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Keys to the Kingdom

2011-10-20T04:15:03Z

All my working life I have been given keys to my place of employment. Until now.

At the high school where I’m working my 23^rd year, the lock to the gate to the faculty parking lot was changed. As a way to improve security, the school district decided to limit the number of keys to 50 at a school that employs nearly 150. After administrators, custodians, and coaches were given keys, only a few were left for, you guessed it, the teachers. You know those people? The ones who parents entrust with furthering their children’s knowledge are evidently the same people who the school district mistrusts with their keys.

This means that each time a teacher needs to leave during school hours for whatever reason, the teacher has to call the office for a security officer to open the gate. Then, upon returning, the teacher while sitting in a car has to call the school again for someone to open the gate. Hopefully, a police officer doesn’t give a ticket to the teacher for using a cell phone while in a car.

This is another example of how teachers as a group continue to be viewed as second-class employees, to be controlled more like students than as professionals.

Let Those Who Ban Books Read the First Book

2011-09-28T14:13:40Z

Since this week is Banned Books Week, and since one of my colleagues over at Glendale High School is fighting for Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood to be approved as a book to teach to advanced 11^th grade English students, I thought I’d share with you my experience with banned books.

When looking back on the books I’ve taught over the years, I realize that most of them have been banned in some part of the United States at some time. Here are the “corrupted” books I’ve exposed young children to: Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and, of course that book of dubious merit, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

If by teaching these books to young people, my students have come away knowing a little bit more about human nature, how some people’s intolerance can negatively impact society, then I plead guilty to influencing them. And isn’t that the lesson behind Banned Books Week?

Getting to the Bikini Bottom of Children's Programming

2011-09-14T06:13:49Z

Well, I guess my two boys may have been damaged due to watching every episode of Spongebob Squarepants—at least according to researchers from the University of Virginia.

Using a massive study of, ahem, 60 four-year-olds, the researchers discovered that the group watching 9 minutes of Spongebob developed learning problems when compared to another group that watched a PBS children’s show, and still another who simply drew pictures with crayons.

For decades, some people have viewed cartoons as damaging young people, be it the violence or the frenetic pacing, or the manipulative commercials.

All I know is this. My childhood was richer because of Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, and Screwy Squirrel cartoons. And I hope that my boys will likewise have similar fond memories of Spongebob, Patrick, Squidward, and Mr. Crabs. It is a show reminiscent of the best cartoons from animator geniuses such as Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, and Chuck Jones, cartoons that are funny at both an adult level and a child’s level.

It’s those other so-called children’s shows that are damaging in terms of lack of imagination and lack of respect for its intended audience. Now that’s something the researchers at the University of Virginia should study.

Remembering 9/11 in the classroom

2011-09-10T18:55:01Z

Currently memories of September 11, 2001 are filling the airwaves and periodicals. I can vividly remember going to work that morning, not wanting to teach, desiring instead to watch all TV coverage of the horrific events.

The whole feeling at work was somber. I spoke to a few of my colleagues who had families in the New York area (thankfully none directly affected by the attacks).

I felt it was my duty as a teacher to discuss the happenings with my students, and to watch some of the TV coverage.

I also recall that once the immediate horror of what happened subsided, a profound sense of patriotism surfaced within most people. Not the usual jingoistic chants of “USA, USA” but a true neighborly togetherness of showing how much our country meant to us.

This Monday, I will ask my students, who were 5 years old when this event took place, to share any memories at all that they may have. Strange how they have grown up with terrorism ever so near all the time.

Limiting Homework

2011-07-25T21:19:46Z

Recently, the L.A. Unified School District passed a requirement stipulating that a student’s homework grade should consist of no more than 10 percent of the final grade.

As a long proponent of limiting the amount of homework students are given, I applaud LAUSD for implementing such a courageous measure. Unfortunately, just last week LAUSD Supt. John Deasy suspended the new policy in order to have further public input, even though there were already discussions held for 18 months The earliest for any new homework policy to be in effect will be the 2012-13 school year. Don’t you just love bureaucracies?

Does it really take years to figure out that kids are given too much homework, or that some teachers overemphasize the important of mindless busy work over in-class assignments and tests?

The one aspect of my kids going back to school that I dread are the homework assignments. Much of it is repetitive, but all of it puts strain on the parent-child relationship. The daily question “have you done your homework?” will reverberate throughout every household with school-age children once again very soon. I don’t look forward to constantly referring to my second grader’s weekly packet, and signing every day for every book that he needs to read every night.

