A letter I sent this evening to my State Senator and State Representative:
Dear Representative Kunze,
As you know, schools across Ohio are preparing for the challenge of the "3rd Grade Reading Guarantee" that will force retention of any 3rd grader who cannot pass a standardized reading test. While I question the validity of using such a method to assess a child, I would leave that issue for another time. What I would to ask you is why is Ohio choosing to do this when it has been demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that grade retention does not work any better than promotion to the next grade?
There is ample evidence both online and in scholarly publications (Please see here for guidance, should you not have read any of it.)
The money wasted on a strategy that has been proven ineffective could be much, much better spent on other solutions. For example, why not insist that schools spend the money on extended school-day programs for struggling readers, intensive summer school programs, smaller class sizes or hiring more reading specialists to work in the classrooms?
The idea that we will flunk children who cannot read well *sounds* good. It sounds like a logical course of action and satisfies our need to hold children and teachers accountable. Yes, the 3rd Grade Guarantee sounds very good. But it isn't, and you should know that.
Please, be a leader and insist that our state choose a course of action that actually IS good, and stands a chance at working, rather than one that flushes precious dollars down the drain for the sake of "sounding" good.
Sincerely,
Educator
disapproving kitty
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Teachers, Unions and other Thoughts
So I'm cleaning out some stuff from FB and found this. It's from about 2 years ago, when the debate was running hot with regards to unions in general and teachers' unions in specific. The debate will rage again, I am sure, even though it's quieter now.
This piece would probably be better with citations, rather than my vague recollection of facts once read about in Time or Newsweek or heaven knows where, but I can't be bothered at the moment. So, should something I mention be outdated or even fairly wrong, go ahead and let me know. The errors, if there are any, aren't there to tick you off. They're there because when I wrote this I was dead tired, overworked, and outraged all at the same time.
This piece would probably be better with citations, rather than my vague recollection of facts once read about in Time or Newsweek or heaven knows where, but I can't be bothered at the moment. So, should something I mention be outdated or even fairly wrong, go ahead and let me know. The errors, if there are any, aren't there to tick you off. They're there because when I wrote this I was dead tired, overworked, and outraged all at the same time.
Yes, it's late again and I'm up writing responses to things said on Facebook days ago. I'm writing it now because I've spent every extra hour I had working on Progress Reports. 60 of them. And some written education plans and lesson plans and plans for a large field trip in May. Most of this btw, not on official school time. Just so you know. And the fact is, I spend less personal time doing schoolwork than most teachers I know. And it still adds up.
But, here are my responses to the arguments put forth about why Teachers' Unions have to go --
The Union protects bad workers: As a teacher and union member, I DON’T want “Bad” teachers as my colleagues. People love to throw this phrase around. But there doesn’t seem to be any agreement at all on “Bad Teacher.” A teacher who is abusive, on drugs, or otherwise blatantly unprofessional I’m sure we can all agree upon would qualify. I’ve never met such a teacher. I’m sure they exist, and if my union were to protect one, and keep that person in the classroom, then that is a horrible breach of trust. Let us all shake hands and agree on this one, shall we?
But what about the more grey areas – the teacher who works to contract, comes in and leaves on time and doesn’t seem to do any work outside the classroom either. I’ve never met this teacher, either, but I’m sure they exist. Is this person a “Bad Teacher?”
The teacher who is burnt out – this teacher I think I’ve met, but mostly when I was a student and knew everything in the world. Is this person truly worse than the first-year teacher who would replace him? First-year teachers are universally pretty lousy. They make up for it, usually, with energy and verve and excitement, but they’re still pretty lousy. I certainly was. So should all first-year teachers just be fired? And replaced with….?
I am actually all FOR helping poor teachers improve or helping them out the door if they choose not to improve. What I'm NOT FOR is someone with no teaching experience whatsoever trying to determine which teacher is which based on a single test score. Sorta like judging a Seurat based on the quality of a single dot.
There are too many unproductive and unnecessary workers: Just how many students do you think can be crammed into a classroom and still have it be productive? Unions prevent schools from saving money by just upping the classroom size to completely unmanageable levels. Anybody who thinks that it’s easy teaching 30 children with a wide range of abilities and talents, disabilities, and behavioral problems has NEVER BEEN A TEACHER. If you haven’t been there, and don’t know what it is like, firsthand, then you do not get to say what is do-able and what is not.
This type of thinking is typical of someone who is applying a business model to something that is NOT a business. Our raw materials are children. We take all comers. We cannot send back the ones that aren’t up to standard like you can in business. We have our raw materials for 7 hours out of the day, then we return them to their homes or other environments over which we have no control. For a more fleshed out example, google "the blueberry story."
