Teachable moment or travesty?

And just when you thought it couldn't happen in Oregon...

In the city of Beaverton in Oregon, a student teacher was reassigned from his school because of his sexual orientation. Student teachers are kind of like proto-teachers. When you go though student teaching, it's a trial by fire where, depending on your cooperating teacher, adviser, and other support people, you may or may not have a lot of instruction in how to deal with every situation that comes up. Such was probably the case with this student teacher in his 4th grade classroom when a student asked him whether he was married. It's only natural that students, once they get to know you, are naturally interested in some things about you. It happened with me and made for some interesting discussions that I had to be very deliberate about how I answered in an age and situation-appropriate way. But when the student teacher replied that he was not married, the student asked him why he wasn't. That's where the problems started, because he told the student that it was illegal for him to be married. A parent overheard and complained to the administration. The long and the short of it was that this student teacher ended up being reassigned to a school in the Portland Public Schools while Beaverton School District had a bit of a black eye, feeling pressure from gay and lesbian teachers as well as other sources.

Now, luckily, that was one problem that didn't come up for me, but very well could have for members of my Concordia University cohort (GO ORANGE). But it speaks to a wider problem. The first gut reaction was to bow to the bigots, rather than to do the right thing. I find that this is often the case. It takes a whole lot of guts to stand up to those who would spread hatred. There is nothing wrong with orientation, it is only a function of who you are. Gay, straight, transgender, bisexual and other; it's becoming apparent to a whole generation of Americans, the youth who are not so much leading the charge against bigotry that is at the heart of this kind of behavior, but rather, they fail to understand what the big deal is. I find this interesting, and in many movements, their can either be an outright resistance to a wrong, or a kind of acceptance to of those who are marginalized, and resentment piled on those who are causing the problem. I believe that young people fit more into the second category. The battle is already won when a school district has to trip all over itself apologizing to the community for strange actions such as this. I hope that the same kind of scene will play out in other parts of the country that aren't as liberal as Oregon. Nobody should be discriminated upon based on race, gender, age, religion or orientation. School should be a safe zone not only for kids, but also for the teachers.

PPS decides to stick with a good idea.

Harriet Tubman Leadership Academy for Young Women's
original building facade and lunchroom.
Photo by the author.

Sometimes part of the problem with the idea of school restructuring is short-sightedness.

Let me back up. Portland Public Schools have been in the midst of one of the more difficult restructurings it's been through in a while. In a response to shifting demographic trends, the numbers of students in PPS have shrunk over the past couple of decades. Less children are living in the city and more in the suburbs like Beaverton, Sherwood, Tigard/Tualatin, etc. This has resulted in some hard decisions of restructuring of School District #1. The most visible of these was the recent high school redesign process that went through many iterations. Originally two high schools were to be closed. Then one, while Benson became a half-day technical option. But finally it seemed settled with most schools staying as they are with one high school, Marshall, being closed and students reassigned.

Almost shattered in the high school redesign is a nearly invisible diamond in the rough, the smallest of high schools in the city. Harriet Tubman Leadership Academy for Young Women is the only public single-gender school in the state. The Young Women's Academy (YWA) is under the umbrella of Jefferson High School, which is located about two miles north. This school services students grades 6-12, and its future in its current form was held in the balance, slated to be a possible victim of the redesign process. As it is structured right now, there are 63 high school students in the total population amounting to about 1/3 of the student body. YWA has many things going for it that other public schools in the city don't first, unlike Jefferson's failed and shuttered boys academy, the single-gender setting is successful. I have some thoughts about this. For an all-boys school to be successful, it is my belief that it requires the type of structure that is not easy to find in a public school. While boys might see single-gender as a negative, girls see single-gender as a positive; they see it as refuge from the distractions that interactions between the sexes can cause on a daily basis. This school also has a loose uniform/dress code that allows a small amount of flexibility, while maintaining the underlying the, well, uniformity that this code maintains.

Test scores among the higher grades are consistently higher at YWA than they are at Jefferson High School, but due to the way the academy structured being under Jefferson's wing, test scores are reported as a combined data set. Consequently YWA can be making AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) but because they are still a part of Jefferson, they still suffer from that school's problems. They are also dependent on Jefferson for money, but that's a story left for another post. There was talk at one point of spinning YWA from Jefferson entirely, being allowed to sink or swim independently from the larger high school, but those plans are now tabled. 

As a part of the high school redesign, there was tremendous uncertainty about the future facing the school with one of the most recent plans being to eliminate high school all together and keep the remaining three grades as a middle school in the same form. This was extremely short-sighted. If you are going to think strategically about a problem, you have to be prepared to work on it over the long term. Fortunately, and possibly due to extreme pressure from a dedicated parent base, the YWA is going to continue in its present format, as a 6-12 school. I believe that it would have been wrong for the (so far successful) experiment to be scaled back before it had an opportunity to see the payoff of young inner-city women going to college.

PPS saw the light, and I'm very pleased.

Bad apples? Yes, but some just aren't ripe.

