No Teacher Left Insane

As teachers, we are afraid to speak out. I do not believe that educators will ever rise to the professional level of attorneys and physicians until we are able to voice our frustrations, fears and insightful ideas without fear of losing our careers. So, why are we so fearful of voicing opinions? Simply, because at the campus level, the teacher who voices an opinion is reprimanded. Now, let me qualify that statement. I am not talking about a strident dissident who is constantly complaining. What I am describing is a professional, experienced, college educated individual who simply has insight, knowledge or an opinion on a subject. That person is not welcomed in education, and I will continue with the next logical conclusion:  until teachers can have input into educational decisions without fear of retaliation, we will not move forward in Texas. There can, in reality, be no educational flourishing in a state where, simultaneously, the teachers are fearful of participating vocally. Intellect and control are mutually exclusive. I do not believe they will grow in the same environment.

Why would I make such a statement? Why would I charge that school districts reward the teacher who never voices an opinion? Because I have experienced, or watched the experiences of others, who have simply tried to do what was right within moral parameters but were disciplined harshly. Specifics:  first, let me say that these two experiences were several years ago in a premier district, not in the district where I presently work. In my opinion, these experiences probably could not take place in the district where I presently work.

A fourth grade teacher had a problem with anger and grabbed a student by the upper arm and left bruises on the child’s arm. The teachers on the grade level were shocked by what had happened and documented the bruises with  a photo, and then went to administration quietly and respectfully so that the situation could be dealt with before it became  an article in a newspaper, or, worse, a lawsuit invoked by an angry parent.

I wish I could say that the offending, angry teacher was disciplined and that the teachers who brought the situation to the attention of administrators were rewarded for protecting elementary students, but that was not what happened. What did happen, as it was related to me, was that the teachers bringing the matter to the attention of administrators were moved from their campuses and placed on campuses farther away from their homes. The teacher was moved from fourth grade down to kindergarten, with more vulnerable children.

The principle was stunning and powerful:  keep your mouth shut whatever happens. If you bring unpleasant information to the attention of administration, even in the best interest of a child, you will suffer the wrath of your school district and your career will be called into question. You will become the  messenger who must be killed upon the arrival of bad news to the potentate.

Secondly, as a classroom teacher, I had the experience of having an immigrant parent come to me with the information that a teacher had grabbed her daughter and left a bruise. I begged the mother to go to the principal with this information, but she was fearful of administrative reataliation, or teacher retailiation, towards her daughter. I assured her that our principal at that time was wonderful and supportive and would only act in behalf of her child. In fact, it was well known among faculty members that the principal, a wonderful child advocate, was actively trying to remove the teacher from his campus. But, the mother refused to bring the information to the forefront because of fear of what would happen to her vulnerable, elementary aged daughter at school. Unreasonable? Perhaps, perhaps not based on some of the things I have seen.

Last of all, I am reminded of an unforgiveable incident that was my own personal experience. Many years ago, in a smaller, more rural district, a child came to me in my classroom and asked if he could speak to me privately. It was the day before Thanksgiving break, and I was allowing the students to use paintbrushes and paint, and I was standing in front of the closet where the art materials were, and a student was waiting for me to pour more paint onto a paper plate. (Note to self:  Never let elementary kids pour the paint or the glitter. You’ll be stuck after school cleaning the carpet.) Having no idea what the child wanted, I said, “Can it wait a bit?” He answered “No.”. so I set down the paintbrushes and paint and we walked outside. Now, bear in mind that most times, when a child absolutely, positively has to speak to you outside it’s because she thinks so-and-so has stolen her ice cream money, and then she finds it in the back of her desk, or he says another child is “saying bad things about my momma!” and twenty minutes later both children are happily romping and laughing on the playground. But, it was not to be so on this day.

The child told me, in no uncertain terms, that he was being molested by a family member. Because the charge was so egregious, I asked bluntly in unmistakable terms if the child had experienced sexual molestation and he answered in unmistakable terms and described when, where, and how it had happened, and continued to happen. I was satisfied that he was telling the truth, and I also knew  the family  to be abusive and dysfunctional.