In states with no unions and really lousy pay and working conditions, they have had to reduce the requirements for being a teacher. In some cases, there is no requirement for certification or training as a teacher at all. They can't find people willing to make that kind of educational investment for the return the district is willing to pay. Usually there is a requirement for having a college degree, but if things are bad enough, I'm sure that's been waived, too. Do you really, truly believe that someone with no teacher training at all is going to be better than a certificated teachers? This is not a method for RAISING the quality of education in America. The states that ban teacher unions are the ones at the very BOTTOM of the state rankings. They are embarrassingly bad.
Unions protect teachers and they protect the quality of education, too.
Public Schools should be privatized: And with that, the law requiring that children from ages 5 – 18 attend school would naturally be abolished, because a government should not be allowed to compel a citizen to pay for a service he or she may not want, correct? And if they can compel it, then what about those who can't afford it? A tiered system? Separate-but-equal schools for those with money and those without?
I think the end result of that is obvious to pretty much anyone: those with an extra 8k a year, per child, would send their child to school. The rest would try to care for them at home and provide what education they could. Or parents just let the kids run wild while they (the parents) were off trying to make a living. A “government-subsidy” method (as was suggested) would be enormously cumbersome and probably unfathomable to someone with a poor education, or who spoke/read English as a second language, or, in general, was impoverished. The gap between the haves and have-nots would be enormous. And without an educated populace, the country would suffer tremendously. I have been in a country where they do not bother to educate a large section of the population. Squalor is too nice a word to describe their conditions. I, for one, do not want to condemn anyone to that sort of life. Public education can prevent it.
And that doesn't even begin to address the needs of those kids who fall outside the "typical" range. The kids who need speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, a full - time aide, or a classroom where there are only four other children and three adults at all times. Where would those kids go? Right now, the cost of caring and educating them to the best of their and our ability is spread out over all of society. It has to be. It's enormously expensive. What will happen when the burden falls solely on the parents of those children? Will we head back to the dark ages where the mentally different were chained in basements and backyards because no one could afford to do any better? Private schools do not have to take these children. Public schools do. Privatizing would leave the very least among us with nowhere to go. Having a child with a severe disability would ensure that you would be impoverished for as long as your child lived. Most Americans living now do not recall the utter inhumanity of how people with disabilities were treated 100 years ago. Privatizing would all but ensure a return to that.
And that doesn't even begin to address the needs of those kids who fall outside the "typical" range. The kids who need speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, a full - time aide, or a classroom where there are only four other children and three adults at all times. Where would those kids go? Right now, the cost of caring and educating them to the best of their and our ability is spread out over all of society. It has to be. It's enormously expensive. What will happen when the burden falls solely on the parents of those children? Will we head back to the dark ages where the mentally different were chained in basements and backyards because no one could afford to do any better? Private schools do not have to take these children. Public schools do. Privatizing would leave the very least among us with nowhere to go. Having a child with a severe disability would ensure that you would be impoverished for as long as your child lived. Most Americans living now do not recall the utter inhumanity of how people with disabilities were treated 100 years ago. Privatizing would all but ensure a return to that.
By spreading out the cost of educating the all the young among all people and businesses, society as a whole benefits. But we have become a society that is so short term in its thinking that we have lost sight of that. We can only see that "x dollars a year are going towards property taxes and I don't even have a kid in school yet!" or "I don't have a kid at all!"
Private schools run at least 6k to over 20K a year. My property taxes are cheap by comparison. And even if I didn't have children, I need a society with an educated population to work in it, live in it, be part of my society's economy. How many businesses really want to hire employees who can't read? Can't write? Can't use a computer? Can't add? Can't get along with others? Would you hire someone with no education, or want to pay for remedial training? That's that taxes pay for, not just for your own personal child to go to school.
Teachers should have “Merit Pay”: This has been tried a few times, and the result is – no effect on test scores. None. Zip. Zero. But then, test scores are a piss-poor measure of a teacher. Even if you take Child A, test him and test him again with a similar test one year later and compare that to how he did the previous year it’s STILL a piss-poor measure. Why? Because kids do not grow evenly and even if they did, paper-pencil test don’t accurately judge what a child can do or understand. Or what about the gifted kid who took the test last year, got a 99th%ile score on it and next year, missed one question and got the 98th%ile instead. He went down a point! Does that mean the teacher is a failure? Not hardly. It means he maxed out the test BOTH years, bonked his head on the test ceiling and the test makers haven’t got the faintest idea of what he can do. Or what about the kid who got a new baby brother 10 days before the test and is being woken up 4 times a night now by a colickly newborn? What about the kids whose parents got divorced this year, or lost their jobs, or moved or 1000 other things – should we penalize the teacher for a child’s lousy life situation?
