"Save Our Failing Teachers" [html]No, it's not the new motto from the CTU. It's a new website out there called SOFT. It describes itself as "A coalition of concerned parents and teachers who want to protect teachers from scrutiny and criticism ...We believe teachers who are failing to achieve need more resources and support, not threats and criticism. We believe in the inherent good of all teachers." Thanks to a friend for sending this in.[/html]
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Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 1:28 PM
"Save Our Failing Teachers"
This would not be a "new" motto of the CTU. This is what the CTU is saying and has been saying for many long years. The CTU appreciates the support of SOFT and all parents and community groups who feel the same about our teachers.
Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 1:49 PM
"Save Our Failing Teachers"
While the sentiment "there is no such thing as a failing teacher" is nice, it is also completely false. Teaching is a profession. It requires training and skill, not hugs. Not everyone is capable of being a teacher just like not everyone is capable of being an electrician, firefighter, nuclear physicist, etc.
We don't need inspirational quotes, we need veteran mentors and strong administrative support for new teachers to have a chance to succeed and we need better university programs that focus on reality not utopian theoretical learning environments. Wanting to be a teacher is not enough to be a good teacher.
This organization is perpetuating the "teaching is art" school where all you need to be a good teacher is a big heart. We longer work in cute little one-room schoolhouses. Not all the kids are going to give us an apple. We need to begin treating teachers like highly skilled professionals and hold accountable those who cannot rise to that level.
We don't need inspirational quotes, we need veteran mentors and strong administrative support for new teachers to have a chance to succeed and we need better university programs that focus on reality not utopian theoretical learning environments. Wanting to be a teacher is not enough to be a good teacher.
This organization is perpetuating the "teaching is art" school where all you need to be a good teacher is a big heart. We longer work in cute little one-room schoolhouses. Not all the kids are going to give us an apple. We need to begin treating teachers like highly skilled professionals and hold accountable those who cannot rise to that level.
Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 3:31 PM
"Save Our Failing Teachers"
Well said John! Marilyn Stewart is right, the CTU "has been saying that for many long years," TOO many years at that, with no signs of improvement!
Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 4:13 PM
"Save Our Failing Teachers"
Yeah, John and blahblahblah. Right on. Tell it like it is.
"Failing Teachers"? Isn't that redundant? A teacher is by definition someone who is a failure. If they could hold down a real job they wouldn't have to be lording it over kids in the name of stinking "education." I say fire 'em all. Who needs 'em? Not me, that's for sure. Everything I know I learned before I was 3. The rest was just keeping the morons from making me forget it all. Waste of valuable real estate to pay for schools where these good for nothing louts can leech off the public teat in the name of "education". Give me a break.
"Failing Teachers"? Isn't that redundant? A teacher is by definition someone who is a failure. If they could hold down a real job they wouldn't have to be lording it over kids in the name of stinking "education." I say fire 'em all. Who needs 'em? Not me, that's for sure. Everything I know I learned before I was 3. The rest was just keeping the morons from making me forget it all. Waste of valuable real estate to pay for schools where these good for nothing louts can leech off the public teat in the name of "education". Give me a break.
Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 9:36 PM
"Save Our Failing Teachers"
At most of the "failing schools" in CPS the challenge is not getting rid of the failing teachers, it's keeping the good ones. The underperforming schools have HIGH teacher turnover. Why would a good teacher continue to teach in an underperforming school and risk the stigma of being associated with a failing school? Better to move to an easier assignment in a suburban school or a school in a middle or upper income community in Chicago --a school where success is almost guaranteed.
The nasty cynicism of websites like SOFT, and the teacher-hating vitriol displayed by some of the posters on this site denigrate the teaching profession, and making keeping good teachers in difficult schools that much more challenging.
The nasty cynicism of websites like SOFT, and the teacher-hating vitriol displayed by some of the posters on this site denigrate the teaching profession, and making keeping good teachers in difficult schools that much more challenging.