As a high school English teacher I am very mindful of minimizing the amount of homework I assign, aware that my students have 5 other teachers who may not minimize it as much as I do. I also make it my policy not to deliberately assign massive projects over 3-day weekends or vacation periods. It’s important that kids be given time to be kids after the school day is over, and that they spend as much time with their family as possible.

School work is best done at school with the people best able to help the children—the teachers.

Bad Teacher Gets an F

2011-06-25T16:16:55Z

Hi Folks,

Sorry for not posting in a while, but I've been writing a blog for the Glendale News Press three times a week called "Crosby Chronicles."

Here's an updated take on coarse Hollywood movie titles that have gone further off the deep end of bad taste with the new film "Bad Teacher."

Just when you think you’ve seen the most tasteless movie ad or billboard ever, a more obscene one comes along.

Case in point: the new Cameron Diaz film titled “Bad Teacher.”

The ad for this latest raunchy comedy to come out of Hollywood shows Diaz leaning back at her desk in a classroom, her feet propped upon the desk with her legs uncovered, the words “eat me” on an apple, and the tagline, “She doesn’t give an ‘F’.”

I don’t understand how such pornographic innuendo gets approval to be splattered all over town on public transportation. Isn’t there any one with good taste saying “no” to this smut?

What makes it worse is that the subject matter is a teacher. The real world is crammed with enough true horror stories about inappropriate student-teacher relationships, so is it smart or responsible for a major motion picture studio to make a movie like this and distribute in theatres as entertainment across the country?

You know, not every movie-going patron is an oversexed sophomoric male whose sexual habits get satiated with Internet porn sites.

Why does the Motion Picture Association of America even bother with ratings when the titles of recent movies evidently have no scrutiny? It all started a few years back when the raunchy “South Park” cable cartoon series released the feature “Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” and the producers admitted they got a kick out of having the MPAA allow such a gross title. However, that seems tame compared to “Meet the Fockers”, “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”, and “Kick-Ass.”

If you are watching TV with your mother or children, do you not blush when ads for these movies appear?

The old argument about turning off the TV if you don’t like what’s on it doesn’t work when billboards all over town are emblazoned with “KICK-ASS”; you can’t easily swerve the car in the opposite direction.

It is practically impossible to shield young children from being bombarded by images and sounds that at the very least makes it quite difficult to explain to young people, at the worst makes life around them coarse and vulgar.

In the past, double entendres were employed as a way to get around a censor. Nowadays, there is no shading of what the true meaning of something is. In fact, often the magnified message is quite clear, slammed in your face super-sized style, leaving no doubt what is intended.

If your reaction to these examples is “big deal,” then my point is made: people have become blinded to good taste.

Clearly, things have gotten out of control. This is not about censorship. It’s about boundaries.

No standards seem to exist anywhere anymore. Are people asleep out there?

Yet how many of us are sick and tired of the “Holy Shift” ads for Showtime’s“Nurse Jackie”? Last year’s slogan was “Life is full of little pricks.” How raunchy will next year’s ad campaign be? You can imagine those writing these lines snickering to themselves. You have to wonder about those who are paid big bucks to come up with this tripe: don’t any of them have kids? Aren’t any of them ashamed of their work?

It’s akin to a person drawing genitals in a public restroom. Only now all of us can see the work of the infantile minds in magazines, newspapers, and on television, buses, and the Internet.

We all should feel embarrassed when we see and hear these images. Evidently shame is on the endangered species list of human traits.

People can be very good at trumpeting certain causes, such as outlawing cigarette smoking in public places, making sure animals have rights, cleaning up the environment. But when it comes to the pollution of the eyes and ears, protests are nonexistent.

We don’t know the possible harm that is being done on young people’s psyches. All of us need to remember that there are children soaking in all these words and images, and as adults we need our guardianship role seriously. Who’s to say if children growing up today with a coarser culture will turn out courser themselves?

There was a time when adults would refrain from using obscenities whenever women or children entered a room. Now those obscenities are tattooed on the parents’ arms.

Freedom is not about doing or saying anything you want. If so, there would be no civilized society.

There is plenty of room in the marketplace for garbage, but the public should have the choice whether or not to be forced to look at it and smell it.

We all could use a little civility nowadays.

Hollywood, enough is enough. Stop making garbage.

Unlock the lockdowns

2011-01-12T04:00:00Z

“We are in lockdown. This is not a drill. Repeat. We are in lockdown. This is not a drill.”

Such dire-sounding words piped over the P.A. system sound like something one would hear in the military or in prison. Instead, the discomforting announcement is made at the high school where I work.

