wouldn't have to have this march. By the way, I was there too.

[Michael GE]

09:49 PM on 07/30/2011

Was I lucky? (Mostly a question which other Europeans might like to answer)
So, from class 1 to 4 we had "Science" (Sachkunde) as a subject. We would first explore the buildings of our city, then the museums, then the historical sights. We had (in a small town in Germany) everything: buildings that survived WWII, three (back then hostile against each other) castles (one a real WWI ruin), ruins which dated back to times when the town had been several villages, lots of other stuff, a Celtic castle and a stone age cave (with paintings, etc.) and most of all (class 1 starting) we had lots of (sea) fossils and were encouraged to collect them and discuss them with out teacher.
There was just never the need to play around with chickens or explain the wider implications of the Mongolian push. None of the two things, however intriguing, can substitute to just ... "Hey, this and that you can explore right around your home".

[VikingQuest]

08:20 PM on 07/30/2011

"Or you might have heard your child talking about the fascinating way the Mongols conquered Asia in the 13th century with their amazing equestrian skills"

If my kid ever came home talking about equestrian, I'd ground him.

[angelcakesinc]

02:08 AM on 08/01/2011

What do you have against horses?!

[jal6641]

03:14 PM on 08/01/2011

So you don't want your child to be excited about history? I feel soooo sorry for him.

[georgiaR]

08:18 PM on 07/30/2011

I have been a teacher's aide in an elementary school for 25 years. I have worked with some really good teachers but also some very bad ones. Many teachers put the kids in front of a video so they can get their paperwork done and leave school at 3 pm. There is not enough time in the day spent on the basics (reading, writing, math) Many of the bad teachers are not very organized in their lesson plans - there is no connection between the state standards, the curriculum, and the testing.

[PixieGirl0731]

08:39 PM on 07/30/2011

I have been told I am a bad teacher and I "need Improvement" because I do not do that! I was told that my paperwork was never good enough. The lesson plan disertations were not 'complete". Meaning that there was not enough fluff. My scores went up but I was rated a failure. Please explain this to me. Where I teach there is perfect agreement on all 3 the test, standards, and there is no curriculum. I have worked with as many as 5 aides in 1 class in 1 year. I can tell you that there are aides that spend their entire day causing trouble all over the school and never with a student. This September I plan to use that VHS player in the closet a lot more. After all I have to focus on my paperwork or get fired.

[wmnorton]

08:15 PM on 07/30/2011

I saw a study several years ago, can't find it now, that showed that the best determiator of whether a child will graduate from high school is whether or not he was taught art in grade school. Without this approach what we are doing is teaching 1/2 of the brain and then expecting the child to have a well rounded education. Seems that if you ignore half of the brain by not teaching art you also limit the child's ability to see the big picture. What you get is what we have now kids that can do math, but not able to see what math is good for.

[TurtleSaysLessIsMore]

11:52 PM on 07/30/2011

Art is cool. I was taught aspects of it in grade school and liked it. So, I purposely took two courses in High School. So and to your point , I was fortunate to exercise both halves of my brain. Today though, I am not seeing the teaching of even 1/2 of the brain, are you? Are you really seeing "kids that can do math"? Where are they? I am not seeing kids who can do arithmetic?

[wmnorton]

01:40 AM on 07/31/2011

There are pockets where kids learn math for the test, but they don't learn how to apply it. And that is not new, most of the Tea Party people I deal with can not figure out where the Koch brothers are getting them to vote against their own self interest. They seem to think that if they give all their money to the wealthy, the wealthy will take care of them. Sorry Charlie!

[pa104inf]

12:22 AM on 07/31/2011

Liberal arts major in college I would guess, right? Working at the local Starbucks are you?

[wmnorton]

01:33 AM on 07/31/2011

No sorry, I'm a retired electrical engineer. Have a large enough IRA to live better than the guys working at Starbucks. But I was taught art in grade school. Learned how to see, as Yogi once said "You can see a lot by just looking." unfortunately most of the conservatives I know didn't have art in grade school so they are trying to figure stuff out with only half of their brain working. If you would like to learn what your missing I would suggest you get a book called "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards. Once you get through that you will find that you can see things you have always overlooked before. Opens a whole new world that has always been around you.

[TurtleSaysLessIsMore]

01:41 AM on 07/31/2011

Liberal arts major? Nope. I started in Forestry, moved over to Journalism and ended up as a Finance and Accounting major. Starbucks? Nope. (But, I do get a kick from how they chose their corporate name.) I was a software engineer for over twenty years, the black sheep in a family of salespeople. I loved it. Still do. Much to my Father's delight, I've been selling the stuff for years and loving every minute of that too. How 'bout you?