Thu Nov 22, 2007 at 2:12 AM
"Save Our Failing Teachers"
Most of the geniuses who berate those of us who taught (or are still teaching) in the hard core inner city (where the failures of society are the norm, and the children of the poor are the victims until they become big enough to begin to wreak vengeance) did not last a week in those schools. One of the main reasons cowards needed "data driven management" was to deflect all of the issues into something they could control with spreadsheets and Power Point. That era is ending.
I guess I'm not surprised that this "failing teachers" thing has happened, although it sounds like a send up worthy of Second City. But let's not make too big a deal of it. The majority of suburban teachers would "fail" at places like the ones being crucified under "High School Transformation" as would every single overpaid undercompetent bubblehead on the 5th floor at 125 S. Clark St. This overpaid undercompetent bubblehead list included, but is not limited to, the CEOs and "New Schools". Put them in a program out at Manley, or back at Bowen (but with the "leftovers" who didn't make the elite "small schools"), or on the 6th floor at Clemente, or even down the street here at Schurz or Steinmetz -- for two years and let me know how their theories worked...). Wouldn't you love to see Arne take a two-year sabbatical from executiving and try his hand at teaching (at teacher pay and on the teacher payroll system) at Julian now that he's cut half the new teachers there?
The Daley people had to put me on the DO NOT HIRE list after that silly million dollar lawsuit (which they brought down to zero after all those headlines, admitting their CASE tests were a bucket of manure, just as I'd proved). They got away with violating the First Amendment big time, or I'd still be teaching at Bowen High School -- or someplace like it.
So don't preach here or elsewhere about the values of this hypocritical town, or its "reformed" public school system.
Teacher available. Veteran. For inner city public high schools. Elite (University of Chicago) degree and all. More than two decades of classroom successes (modest to enormous and heart rending).
Been there; done that. Ready to do it again. But not as defined by someone's idiot Power Point and data driven rubrics. That stuff's not real world and never has been. Inner city teaching can be done, but the past decade has been erecting a scaffolding of scapegoating. To break that down, you have to change your dominant narrative. Unscrew up the visions and definitions.
Anyone want to hire, show some courage? It's the holidays!
I'm still available, and waiting just as 25 years ago, when I walked into Marshall H.S. back when Bob Saddler was principal -- the sixth teacher in the first semester that year. Nothing big has changed except the way the problems are defined. Back in those days, we knew a system that placed hundreds of thousands of children into segregation poverty was an evil system.
Today, the children and those who try and work with them as public servants are blamed, and the system is hailed. That's happened before in history, and each time the crash was as ugly as this one is beginning to be.
Anyway, back to this year's courage test.
Next time you hear a public high school principal in Chicago complaining complaining she can't find an English teacher, tell her to go to the Board, tell them to get me off the DO NOT HIRE list, and put me to work in those classrooms.
Six months after that day, we'll talk about some other suggestions for solving little (one classroom; one program) and bigger problems (the reign of idiots under the smokescreen of an evil ideology).
It's in the phone book and easy to find on line.
I guess I'm not surprised that this "failing teachers" thing has happened, although it sounds like a send up worthy of Second City. But let's not make too big a deal of it. The majority of suburban teachers would "fail" at places like the ones being crucified under "High School Transformation" as would every single overpaid undercompetent bubblehead on the 5th floor at 125 S. Clark St. This overpaid undercompetent bubblehead list included, but is not limited to, the CEOs and "New Schools". Put them in a program out at Manley, or back at Bowen (but with the "leftovers" who didn't make the elite "small schools"), or on the 6th floor at Clemente, or even down the street here at Schurz or Steinmetz -- for two years and let me know how their theories worked...). Wouldn't you love to see Arne take a two-year sabbatical from executiving and try his hand at teaching (at teacher pay and on the teacher payroll system) at Julian now that he's cut half the new teachers there?
The Daley people had to put me on the DO NOT HIRE list after that silly million dollar lawsuit (which they brought down to zero after all those headlines, admitting their CASE tests were a bucket of manure, just as I'd proved). They got away with violating the First Amendment big time, or I'd still be teaching at Bowen High School -- or someplace like it.
So don't preach here or elsewhere about the values of this hypocritical town, or its "reformed" public school system.