Now, one could argue that we should take the information, over several years, in aggregate, and we should see some trends. Like Teacher X always has kids that perform worse than Teacher Y who teaches the same things at the same grade level. If that’s the case, then maybe Teacher X needs support, mentoring, professional development and assistance to improve his teaching skills. There ARE districts that have tried this, and used other teachers, who know and understand teaching, as part of a team to evaluate teachers’ performance and recommend for rehire or not. It’s done with respect and support and these pilot programs may work, though the jury is still out, to my knowledge. Pay, as far as I am aware, isn’t a part of it.
The whole “merit pay system” has such a nice ring to it. But all those who use it haven’t the faintest idea of how to go about devising it. So unless you have something tested, accurate, valid and reliable to use, then quit saying it’s the way to go.
I have had experience working in the private sector, albeit briefly, and one thing I know is that salaries are kept 100% private. They are highly privileged information. When something gets out about how much person X is paid versus person Y, intense anger/rage/jealousy/annoyance/dissatisfaction ensues. Teacher salaries are public. They have to be. A “merit pay” system as devised by those who know only the business world would inevitably result in teachers being demoralized, angry, and outraged at one another. That’s hardly going to result in improved teaching.
If you have not had experience in the world of teaching, only in business, then you need to either spend significant time in a classroom before making your judgments and pronouncements, or you need to SHUT UP.
Friday, December 28, 2012
This Was Going to be a Jaunty Post About Holiday Preparation, But I Got Distracted
In my brain has been pages and pages -- a dissertations worth at least -- of response and continuation of replies about the latest shooting and all of the subsequent nonsense about who to arm and who ought to have guns and who shouldn't, and well...I just couldn't. Christmas was happening and I had things to bake and decorate and presents to make and buy and order from Amazon and a holiday newsletter* to write. And there was just too much to say. Too many statistics to gather to prove my points, analogies to craft and detailed sentences to craft. So I let it go. For now. It will go on my big list of things to eventually blog about.
I've maintained for awhile now that gun control isn't one of the hills I'm willing to die upon anyways, and still wasn't until people started saying that we should have to have them in my workplace. At that point, the shit got real and personal and was being said by people who have no idea what it's like to work in a school. With actual children.
I have friends and relatives who own and love their guns and not a one of them is an idiot, so please don't think that I hate all gun owners and/or think they are necessarily stupid. In fact, I know that stupid and smart have very, very little to do with gun safety. I think it has a lot more to do with personality type.
You see, I recently had my students take the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory and asked many of my friends to take it, too, so we could do some comparisons. Turns out, the vast majority of my friends are the opposite of me in most regards. I was quite surprised since I've always sort of assumed that most people, especially my friends, think like I do. They don't. In fact, most people don't. They perceive the world differently, organize their thinking differently and react differently to the world. And yet, I still have a tendency to think that other people are going to see the world the way I do. And, given my dealings with lots and lots of humans on a regular basis -- other people do this, too.
All the devoted gun-owners out there who are extraordinarily careful with their loaded weapons quite possibly assume that everyone else has this natural or learned tendency to be highly organized and capable of keeping track of all the important things. So maybe the thinking goes like this: Teachers are smart people. They can be diligent and organized just like me, it's easy and natural! No problem. And if they can't be like me, then clearly, they're too dumb to be teaching!
The problem with this kind of thinking is that organization and attention to detail have little to do with smart and stupid. We all know the (probably somewhat apocryphal) story of Einstein having to have his door painted red so he could remember which house was his. Einstein wasn't an idiot. Neither am I.** But I do sometimes do things like leave very large, sharp cake-cutting knives lying on the table which is surrounded by hopped-up four-year-olds while I run off to find birthday candles which I'd forgotten to get.
Yes, I could probably get better at paying attention to such things and not getting distracted like a dog in a squirrel cage, but I'm not going to. It is one of my weaknesses that is amply made up for by other strengths, and I do my best to surround myself with people who are more observant than I am.
However, it is unavoidably clear that I should not, ever, regularly carry a loaded weapon. Ever. And neither should teachers. Not because I think they are all like me (they aren't) but because of the sheer magnitude of details to which teachers must pay attention, and because of the catastrophic nature of the event even a moment's failure of attention would cause. We are people surrounded by children, and it's best if the consequences of a mistake are more along the lines of "Oh, I need to change your grade" and not "Oh, I'm sorry, your child got my gun and shot another student."
Think about it.
*Yes, it's a holiday newsletter. It is not a Christmas newsletter. Not because of some trumped up war or Christmas or any other political agenda but because I never get the damn thing sent out until after Christmas. Sometimes not till after New Year. I think one year the holiday in question was more like President's Day.