When I became a teacher over 21 years ago, I never thought in my wildest imagination my life could be in jeopardy while on the job. Due to the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings, today’s teachers and students face new threats going to school. It’s not enough having fire and earthquake drills.

If you’ve never experienced a lockdown, feel lucky. I’ve been through two and they are frightening. Yet much of the horror stems from the procedures of a lockdown more than the suspected sniper lurking about.

Teachers are told to lock the door, turn off all lights, and get kids on the floor under tables and desks.

Since everyone knows this, what prevents a person with a gun on a school campus from shooting the lock off the door and killing 35 kids who are sitting ducks?

For the teacher, there is no worse feeling than having no communication with the administrators. Besides the P.A. announcement of a lockdown, no further messages are aired. No e-mails are sent to teacher computers. Cell phones aren’t even utilized.

“It was only fifteen minutes,” an outside observer may comment. But let me tell you, when you are crouched down under a table, hearing muffled cries and whispers from students, unsure how to comfort them, unable to calm your rapidly beating heart, peering up through the slits of vertical blinds hoping not to get a glimpse of a gunman, it seems like an eternity.

School officials need to figure out a better way of protecting children during future lockdown episodes.

Tony Danza is not a teacher!

2010-10-01T22:52:00Z

“Those who can do. Those who can’t teach.”

So goes the clichéd saying that has long been an indictment on the quality of the teaching profession.

No one in a position of power, from presidents to principals to managing editors, believes that school teachers have anything worthwhile to say in fixing America’s declining public school system. Teachers are rarely consulted, their advice never used in any decision-making capacity on how best to teach to children. Most definitely, they are not the face of the teaching profession.

Whenever the media, especially television, use on-screen attorneys to dissect the latest headline-grabbing trial, it makes sense to have those who have studied and practiced law to discuss the law. And when the story revolves around terrorism, all kinds of security specialists surface including ex-secretaries of state and CIA officials. Yet when the subject turns to education, who are the experts sought out by the media? Former U.S. education secretaries, think tank opine-ers, or anyone with a household name of Bill as in Bill Gates or Bill Cosby. Almost all newspaper op-ed pieces on education are written by people with these pedigrees. Rare it is to find a byline of an actual classroom teacher.

Oh sure, every September there’ll be a “first day” diary written by a local teacher. And once in a while a newspaper will track the year of a teacher, but even that is written by a journalist.

Would a person give more credence to a friend or neighbor on how best to treat a medical condition than what an actual medical doctor has to say? Yet year after year anyone with name recognition chimes in on how best to teach kids despite a total lack of teaching credentials.

This belittlement of the teaching profession is maddening and is directly related to the fact that 75% of all K-12 teachers are female, and females as an employee group traditionally haven’t had the same salary and respect level of mainly male employee groups.

Teachers don’t need a Big Daddy figure to stand up for them. Teachers shouldn’t allow the Tony Danzas of society to put teaching in prime time.

Believe it or not, America does have talent and it’s in classrooms all across America. The teaching profession has its own superstars. But the media doesn’t seem interested in either seeking them out, or in giving space in print, on air or online to these special educators who not only do incredible work with young people, but who strive to better education. The word “hero” gets bandied about too easily these days, but some of these folks would be candidates for such an honored title.
It’s wonderful that President Obama is willing to rattle the teachers union status quo about merit pay, it’s good to see Education Secretary Duncan taking risks by stating teachers need to be held accountable, but neither of these gentlemen have teaching experience. And the president’s two daughters attend private school, just as the majority of politicians’ children do. These folks may be the least qualified to stake a claim on what’s best for kids in this country’s public schools.

It seems that the media listens to everyone who has an opinion about teacher and schools except those who actually teach to America’s youth.

When I was doing research for my latest book and came across a report from the College Board, the folks behind the SAT and AP tests, I noticed on the very first page at the top was a quote triple the size of the other text attributed to former IBM CEO Louis V. Gerstner Jr. When I read it my eyes bugged out—it was a quote from my first book. Not a word altered, moved or deleted. Verbatim.

To the College Board’s credit, once I brought the matter to their attention, they were apologetic and made the correction. In a way I understood why I wasn’t credited. Who am I? I’m not a billionaire or celebrity or national politician. I’m just a classroom teacher.

One of the paradoxes in good teachers is their innate desire to help others and, at the same time, not take credit for it. This selflessness has to change. Good teachers should stand up and speak out and take ownership of their own profession, and don’t let outsiders take away the spotlight of their work. Until that happens, teachers will continue to be overlooked, their expertise unexplored.