Image by Matt Grigsby, Willamette Week

The writing is on the wall. It's time for bad teachers to be kicked out of their positions. Though Oregon doesn't have tenure per se, in most places it's still unlikely that the "bad" teachers will lose their jobs any time soon. As a newly minted teacher who's looking for a position, it may seem self-serving for me to wish for people to lose their jobs, especially in an economy such as this, but I have some thoughts on the concept of "bad apples."

1. Yes, they do exist. One example of such a poisonous apple was a teacher that I worked with in my student teaching who went out of their way to badmouth other teachers in front of students, yell at her students and demean them, and then have the gall to feel like she was being mistreated. This woman was toxic, and quite obviously needed to not only have her contract not extended, encouraged to quit, etc, but to be out and out FIRED.

2. There is room for improvement. This is the case for any job, and everyone needs to be on board. I recently listened to a segment on NPR's "Talk of the Nation," where Neal Conan was interviewing an author that said that performance reviews were detrimental. His belief was that when managers (principals for this conversation) have a set of benchmarks that they expect an employee to meet, it's a dodge to absolve themselves of responsibility. His belief is that the mark of an effective manager is to help your subordinates be successful, rather than to be a cop who cites the employee when they are committing an infraction. There are teachers who see the principal in their classroom once every two years. That is inexcusable. Also, it's incumbent upon the teacher to be always working to up their game. They need to work with other teachers, to share ideas about how to be more successful. And talking isn't enough. If possible, a principal needs to find a way for teachers to be able to observe other effective (or ineffective) teachers in the school to learn from them. The relationship between the teacher and the principal should not be adversarial, but more as a student/teacher relationship. We're all in this together to make learning more effective for the children.

3. Don't confuse earnestness with effectiveness. I am learning how to play the guitar. It is my sneaking suspicion that I will never be great, despite my earnest interest in the instrument. There are teachers out there that just love being in a classroom, sharing knowledge and seeing a child's eyes light up when they get something. That's great. But it doesn't mean that those are necessarily great teachers.

4. Standardized testing as an assessment isn't unfair, so long as the test makes sense. As much as teachers complain about standardized testing, it's a measure of how well students have done in the classroom. There must be some kind of objective measurement of student progress, it's that simple. A good teacher teaches to the test. "WHAT?" they ask. A good teacher will figure out what the student needs to know, makes the test, and then teaches to that the student will be able to pass the test. If they pass the test well, that means that they know the content that the teachers deemed important. I believe that part of the reason that teachers are so incensed about standardized testing is that they have no control over the content of the test and feel out of the loop. Like their opinion isn't important. Maybe so. Teachers should have more input into what goes into the standardized tests. Then when they have buy-in, they can teach to the test. Finally we can use that as an objective measure to gauging not only the students, but the teachers progress against themselves.

5. The younger generation doesn't "get" why losing your job is a bad thing. I'm not young at the age of 38, but I've worked in the private sector. I've survived layoffs, but also been affected by them. I also know that in the private sector (in the ideal company) results matter. I don't get why this is a tough concept for some people who shall remain nameless to get. It's even more important that results matter when it comes to school, because a degree is one of the better predictors of earning potential in the future. If a teacher is ineffective, people talk about how it is hurting the children, but here's something that I don't think that they think about. If you are ineffective in your job, despite the fact that you may like it, are you really doing what's best for yourself? Are you achieving to your fullest potential. I know that if I wasn't great at my job despite an earnest desire to be great, I should probably move on. Quit trying to be a professional guitarist, and do it as a hobby if that's what makes me happy. But leave room for the talented professionals.

School must be a safe place.

Recently we’ve seen some fairly high profile examples of bullying, in schools. With the tragic case of Asher Brown in Texas to the case of this girl who has cerebral palsy, most of the kids who are bullied have something in common, and that is that they are not “like the other kids.” Take for instance Asher’s case, a 13 year old who just came out as gay. Shortly after he did, he ended up taking his own life, after being bullied mercilessly about his sexuality. He must have been in a very dark place where he didn’t think that the treatment that was being directed at him was likely to stop, and that he had no place to turn. Below is an interview with parent who stepped in under different circumstances and tried to stop it the wrong way. I understand his frustration, but clearly his methodology was misguided.

That’s where we, as educators, need to step in. School and the bus ride to and from school must be a safe place for children and teens. Just like there is a zero tolerance policy for weapons in schools, I believe that there should also be a zero tolerance policy for bullying in schools as well. Teachers need to be absolutely consistent about how they react to bullying and get treatment for the bullied and the bully. Here are a couple of links, one from Fox News, and another from Stop Bullying Now, an anti-bullying website with some specific measures that should be taken to help mitigate the problem.

If a child is freaked out about coming to school, filled with anxiety about what's going to happen to them at the end of the day, during lunch, P.E. or even math class, how on earth are they going to function well in your class? Bullying doesn't just affect their self-esteem, but also their ability to learn, and that is something that can adversely affect their future.

Don't ever think that just because you "got through it" that bullying is in some way an acceptable rite of passage for young people. There are a lot of things that used to be commonplace that are now considered backward and unacceptable. Bullying should be treated the same way. And just because it you can't eliminate it entirely, doesn't mean we should allow an "acceptable level." We must always be vigilant and take the problem seriously.