**I'm not Einstein, either. (And while I'm not going to trot out the evidence to prove it, nor am I stupid.)
I've maintained for awhile now that gun control isn't one of the hills I'm willing to die upon anyways, and still wasn't until people started saying that we should have to have them in my workplace. At that point, the shit got real and personal and was being said by people who have no idea what it's like to work in a school. With actual children.
I have friends and relatives who own and love their guns and not a one of them is an idiot, so please don't think that I hate all gun owners and/or think they are necessarily stupid. In fact, I know that stupid and smart have very, very little to do with gun safety. I think it has a lot more to do with personality type.
You see, I recently had my students take the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory and asked many of my friends to take it, too, so we could do some comparisons. Turns out, the vast majority of my friends are the opposite of me in most regards. I was quite surprised since I've always sort of assumed that most people, especially my friends, think like I do. They don't. In fact, most people don't. They perceive the world differently, organize their thinking differently and react differently to the world. And yet, I still have a tendency to think that other people are going to see the world the way I do. And, given my dealings with lots and lots of humans on a regular basis -- other people do this, too.
All the devoted gun-owners out there who are extraordinarily careful with their loaded weapons quite possibly assume that everyone else has this natural or learned tendency to be highly organized and capable of keeping track of all the important things. So maybe the thinking goes like this: Teachers are smart people. They can be diligent and organized just like me, it's easy and natural! No problem. And if they can't be like me, then clearly, they're too dumb to be teaching!
The problem with this kind of thinking is that organization and attention to detail have little to do with smart and stupid. We all know the (probably somewhat apocryphal) story of Einstein having to have his door painted red so he could remember which house was his. Einstein wasn't an idiot. Neither am I.** But I do sometimes do things like leave very large, sharp cake-cutting knives lying on the table which is surrounded by hopped-up four-year-olds while I run off to find birthday candles which I'd forgotten to get.
Yes, I could probably get better at paying attention to such things and not getting distracted like a dog in a squirrel cage, but I'm not going to. It is one of my weaknesses that is amply made up for by other strengths, and I do my best to surround myself with people who are more observant than I am.
However, it is unavoidably clear that I should not, ever, regularly carry a loaded weapon. Ever. And neither should teachers. Not because I think they are all like me (they aren't) but because of the sheer magnitude of details to which teachers must pay attention, and because of the catastrophic nature of the event even a moment's failure of attention would cause. We are people surrounded by children, and it's best if the consequences of a mistake are more along the lines of "Oh, I need to change your grade" and not "Oh, I'm sorry, your child got my gun and shot another student."
Think about it.
*Yes, it's a holiday newsletter. It is not a Christmas newsletter. Not because of some trumped up war or Christmas or any other political agenda but because I never get the damn thing sent out until after Christmas. Sometimes not till after New Year. I think one year the holiday in question was more like President's Day.
**I'm not Einstein, either. (And while I'm not going to trot out the evidence to prove it, nor am I stupid.)
Sunday, December 16, 2012
If Your Solution Tempts the Gods of Irony, You Might Want to Rethink Things
Last Friday my son ran full tilt into a safety railing. Got himself a red welt and a lovely greenish-yellow bruise over the bridge of his nose. Looks grand. He was playing tag, didn't watch where he was going and Wham! Right into the safety railing. I'm blaming the gods of irony for this one.
Earlier this year, two of my students were fooling around in class while I was no more than three feet away, but working on connecting up a computer wire. As I turned around to tell them to get back to work as previously told, one pushed the other into a cart and a $400 projector smashed to the ground. D'oh.
A few years ago, a six or seven year old boy climbed up onto some cafeteria tables -- the kind that fold upright and latch so they can be wheeled into the corner. Who knows where his teacher was. Maybe right there, but dealing with another student. Maybe in the hall, corralling other kids while he was supposed to be waiting in line. There are a thousand things that children do that require a teacher's attention, and I defy even the most observant civilian to watch 30 children at a time for five hours and never once lose track of what all of them are doing every second. The vast majority of the time, nothing truly bad happens, but in this case, something did. The latch on the table was broken, or not secured properly, and the table fell, crushing the boy. It was tragic. I don't know the details, but I'm sure there was finger - pointing and blame and a huge lawsuit and possibly criminal negligence charges.
What I do know is that "Jarod's Law" came out of it in Ohio, and a thousand things got hung onto the law, like the banning of a lot of essential classroom items, and requiring an MSDS safety sheet on everything in the room from the hand-sanitizer to the pencils. There were other common sense things too, things that one would think were already codified somewhere, but maybe not, like: no classroom shall have animals deemed poisonous or toxic." Really? Well, damn, there goes my coral snake*. It was so ridiculous that eventually implementation got postponed and we haven't heard much since.