However, don’t feel sorry for them. Once Teacher Appreciation Week kicks in, they’ll be inundated with tshatshkes as proof of their worth, such as a marble with a saying attached, “You are marble-ous!”

NBC's Education Nation without Educators

2010-09-29T03:03:00Z

Teachers are the experts in the education field and their voices need to be at the forefront of changing the way this country’s children get educated. Unfortunately, no one is listening.

Credit should be paid to NBC News for devoting days of coverage this week to a national discussion on education reform. But why wasn’t an outstanding teacher the guest on “Meet the Press” instead of Education Secretary Arne Duncan?

A big “thank you” to Bill and Melinda Gates for donating billions of dollars to public schools. But Microsoft should not be the face of education reform.

Creating a reality TV show with Tony Danza as a classroom teacher may garner ratings, but all it does is bring more attention to Mr. Danza than those who year after year positively impact young people’s lives.

Congratulations to filmmaker David Guggenheim on his education documentary “Waiting for Superman” but he shouldn’t be the one on Oprah.

The people who deserve to be in the spotlight, who should be the stars of the public school reform show, are the classroom teachers.

Many bright instructors are in America’s classrooms right now who could do wonders in transforming public schools if given the opportunity. Why won’t anyone listen to them when it comes to how schools should be run?

When 46 of the nation’s governors held a groundbreaking meeting on high school reform in February of 2005, no teachers were present. This is like holding hearings on tort reform without a single attorney there. Why would anybody intelligent do that?

It seems no matter how hard they work, when it comes down to it, teachers are shut out from the decision-making process. Just when teachers feel they have reached a certain level of respectability in their profession—sit on committees, chair departments, mentor other teachers—they quickly slip back to reality: they wield no authority. Despite their achievements, in the eyes of those in charge, they remain teachers, nothing more, and most definitely not needed for establishing education policy and reform.

Whenever politicians talk about what needs to be done in education, they always seem to forget to invite the people who have the most direct connection to the students—the teachers. Despite many of them sending their own kids to private schools, and having never spent a single day teaching a class, these lawmakers think nothing of dictating educational policies without the representation and advice of the people who do the teaching. It makes about as much sense as having these same politicians debate a new surgical procedure and not having a single surgeon in the room. That would never happen in the medical community, but it happens all the time in education.

It is frustrating for teachers to work in a system where they are accustomed to being the leader in the classroom, yet subservient to principals, superintendents, and, above else, politicians. Teachers’ thoughts and concerns are ignored, discounted, overruled.

The California State University found that “having meaningful input in the decision-making process” increases teacher retention. Teachers not feeling that their input is valued end up exiting the profession.

The time has come for teachers to be in charge of their own profession. Teachers need to chair committees, lead state school boards, run for state superintendent positions. The President of the United States should create a new position of Education Czar, a post that carries one stringent requirement: several years of exemplary teaching experience.

The greatest resource a school has to offer is its finest teachers. If given the chance, they might just be able to transform America’s schools.

The Expiration of the Teacher's Sheltered Life

2010-09-17T01:28:00Z

It’s coming. Whether you like it or not, it’s coming.

To all my fellow teachers out there, stay awake and pay attention. Your job is about to be on the line.

No more can you hide in your classroom except for the once every two-year visit from your administrator.

No more can you pooh-pooh standardized testing.

No more can you keep private test results of your students.

With the state Board of Education voting for a database that will share information about teacher effectiveness, the gig is up. The free ride over.

Your lifetime job security is about to be extinct along with free healthcare.

President Obama isn’t on your side and neither is education secretary Arne Duncan.

The age of evaluating teachers qualitatively has arrived. For those teachers who have clocked in and out of work, doing the minimum effort, knowing full well they’d still have a job, it’s time to wake up. For those teachers who have always been remarkable, it’s time to shine.

Value-added evaluations, using student test scores to determine if a teacher is effectively teaching or not, is being tried in certain school districts around the country. This is a Nightmare on School Street for the National Education Association (NEA) and other teachers unions. The last thing they want is for teachers to be evaluated for the job performed. The union’s goal is to maximize membership and to serve in a protector role for all teachers regardless of ability level.

What’s missing in the value-added evaluation discussion is the next step. Evaluating teachers based on student data must be only one piece of the overhaul needed to ensure high teacher quality. Tied to value-added evaluation must be the reward and punishment, i.e., if a teacher is determined to teach well, that teacher deserves an increase in salary and bonuses, and if a teacher is determined not to teach well, that teacher deserves to be fired. Otherwise, identifying which teachers are good becomes a bragging rights exercise. Not building a payoff into the evaluation system makes such judgments meaningless.

