While opening a new word document in Office 2007, I clicked on letters, than academic templates.

Within this collection were the following:

Complaint about teacher
Complaint about teacher to principal
Complaint about teacher to school board

Make it as easy as possible to poop on those damned teachers.

I spent much of the past three days putting together a proposal for the major conference on education. In documenting teacher work, I based my argument on the notion that the only way to explain how it feels to teach is to actually teach.

Today I got the link for the new TCRecord and the lead article was a statistical analysis of survey data taken from thousands of teachers. I just can’t help but feel that no matter how clever the survey author, and no matter how clever the analyst, you miss something by not talking to teachers directly.

Similarly, the summer issue of the HER features some great articles gathered under the heading of VIS (voices inside schools). Wonderful — the words and thoughts of students, counselors, and teachers ! Maybe in four years we’ll see another edition that embraces a similar approach.

I suppose it’s just my own wariness regarding how certain kinds of “research” are perceived and my fears that now matter how rigorous and theoretically grounded, the kids of teacher research that I think actually helps folks in the field will continue to be forced underground.

Submitted tonight; damn APA guidelines with their parenthetical citations.

The “We” Problem: Patriotism, Democracy, and Teaching American History in an Urban, Comprehensive High School

This paper explores notions of patriotism as they emerge over the course of an academic year in an American history course offered in a high-school class composed of working class teenagers of color. The teacher/researcher will document the process as the students grapple with their coursework, coursework framed by an inquiry into the origins and trajectory of democracy in the United States. The end project seeks to illuminate both effective social studies practice and the power of history to enhance student analysis and foster student activism, particularly in a setting where few other resources exist.

16 oz of free range beef, purchased Clark Park Farmer’s Market
5 cloves of garlic, cut into smallish chunks
2 tblsp of Worcestershire Saure

Mix in bowl with hands. Form into balls. Refrigerate for ten minutes. Smoosh into patties. Cook. Eat.

I’m still thinking about how to frame this seminar; I had finished planning the course as a recapitulation of the coursework students had already completed.

But then I encountered R. Esquith’s Teach Like Your Hair is on Fire. I wondered if the texts for our class couldn’t all be first hand accounts of what it means to be a teacher. My only concern is that most (not all) of these books are written after someone has quit teaching, usually after four or five years. Then I got to thinking — what if I used the money chapters from some of the thousands of education dissertations folks have written about good teachers?

Will make a list and post later.

Short, to the point, editorial from the SF Chronicle on cheating.

Anyone who has been in a school during a high-stakes test — especially lately –can testify to the changed environment.

Messing about with upgrading so there may be some serious issues.

Bear with me.

The most recent article in Educational Leadership with “discipline” in the title was published in 2001.    I guess this term has been replaced by “classroom management.”

Reading this collection of essays; particularly striking were several of the assertions in Deborah Meier’s piece on democracy:

We need school where strong cross-generational relationships can be built around matters of importance to the world. Schools cannot do it alone — kids also need other non-school communities — but creating such schools is a necessary start. These schools can exist only in communities that trust them. There is no shortcut. The authority needed to do the job requires trust. Trusting our schools cannot be a long-term goal in some utopian vision. If you don’t trust the babysitter, no accountability scheme will make it safe to leave your child in her hands tonight. The only alternative is to stay home.

The business world offers little guidance in this task (to build trust/community/democracy). The ways of business hardly work for business, where “buyer beware” is the primary response to demands of accountability.

There will be acrimony and there will be local fights (if we can return democracy to schools). Hurrah, not alas. It is the habits of mind necessary for practicing and resolving disagreement — the mental toughness that democracy rests on — that kids most need to learn about in school. If we all agreed about everything, we wouldn’t need democracy; we wouldn’t need to learn how people work out differences.

Meier, Deborah. “NCLB and Democracy.” In Many Children Left Behind: How the No Child Left Behind Act is Damaging our Children and our Schools, edited by Deborah Meier and George H. Wood. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.

To the Editor:

I’ve never had a problem with the idea of merit pay for teachers, just the way that it is too often distributed. In many institutions, monetary rewards are the outcome of obedience to administrators rather than excellence in teaching and scholarship.

With academic leadership increasingly falling into the hands of politically appointed micromanagers rather than serious well-qualified educators, this problem will only continue, posing a threat to academic excellence.

If administrators, trustees and legislative overseers are willing to acknowledge that they may not be the most competent arbiters of academic “merit,” then a meritocracy may be able to work.

In an environment where petty martinets are in a position to make decisions about merit, excellence will be sacrificed at the altar of subservience. This is not good for education, or for the future of a well-educated America.

Stuart Ewen
New York, June 18, 2007