My point here, that I am meandering towards, is that children are unpredictable. They will get into things, break things, hurt themselves, hurt each other either by accident or design and generally fool around when they think they can get away with it. They're not that much different from adults, just smaller, and with less developed frontal lobes to tell them when something they're doing is a really bad idea.
Speaking of adults, a lot of them aren't all that reliable, either. Teachers in general are good eggs, and most of us are good with large groups of children and dealing with all the little unpredictabilities. But we're still people, and have varying responses to a crisis. I tend to have my brain freeze up a bit, lose the ability to string together coherent sentences well and I don't see well.** I forget where things are. I can sorta fake calmness for my students, but all that's happening in my head is a string of swear words. Other people I know scream, freeze, run away, start sobbing and shaking, get hysterical, yell, hyper-fixate on the trivial or stop communicating all together. These are all fairly normal-people reactions to a crisis. People who respond really well to crises would be, well, trained first responders. Soldiers. Police. Firefighters. Emergency Room doctors. They go through a lot of training to learn how to respond to the frighteningly unexpected.
Teachers are not trained this way. It's expensive training, in both time and money. We have a lot of other training in pedagogy, and curriculum development and classroom management and not enough of any of that, really. And honestly, there's no need beyond the standard drills we practice once a month. Fire, Tornado, Lockdown. We practice those faithfully and in 13 years of teaching I've never needed them.***
So, to all the people, including many who ought to know better, who are espousing the idea that all teachers should have loaded guns in their classrooms with them at all times, I say: Are you effing crazy? I'm not allowed to have high-odor markers in my room because they are too dangerous for children to be around. My last school took out a certified-safe slide from the playground because someone got hurt on it for crying out loud. Why? Because kids are unpredictable. Classrooms are places filled with these unpredictable small people who are very capable of getting into places where they shouldn't, even locked places. And no matter how much we want to, it is not possible to watch 20 plus children every second. It just isn't.**** Teachers are not trained to deal with severe crisis situations, and most certainly aren't trained to shoot someone in a chaotic environment filled with children. Hell, I think even a lot of police aren't trained well enough for that.
Arming teachers would cost millions of dollars every year in equipment and training, not to mention funding for the lawsuits that would pop up like weeds for creating an unsafe environment for students. Which actually educational programming are you willing to cut to fund this effort? And all for what? To protect us from the chance that someone might attack the school? Arming teachers is the best way to do this?
Let us imagine that you actually did do this, gave me a loaded weapon to keep in my room. Common sense says it has to be in a locked drawer*****. To which I would have to remember where I keep the key or the code and it would have to be a secure enough place that students wouldn't find it easily. The one-in-a-very-high-number-event-occurs and a gunman attacks! I have to a) go into lockdown mode b) remember where I keep the key/code for the gun drawer (oops, can't recall things when highly stressed.) c) look for the key or where I wrote the code (no dice, since I don't see well when stressed) d) if I do eventually find it and unlock the drawer then e) remember all the training on how to safely operate the gun and aim properly (see problems at b and c) f) wait and keep children calm while holding a freaking gun till said gunman breaks through my locked door g) shoot a moving target while surrounded by small, panicked children.
This doesn't even take in the possibility that there might be a teacher somewhere with mental illness or even just an anger management problem who would misuse the gun on himself or others. It doesn't take in the possibility that an angry student or parent could break into the gun drawer and use the gun. This doesn't take in the actuality at all that it would be making thousands more guns accessible to thousands more people, none of whom have proven themselves capable of safely being around a lethal weapon.
In short, is it a bad idea. There is no logical, reasonable argument that would make this a good idea on any level. If you think there is then we have not done a good enough job of teaching you how to construct a reasoned argument, and you should go augment your education with some debate skills.
Should we work towards keeping schools as safe as possible? Of course.
Should this involve giving guns to untrained civilians, whose training we can't and don't want to pay for? Of course not. That wouldn't keep anyone safer.
I'm sure the gods of irony are just having a field day with the whole idea.
*not really. I don't have classroom pets. I always thought I would, but it turns out I don't have the wherewithal to deal with them. I don't even have plants.
**my eyes work fine. It's that I just don't process what I'm seeing at normal speed. It means that when I'm stressed out I have difficulty finding things that are right there†. It also means that I don't process red lights as well, or other vehicles on the road or anything else unpredictable. I try not to drive when I'm upset for this reason.
***once, when the police were chasing a bank robber several miles away from my school, they put the whole district into lockdown for about 30 minutes. The robber holed up in a private home and there was thankfully never even the slightest bit of danger for a child in a classroom. The authorities were being on the safe side, which is fine. I got to sit and read a book to kids for a bit. It was nice.