The uproar over using student test results to determine teacher effectiveness, and to publicize it, is strangely muted, only erupting into a protest against The Los Angeles Times for printing them.

One reason being that it is a Democratic President who has been leading the charge. Imagine if a Republican President were rattling the teaching establishment and union leadership, there would be no end to the on-street protests and public tongue-lashings. But when the NEA almost without exception financially supports Democrat-only candidates, this call for change is indeed a hard pill to swallow.

And you know what? It’s about time.

For while some teachers cringe at the idea of having their incompetence spotlighted and broadcasted over the Internet, there are many others who applaud any effort to attach some kind of quality label to the teaching profession.

Outside of a few progressive schools districts across the nation, teachers have never been given true job performance evaluations.

The healthiest aspect to this discussion is that finally, finally the argument about the inability to determine if a teacher is good or not can be buried forever. You can tell if a teacher is effective. But test scores alone don’t reveal a teacher’s quality.

How well a teacher communicates to students is a component not easily tested. The well-thought through lesson plan cannot be looked at quickly either. The comments on student work that provides insight and encouragement also don’t show up on a scan-tron form.

So before we all go numbers crazy about trying to squeeze a teacher’s complete skills set into a couple of digits, let’s use the value-added discussion not as opening the door to a new way to evaluate teachers but as a stick of dynamite to blow the door clean off to a complete overhaul on how teachers are trained, evaluated and, yes, paid.

It's Okay to Evaluate Teachers Using Test Scores as Long as the Better Teachers Get More Pay

2010-08-28T00:28:00Z

Using student test scores as part of a teacher’s job evaluation while not ideal is at least a step in the right direction towards shattering the outmoded concept that all teachers are the same.

The debate shouldn’t center on whether teachers should be evaluated using test score results. Rather, the conversation needs to involve completely rethinking the way teachers are compensated.

Testing students at the start of the year, then again at the end, provides data that is quick but insignificant. Test score results by themselves mean little in terms of a teacher’s abilities. It’s not so easy to evaluate how well a teacher communicates with her students, how clearly and coherently she answers student questions, how thoughtfully designed her assignments are, or how patiently she works with individual students.

However, if test scores are going to be used to determine which teachers are doing a better job of teaching, then what must follow is an acknowledgement that certain teachers are better than others. And, if that is so (and who would argue with such logic), then those more effective teachers need to get paid higher salaries, while ineffective teachers receive less or, without further improvement, get fired.

Paying teachers for the quality of their work is a foreign concept in the teaching profession. When a teacher is observed by an administrator, the visit is carefully pre-arranged at a time of day when the teacher can control as much of the lesson as possible knowing her superior will be present. What often happens is a highly rehearsed and unrealistic picture of what goes on in that classroom day in and day out.

All teachers get paid the same regardless of the type of job they do.

Quality is not acknowledged, applauded, spotlighted nor rewarded.

Because the system has low expectations of teachers, teachers, in turn, have low expectations of themselves as workers and, not surprisingly, this domino effect translates to the low expectations they have of their students.

The very forms that are used to evaluate teachers clearly show that quality is not part of the evaluation equation. On the evaluation form are listed several teacher behaviors each with two boxes for an administrator to check off: “meets standards” or “does not meet standards.” Notice the absence of a third option “exceeds standards.” So why should teachers desire to earn higher than average marks when they are not expected to be that good?

Thankfully, a few forward-thinking school districts and states including Denver, Houston, and Florida, have what’s commonly called a performance-pay system, often overriding union’s objections, that takes into account student test scores and pays better teachers more money.

One study found that when teachers get paid according to their performance, their students’ performance increases. In other words, money does motivate people to work harder. Who would have thought?

Excellence in public schools is a random occurrence. There’s nothing in the system to guarantee powerful instructors. In this era of accountability there is none where it really counts and that is with the teacher in the classroom.

Give principals the power to fire bad teachers. Each day an incompetent teacher is allowed to be in the same room with young people is another day of learning permanently lost.

The solution to many of public education’s problems is not a new reading program, not a new computer, and certainly not more testing. The solution is to have higher quality teachers by providing meaningful feedback and paying them well for good work.

People will work harder if their jobs are on the line. Teachers need to trade job security for professional integrity and join the rest of the American workforce and embrace with open arms the right to be fired and the right to be rewarded.

Quality Teaching is THE Answer

2010-05-19T05:13:00Z

“Mr. Crosby is peerless as an instructional leader. He is quintessentially professional in all aspects of his work.”