Teacher available. Veteran. For inner city public high schools. Elite (University of Chicago) degree and all. More than two decades of classroom successes (modest to enormous and heart rending).
Been there; done that. Ready to do it again. But not as defined by someone's idiot Power Point and data driven rubrics. That stuff's not real world and never has been. Inner city teaching can be done, but the past decade has been erecting a scaffolding of scapegoating. To break that down, you have to change your dominant narrative. Unscrew up the visions and definitions.
Anyone want to hire, show some courage? It's the holidays!
I'm still available, and waiting just as 25 years ago, when I walked into Marshall H.S. back when Bob Saddler was principal -- the sixth teacher in the first semester that year. Nothing big has changed except the way the problems are defined. Back in those days, we knew a system that placed hundreds of thousands of children into segregation poverty was an evil system.
Today, the children and those who try and work with them as public servants are blamed, and the system is hailed. That's happened before in history, and each time the crash was as ugly as this one is beginning to be.
Anyway, back to this year's courage test.
Next time you hear a public high school principal in Chicago complaining complaining she can't find an English teacher, tell her to go to the Board, tell them to get me off the DO NOT HIRE list, and put me to work in those classrooms.
Six months after that day, we'll talk about some other suggestions for solving little (one classroom; one program) and bigger problems (the reign of idiots under the smokescreen of an evil ideology).
It's in the phone book and easy to find on line.
Fri Nov 23, 2007 at 8:56 AM
"Save Our Failing Teachers"
Go To Hell
I’m a failure? The hell I am after 38 years in the pit I challenge anyone out there to
Call me a failure to my face. Even though I’m over 60 now it will not be pretty
Having fought with every South side gang crazy drunken parents, totally incompetent
Administrator do you really think I am afraid of some chicken bureaucrat?
We as a profession take far too much crap from people who do not have a clue
What we see and have to endure every day in the name of education. Teaching in
buildings that make you want to make you puke,hoping you will get down the hall in one piece
It’s pretty hard to teach when you spend 85% of your time just trying to keep the
Kids from killing each other.
I also have been given an education which few experence,The respect I have for myself, and all the kids I ever tried to teach, was hard won and took a mighty toll
But I still have the fire in my ass,slightly lower flame to be sure, that I had back in the day and I know some day I might die trying.But just ask the kids I did teach if I, and
Them by association are failures and see what they tell you.
I’m a failure? The hell I am after 38 years in the pit I challenge anyone out there to
Call me a failure to my face. Even though I’m over 60 now it will not be pretty
Having fought with every South side gang crazy drunken parents, totally incompetent
Administrator do you really think I am afraid of some chicken bureaucrat?
We as a profession take far too much crap from people who do not have a clue
What we see and have to endure every day in the name of education. Teaching in
buildings that make you want to make you puke,hoping you will get down the hall in one piece
It’s pretty hard to teach when you spend 85% of your time just trying to keep the
Kids from killing each other.
I also have been given an education which few experence,The respect I have for myself, and all the kids I ever tried to teach, was hard won and took a mighty toll
But I still have the fire in my ass,slightly lower flame to be sure, that I had back in the day and I know some day I might die trying.But just ask the kids I did teach if I, and
Them by association are failures and see what they tell you.
Fri Nov 23, 2007 at 11:17 AM
"Save Our Failing Teachers"
to embittered:
Those who CAN, Teach. Those who CAN'T become administrators.
Those who CAN, Teach. Those who CAN'T become administrators.
Fri Nov 23, 2007 at 12:40 PM
"Save Our Failing Teachers"
Why don't you do teach at a failing charter school?
Fri Nov 23, 2007 at 1:37 PM
"Save Our Failing Teachers"
"Why don't you do teach at a failing charter school..." (from "To George" this morning).
I will "do teach" at a failing charter school with a union from the first day they pay union wages, honor union hours, and provide all union benefits. Let me know, 'cause I'm raring to go.
Do tell soon as you know of one.
I will "do teach" at a failing charter school with a union from the first day they pay union wages, honor union hours, and provide all union benefits. Let me know, 'cause I'm raring to go.
Do tell soon as you know of one.