****if you think it is then you have a) never been in a classroom and b) do not have children of your own.
*****if you think I'd be keeping this loaded weapon in a holster at my side in a classroom full of children I'm supposed to be working closely with then you are so irrational that you can just quit reading.
†like, for instance, my car keys when I am late in the morning because I can't find my g-d car keys.
Earlier this year, two of my students were fooling around in class while I was no more than three feet away, but working on connecting up a computer wire. As I turned around to tell them to get back to work as previously told, one pushed the other into a cart and a $400 projector smashed to the ground. D'oh.
A few years ago, a six or seven year old boy climbed up onto some cafeteria tables -- the kind that fold upright and latch so they can be wheeled into the corner. Who knows where his teacher was. Maybe right there, but dealing with another student. Maybe in the hall, corralling other kids while he was supposed to be waiting in line. There are a thousand things that children do that require a teacher's attention, and I defy even the most observant civilian to watch 30 children at a time for five hours and never once lose track of what all of them are doing every second. The vast majority of the time, nothing truly bad happens, but in this case, something did. The latch on the table was broken, or not secured properly, and the table fell, crushing the boy. It was tragic. I don't know the details, but I'm sure there was finger - pointing and blame and a huge lawsuit and possibly criminal negligence charges.
What I do know is that "Jarod's Law" came out of it in Ohio, and a thousand things got hung onto the law, like the banning of a lot of essential classroom items, and requiring an MSDS safety sheet on everything in the room from the hand-sanitizer to the pencils. There were other common sense things too, things that one would think were already codified somewhere, but maybe not, like: no classroom shall have animals deemed poisonous or toxic." Really? Well, damn, there goes my coral snake*. It was so ridiculous that eventually implementation got postponed and we haven't heard much since.
My point here, that I am meandering towards, is that children are unpredictable. They will get into things, break things, hurt themselves, hurt each other either by accident or design and generally fool around when they think they can get away with it. They're not that much different from adults, just smaller, and with less developed frontal lobes to tell them when something they're doing is a really bad idea.
Speaking of adults, a lot of them aren't all that reliable, either. Teachers in general are good eggs, and most of us are good with large groups of children and dealing with all the little unpredictabilities. But we're still people, and have varying responses to a crisis. I tend to have my brain freeze up a bit, lose the ability to string together coherent sentences well and I don't see well.** I forget where things are. I can sorta fake calmness for my students, but all that's happening in my head is a string of swear words. Other people I know scream, freeze, run away, start sobbing and shaking, get hysterical, yell, hyper-fixate on the trivial or stop communicating all together. These are all fairly normal-people reactions to a crisis. People who respond really well to crises would be, well, trained first responders. Soldiers. Police. Firefighters. Emergency Room doctors. They go through a lot of training to learn how to respond to the frighteningly unexpected.
Teachers are not trained this way. It's expensive training, in both time and money. We have a lot of other training in pedagogy, and curriculum development and classroom management and not enough of any of that, really. And honestly, there's no need beyond the standard drills we practice once a month. Fire, Tornado, Lockdown. We practice those faithfully and in 13 years of teaching I've never needed them.***
So, to all the people, including many who ought to know better, who are espousing the idea that all teachers should have loaded guns in their classrooms with them at all times, I say: Are you effing crazy? I'm not allowed to have high-odor markers in my room because they are too dangerous for children to be around. My last school took out a certified-safe slide from the playground because someone got hurt on it for crying out loud. Why? Because kids are unpredictable. Classrooms are places filled with these unpredictable small people who are very capable of getting into places where they shouldn't, even locked places. And no matter how much we want to, it is not possible to watch 20 plus children every second. It just isn't.**** Teachers are not trained to deal with severe crisis situations, and most certainly aren't trained to shoot someone in a chaotic environment filled with children. Hell, I think even a lot of police aren't trained well enough for that.
Arming teachers would cost millions of dollars every year in equipment and training, not to mention funding for the lawsuits that would pop up like weeds for creating an unsafe environment for students. Which actually educational programming are you willing to cut to fund this effort? And all for what? To protect us from the chance that someone might attack the school? Arming teachers is the best way to do this?
Let us imagine that you actually did do this, gave me a loaded weapon to keep in my room. Common sense says it has to be in a locked drawer*****. To which I would have to remember where I keep the key or the code and it would have to be a secure enough place that students wouldn't find it easily. The one-in-a-very-high-number-event-occurs and a gunman attacks! I have to a) go into lockdown mode b) remember where I keep the key/code for the gun drawer (oops, can't recall things when highly stressed.) c) look for the key or where I wrote the code (no dice, since I don't see well when stressed) d) if I do eventually find it and unlock the drawer then e) remember all the training on how to safely operate the gun and aim properly (see problems at b and c) f) wait and keep children calm while holding a freaking gun till said gunman breaks through my locked door g) shoot a moving target while surrounded by small, panicked children.