“Mr. Crosby is an excellent teacher. He has high expectations for all of his students.”

“His lessons are superb. His students are actively engaged in the learning process so much so that his students have actually developed their own standards-based lesson plans.”

“Mr. Crosby has an incredible way of motivating his students.”

“I saw more outstanding teaching techniques in 25 minutes than I’ve seen in a long time.”

“New teachers desiring to learn effective instructional strategies would benefit from observing his instruction and ability to engage all students.”

“He is a model for the teaching profession.”

These are excerpts from administrators’ evaluations during my 21 years of teaching high school English. They are not meant to demonstrate how great I teacher I am. I consider myself a very good teacher, but not Teacher of the Year material.

Rather, the purpose of using these comments is to show how despite earning the highest commendations from my superiors, I and millions of other teachers are never rewarded either with pay or promotion.

Teaching is more a calling than a profession, many have said. But it shouldn’t be a sacrifice, a sacrifice of salary, working conditions, and respect.

If I worked in the private sector, some of this praise would have generated bonuses or promotions. I have received neither in my entire teaching career.

Teachers are not paid based on their performance but on the number of years on the job and college units earned. In other words, there is no subjectivity involved. A teacher may work very hard or do the bare minimum, yet each receives the same amount of money. A teacher may spark the minds of young people, or may dampen their spirits. No matter. The paycheck is the same.

This is not right.

There are a few school districts across the nation who have implemented merit pay or performance pay systems. Both President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan favor paying teachers for their performance, as long as one of the criterions used in evaluating them is test results. This is where I draw the line.

To use a broad, standardized test that all students take in a state as a measure of that particular teacher’s record is erroneous. Some teachers are blessed with high achieving students, while others are less lucky with unmotivated kids.

The only advantage in using test results as a teacher evaluation tool is that it is quick. One looks at numbers and notices if they’ve gone up or down. Done.

A more effective evaluation system would be to observe certain behaviors in the teacher, behaviors that all parties can agree represent excellent teaching skills.

Of course, much more time and energy is expended when visiting classrooms for several minutes at a time, multiple times, over the course of a year. Man hours intensive, to be sure. But a more accurate picture of the teacher’s abilities will be observed.

Implementing career ladders in the teaching profession would also aid in students having a higher caliber of instructor. If teachers knew that if they worked hard they would be promoted to a higher level of not just salary but status, quality would finally define the teaching profession.

Saying that children are our country’s most precious resource may be a cliché but it is true. Ensuring that the people who work with this resource are the best isn’t asking too much.

Kids go to school only 180 days of the year, a total of 2,340 days from kindergarten through 12th grade. Let’s make sure children spend those precious days with the best teaching talent that money can buy. Performance pay and career ladders are part of an insurance policy for the future of America.

Teacher--oops--I Mean Staff Appreciation Week

2010-05-10T02:08:00Z

For those educators out there this is the time of year in May when our work officially gets recognized. Of course, up until a few years ago, this event was called Teacher Appreciation Week. However, after complaints from custodians and cafeteria workers, it has gone through the politically correct name change of Staff Appreciation Week.

If you are lucky enough, your local PTA will honor you with a special breakfast or lunch. For many teachers, however, Teacher Appreciation celebrations have the opposite effect of their intentions--insulting teachers not honoring them.

Where I work the local PTA puts a lot of time and effort in a whole week of placing in each teacher's box a token "thank you." Here are some examples:

a Cup O'Noodles with "you are SOUP-er" taped on it

a miniature fan with the saying "you are FAN-tastic"
a marble with a note "you are MARBLE-lous"
"we are the lucky ones" taped to a penny

How more substantive would it be to bundle all the money to pay for these trinkets and give teachers a special breakfast or lunch? Plus, it would take only one timeframe of effort instead of 5 days.

What do you think?

Movie Titles Need to be Rated

2010-04-16T00:22:00Z

Why does the Motion Picture Association of America even bother with ratings when the titles of recent movies evidently have no scrutiny. It all started a few years back when the raunchy “South Park” cable cartoon series released the feature “Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” and the producers admitted they got a kick out of having the MPAA allow such a gross title. However, that seems tame compared to “Meet the Fockers”, “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”, and now “Kick-Ass.”

If you are watching TV with your mother or children, do you not blush when ads for these movies appear?

I don’t mean to sound like a snob but enough already with all the smutty ads and movie titles. No, using four-letter words and profane depictions is not the end of American civilization. Yes, I enjoy watching R-rated DVDs, once my kids are in bed.