This doesn't even take in the possibility that there might be a teacher somewhere with mental illness or even just an anger management problem who would misuse the gun on himself or others. It doesn't take in the possibility that an angry student or parent could break into the gun drawer and use the gun. This doesn't take in the actuality at all that it would be making thousands more guns accessible to thousands more people, none of whom have proven themselves capable of safely being around a lethal weapon.
In short, is it a bad idea. There is no logical, reasonable argument that would make this a good idea on any level. If you think there is then we have not done a good enough job of teaching you how to construct a reasoned argument, and you should go augment your education with some debate skills.
Should we work towards keeping schools as safe as possible? Of course.
Should this involve giving guns to untrained civilians, whose training we can't and don't want to pay for? Of course not. That wouldn't keep anyone safer.
I'm sure the gods of irony are just having a field day with the whole idea.
*not really. I don't have classroom pets. I always thought I would, but it turns out I don't have the wherewithal to deal with them. I don't even have plants.
**my eyes work fine. It's that I just don't process what I'm seeing at normal speed. It means that when I'm stressed out I have difficulty finding things that are right there†. It also means that I don't process red lights as well, or other vehicles on the road or anything else unpredictable. I try not to drive when I'm upset for this reason.
***once, when the police were chasing a bank robber several miles away from my school, they put the whole district into lockdown for about 30 minutes. The robber holed up in a private home and there was thankfully never even the slightest bit of danger for a child in a classroom. The authorities were being on the safe side, which is fine. I got to sit and read a book to kids for a bit. It was nice.
****if you think it is then you have a) never been in a classroom and b) do not have children of your own.
*****if you think I'd be keeping this loaded weapon in a holster at my side in a classroom full of children I'm supposed to be working closely with then you are so irrational that you can just quit reading.
†like, for instance, my car keys when I am late in the morning because I can't find my g-d car keys.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Actually, I Don't Want to Hear Your Pro-Gun Argument, Unless You'd Be Willing to Trade Your Child's Life for One That Was Lost Today
A madman shot and killed 20 children and seven adults today, most of them at a school in Connecticut. Everyone in America who isn't living under a rock has heard about it. The gun debate will boil up with all the usual phrases and such. Nothing will change.
Guns are one of those issues that I just don't put much fight into. There are other fights. I only have so much energy and outrage to go around, so this is one that I just let go. My brothers are legally registered gun owners. Some of my friends are, too, and I've had to tell at least one of them that he may not carry a firearm into my home. He respects that, and I am grateful.
I think it's a bad idea to have one firearm per citizen in our country but it's been made abundantly clear that all the numbers, statistics, and reasoned arguments that tell us that having these weapons readily available is what makes us the killing-est developed country on the planet is never, ever going to convince the someone on the other side to give up even the most ridiculously overpowered and unnecessary weapon in their arsenal.
These arguments can't even convince gun rights advocates to police themselves, or get them to work to ensure that legal guns only get into the hands of people who have the knowledge, will and sense to keep them out of the hands of those who should not have them.
Gun rights advocates insist that they be allowed their weapons, but not one of them has yet to come up with a way to prevent those who should not have guns from getting them. Is it an unsolvable problem, or simply a lack of will? I do not know.
Please don't think that I'm trying to argue that we should take away all the guns. That would be a pointless and fruitless endeavor. The gun lobby won, and this will not change. I don't expect it to.
But there were nearly 13,000 people murdered in the US in 2010, and about 2/3, nearly 9000 of them were killed with a gun. Thousands more people were injured, either accidentally or purposefully, by guns.
A few times a year, madmen take their firearms and kill the innocent, the passers-by, the blameless.
Today, 20 small children are dead because they were shot with a gun.
Guns are one of those issues that I just don't put much fight into. There are other fights. I only have so much energy and outrage to go around, so this is one that I just let go. My brothers are legally registered gun owners. Some of my friends are, too, and I've had to tell at least one of them that he may not carry a firearm into my home. He respects that, and I am grateful.
I think it's a bad idea to have one firearm per citizen in our country but it's been made abundantly clear that all the numbers, statistics, and reasoned arguments that tell us that having these weapons readily available is what makes us the killing-est developed country on the planet is never, ever going to convince the someone on the other side to give up even the most ridiculously overpowered and unnecessary weapon in their arsenal.
These arguments can't even convince gun rights advocates to police themselves, or get them to work to ensure that legal guns only get into the hands of people who have the knowledge, will and sense to keep them out of the hands of those who should not have them.
Gun rights advocates insist that they be allowed their weapons, but not one of them has yet to come up with a way to prevent those who should not have guns from getting them. Is it an unsolvable problem, or simply a lack of will? I do not know.
Please don't think that I'm trying to argue that we should take away all the guns. That would be a pointless and fruitless endeavor. The gun lobby won, and this will not change. I don't expect it to.
But there were nearly 13,000 people murdered in the US in 2010, and about 2/3, nearly 9000 of them were killed with a gun. Thousands more people were injured, either accidentally or purposefully, by guns.
A few times a year, madmen take their firearms and kill the innocent, the passers-by, the blameless.
Today, 20 small children are dead because they were shot with a gun.
In a classroom.
For no reason.
Twenty sets of parents got to touch the body of their dead child, and weep.
And that this is the price of gun ownership in our country.
We will pay it, every year, thousands and thousands of times.
So I'm not going to argue that we should take away all the guns. But I would like someone to explain to me how it is worth the cost.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Good Thing I Wrote It Down Somewhere
I just finished using a Facebook app to create "My Year In Statuses," which I do ever year because, well, because other people do and it's fun to look back at a year's worth of posts and say "Oh yeah, that happened! I forgot about that."
My favorite ones are about the kids (surprise) and in particular about the goofy things they say like DS yelling "Watch out, DD! I'm going to do some speed!" as he careened around a corner to dive into a pile of cushions. Or when DD told J that I had said she could watch a show.
James: Are you sure mommy said that?
Phia: yes.
James: Are you really sure?
Phia: Yes.
James: Should I go ask Mommy about it?
Phia: No. Don't ask Mommy.
The best one, though, is my observation that DD said "Umbelella" for "Umbrella," and it was so endearing, and I would miss it when it was gone. That was back in January. I knew there was something really cute that she said and couldn't recall what it was until I re-read it tonight.
She doesn't say it anymore. She just says "Umbrella."
And I do miss it.
My favorite ones are about the kids (surprise) and in particular about the goofy things they say like DS yelling "Watch out, DD! I'm going to do some speed!" as he careened around a corner to dive into a pile of cushions. Or when DD told J that I had said she could watch a show.
James: Are you sure mommy said that?
Phia: yes.
James: Are you really sure?
Phia: Yes.
James: Should I go ask Mommy about it?
Phia: No. Don't ask Mommy.
The best one, though, is my observation that DD said "Umbelella" for "Umbrella," and it was so endearing, and I would miss it when it was gone. That was back in January. I knew there was something really cute that she said and couldn't recall what it was until I re-read it tonight.
She doesn't say it anymore. She just says "Umbrella."
And I do miss it.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Some days, I can't handle being me, either
I teach gifted kids. I'm not going to rant about all the flaws in how we find them and what we fail to do for them once we do find them because that's not what this post is about.* I'll just say that I get to work with them for one day a week. I've been doing this for 4th and 5th graders for about eight years.
For the first time in a very long time I'm teaching really small kids, which is rather different than working with the ones who get sarcasm and are pretty good at following multi-step directions. People sometimes ask if the kids are intimidating because they're so smart**, or if they're all absent-minded geniuses***or other such things. They do have very big brains, and they are different in many ways from other kids their age. But they're still just kids.
Yesterday, I had a 7 year old come into class, give me a sad, sad look and say "I just don't think I can handle being gifted today." I took him into the hall to talk and he crawled into my lap and just wept. He wanted to stay with his friends, and go to recess and lunch with them because those were the things that were important.
I let him go eat lunch and have recess with his friends. He missed about half an hour of class, but no matter. He'll catch up.
It is a wonderful thing to have a big brain that is capable of tremendous thinking. I take my job of stretching and challenging these minds very seriously. I do.
But some days, it's all about playing on the swings.
*largely because I don't have the energy for it right now.
**no
***still no
For the first time in a very long time I'm teaching really small kids, which is rather different than working with the ones who get sarcasm and are pretty good at following multi-step directions. People sometimes ask if the kids are intimidating because they're so smart**, or if they're all absent-minded geniuses***or other such things. They do have very big brains, and they are different in many ways from other kids their age. But they're still just kids.
Yesterday, I had a 7 year old come into class, give me a sad, sad look and say "I just don't think I can handle being gifted today." I took him into the hall to talk and he crawled into my lap and just wept. He wanted to stay with his friends, and go to recess and lunch with them because those were the things that were important.
I let him go eat lunch and have recess with his friends. He missed about half an hour of class, but no matter. He'll catch up.
It is a wonderful thing to have a big brain that is capable of tremendous thinking. I take my job of stretching and challenging these minds very seriously. I do.
But some days, it's all about playing on the swings.
*largely because I don't have the energy for it right now.
**no
***still no
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