All of us need to remember that there are children in our society, and we need to take care of them. Children growing up with a coarser culture are bound to be courser themselves.

There was a time when adults would refrain from using obscenities whenever women or children entered a room. Now those obscenities are tattooed on the parents’ arms.

Freedom is not about doing or saying anything you want. If so, there would be no civilized society.

There is plenty of room in the marketplace for garbage. The public should have the choice whether or not to be forced to look at it and smell it.

We all could use a little civility nowadays.

Teacher pay cuts and layoffs

2010-03-04T03:22:00Z

I never thought I would see the day when teachers' salaries get cut and massive teacher layoffs occur. Unfortunately that day is here.

Where I work the district is proposing a 2-3% pay cut in addition to furlough days. Additionally, by increasing class sizes in kindergarten through third grade, dozens of teachers will lose their jobs.

Since the dawn of the profession, teachers have lacked many niceties other private sector workers have enjoyed such as pleasant working conditions and earning pay commiserate with one's skill. The one pay-off has always been job security and salary stability. Teachers have gone years without a pay increase but never a pay decrease.

Many teachers will be starting a new work year this fall with very low morale. Let's hope the economy can rebound so that a few years from now teachers will get back to where they were in 2009.

Share your stories here.

A Teacher's Last Year

2010-01-17T15:03:00Z

No, I'm not retiring. However, many people where I work are, people who I've known all of my teaching career. And when that happens, it makes me think about my future retirement.

When that time comes, how will I feel as I teach Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men for the last time? How about when I show no more the Bill Moyers interview with Maya Angelou, Laurence Olivier's performance as Shylock, the documentary on the Holocaust? One future retiree who is currently going through this said it is moments like these for which the word "bittersweet" was invented.

I'm not looking forward to not teaching since I still get much enjoyment and fulfillment from it, but that day will come for me as it does for all teachers. The key is to retire before you feel you are irrelevant, before you no longer get young people's sense of humor.

For those of you who have already retired, please share your "last year" stories.

Too Much Homework

2009-12-01T14:25:00Z

Homework has been a problem for students and parents alike for years, problem for students to do, problem for parents to force their children to do. In recent years the concept of no homework has surfaced and as a parent myself I can see why.

One of the pleasures of school holidays is not having to get on the backs of your kids to do their homework. For me, I dread Monday through Thursdays since each of those nights I need to constantly remind my sons to do their work. What's especially dreadful, however, is when some teachers assign special projects over Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations. The reason it is called "winter break" is for there to be a physical and mental time away from school. Teachers should recognize this and not place pressure on families during fun, traditional holidays periods.

As a teacher, why do I want to return to work after a holiday and receive dozens of student projects that I have to grade anyway? It's as if some teachers feel an obligation to "lay it on" when school isn't in session. Even during summer vacation, high schools allow teachers of advanced courses to assign summer work.

I'm a big believer in working hard and playing hard. As I've said previously, the school day and year should be lengthened. But a main reason for this is to allow children more time with their teachers who have the best understanding on how to complete the homework. Keep the homework at school and let kids spend time with their families at home.

Let me know what you think, and season's greetings to one and all.

Obama's speech to schoolchildren

2009-09-06T17:34:00Z

At 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, September 8, not only do I plan on showing my own students President Obama’s address to all the nation’s schoolchildren, but I intend to use the brouhaha over it as a teachable moment, of how precious freedom of speech is even if it means allowing hateful people to say things that are not true.

What insanity has taken over parts of this country when a presidential address to young people is perceived to be mistrusted as if an alien dictator has taken over that will brainwash their minds? Former President George W. Bush gave an anti-drug speech to the nation’s children and few screamed about indoctrination.

Some parents intend to keep their children home that day so that they don’t see the message. My gosh, folks, this is the President of the United States we’re talking about.

How far this country has lost its way when the President cannot make a simple “do well in school” speech to America’s youth without controversy.

Paranoia is the key word involved with the vile antagonism expressed by some parents who wish their children not to hear the President of the United States speak to them about their future.

I was amazed when my son brought home a note from his first grade teacher offering parents to opt out of hearing the message. The problem with such a notification is that it creates the sense that what the President has to say is somehow controversial so parents who probably would not have said a peep about the whole thing might now decide to have their children not be present, even though the entire text of the President’s speech is available on line on Monday at whitehouse.gov.

At the high school where I work, the principal sent a carefully worded e-mail regarding the speech, leaving the matter in the hands of individual teachers (as it should be) whether or not to show it in the classroom.

What a shame that such an exciting moment for young people, the President speaking directly to them about their education, has been twisted by ignorant parents and ratings-addicted media pundits into a scary, heinous message that serves to indoctrinate our children. But isn’t having young people stand up, put their hands over their heart, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance a form of indoctrination? Many of these same parents desire religion to be taught in public schools, but that would not be indoctrination, would it?

What is wrong with people today? Don’t we want a president who cares about health care and education? Since when does everything the president does or says has to pass through some kind of “Democrat Liberal” filter? Wasn’t the election over with 10 months ago?

Why any good American would desire a president to fail is beyond reason. There’s only one explanation why some people so vehemently oppose the president: because he’s black. How frightful that this country has so many parents who still cannot accept that an African-American is the president of all of us.

This isn’t the country I grew up in where people viewed the President of the United States as the president of us all whether you voted for him or not.

We are living in dangerous, uncharted times when a presidential address to young people about the importance of education is perceived to be indoctrination. I dread what may happen next.

Back to School time

2009-08-15T06:12:36Z

I remember as a child cringing when my eyes caught sight of the ads in the Sunday newspaper proclaiming in screaming headlines "BACK TO SCHOOL" Looking back, how I would love to have those 13-week summers back. This year, my own sons had one less week of vacation, 10 weeks to be exact, due to their school district's master plan of starting school in mid-August and ending it by Memorial Day.

Of course, I would rather see smaller but more vacation periods between school quarters. How many families do any of us know take 10-week trips?

Good luck to all you parents, teachers, and students out there!

SMUT SELLS

2009-07-15T20:57:00Z

“Sex sells” used to be the mantra of Madison Avenue. Today it is smut that sells.

The crassness of advertising and marketing in this country needs to stop.

So many stimuli exist in the 21^st century that makes it practically impossible to shield young children from being bombarded by images and sounds that at the very least makes it quite difficult to explain to young people, at the worst makes life around them coarse and vulgar.

In the past, double entendres were employed as a way to get around a censor. Nowadays, there is no fooling of what the true meaning of something is. In fact, often the magnified message is quite clear, slammed in your face super-sized style, leaving no doubt what is intended.

All this crassness in the advertising and marketing industries is akin to a bunch of boys sneaking a peak at a Playboy magazine or porn website. They know what they’re doing is considered “forbidden” but it’s fun doing it anyway because they’re getting away with something.

Here are recent samples of promotional campaigns that have appeared in print, on television, on billboards, and, incredulously, on public buses. Evidently, city transportation agencies have no sense of decency on how they generate revenue.

Look at the new HBO series “Hung”. No, it is not about capital punishment. According to the series description, “Ray resolves to take advantage of his greatest asset, in hopes of changing his fortunes in a big way.”

“Zack and Miri Make a Porno.” Amazingly, some news outlets showed a touch of class by refusing to run the full title of this film.

E!’s “The Girls Next Door” ran commercials during TBS’s broadcast of the baseball division series last fall showing scenes of naked women’s backsides blurred, a naked woman who had mud on her breasts and nothing else, and women in all kind of lurid poses. What a nice way to spend the evening with my 9-year-old son.

How about Showtime’s new “Nurse Jackie” with the ad line “life is full of little pricks.”

Quizno’s marketing campaign for its Toasty Torpedo sandwich with a commercial showing a man physically inserting a phallic-shaped sandwich into an oven opening, with the oven speaking to the man ala the computer HAL from “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Put it in me, Scott.”

Clearly, things have gotten out of control. This is not about censorship. It’s about boundaries. It’s about someone, somewhere taking a stand for what is naughty and what is nice.

If your reaction to these examples is “big deal”, then my point is made: people have become blinded to good taste.

No standards seem to exist anywhere anymore. Are viewers asleep out there?

We all should feel embarrassed when we see and hear these images. Evidently shame is on the endangered species list of human traits along with responsibility for one’s actions.

No, using four-letter words and profane depictions is not the end of American civilization. But why aren’t more people riled up about these gutter tactics occurring regularly on TV, billboards, and webpages?

One of the main problems with so much of this is the blurring of right from wrong. Children growing up with a coarser culture are bound to be courser themselves.

We don’t know the possible harm that is being done on young people’s pyches. As human beings all of us should strive to be the best that we can be. Unfortunately, too many media messages push the envelope in a kind of contest of how crude can people get.

There is plenty of room in the marketplace for garbage. The public should have the choice whether or not to be forced to look at it and smell it.

Whenever you see something that definitely crosses the line, make a point not to see the movie or watch the series or buy the product. It is time for good, decent people to let these companies know that enough is enough.