I also felt as if I had, emotionally, been dragged through a sewage pipe, because the child had just described to me his experiences of being sodomized. I knew, from years of in-service on the subject, that I was bound by law to report the abuse immediately, or to risk losing my teacher certification.

I went to our counselor, who was a wonderful lady, but she was not in her office. So, I went to the principal’s office, stunned and shocked, and wishing for some small amount of emotional support. Not to be had. In fact, the principal told me there was “nothing we could do” and to leave the matter alone until such a time as the counselor could get around to it, perhaps after the holidays. He just didn’t seem very concerned. In my opinion, as the school administrator, he should have picked up the phone immediately himself, and notified the authorities.

I went back to my classroom, still emotionally distraught and sickened, and called the child abuse hotline, which, of course, didn’t answer on the day before a major holiday. So, I took the bull by the horns and called a number I found in the front of the phone book that reached the Texas state capitol. I told them who I was, that the child was being abused (there were several other children in the home) and by the time I left school  that afternoon there was a white station wagon in the front yard of the child’s house that identified the car as the property of the state of Texas. The children were interviewed and removed from the home that afternoon. But, my principal was furious with me for making the call - because I should have left everything up to the school counselor who was……….not there. That is exactly  the opposite of what we were instructed to do for years, upon penalty of losing our teaching certification. And, you guessed it, when time came around for evaluations, mine was horrible. Where’s the disconnect? In a rational world, I should have received recognition for having the children removed from the abusive home - but I broke the cardinal rule of public school - even though it was the legal requirement for me to do so.

Again, if these are my experiences within one individual career, how many times are they being repeated in the experiences of other Texas’ teachers? Am I some sort of educational trauma magnet of bizarre experiences? I don’t think so, I believe that “speak no evil” within educational circles in Texas has been taken to an unhealthy parameter that can actually work against the best interests of children.

As is the human habit, at year’s end, I found myself thinking of past educational experiences. And, before the reader rushes to judgement, this experience did not happen in HISD. I add that because I believe that, because HISD is the eighth largest school district in the nation, and because HISD has the unenviable task of educating many, many inner-city and low socioeconomically classified students, the district seems to be the media’s favorite punching bag. In my personal experiences, however, HISD was my favorite place to work, along with San Antonio ISD. The factor that sets HISD apart is the people. I loved the people in the district, and I still have fond memories of every year spent there. There was a lot of laughter, and some of the finest teachers I have ever worked with. Some real characters, too, but no more than any other district. The other districts just keep them covered up better. So, the experiences I was remembering were the product of a premier district, and I will let you guess where I was working, to protect myself legally. However, every word is true.

We were in the library for a faculty meeting with a brand new fledgling principal. After school, of course, and the principal began to describe how we, as teachers, should handle discipline problems on this transitional campus. Government housing had been built in the neighborhood, which had once been middle class,  but was beginning to show the signs of academic strain, which, if you have read my thoughts about test scores, has nothing to do with intelligence, and has everything to do with affluence.

The principal began to relate that research showed that if a child played air guitar while rolling his eyeballs to the back of his head, his emotions would be disengaged and he or she would no longer be angry or disruptive. I can only add at this time that I am not making this up. This is what your public school teachers have to deal with on a daily basis.

We sat, in a sort of stunned silence, processing standing in front of a combative student and encouraging him to stop hitting or cursing, and play air guitar, or roll his eyeballs to the back of his head.

At that point, and I admit that this is a great fault after almost thiry years of teaching, I had had it. I raised my hand and asked the principal if anyone from  the research facility had contacted the joint military chiefs of staff, or the president, who was the head of the military. Because, I was extrapolating that if we could only have the terrorists forced to play air guitar and roll their eyeballs to the backs of their heads under their turbans, then their emotions would be disengaged from their behavior and the war would soon come to an end.

Heck, why stop with the military? With this riveting information, why weren’t law enforcement organizations receiving this fascinating research?  Why wasn’t it on the front page of newspapers? If teachers were going to be asked to act upon the research, why not policemen?

I will be the first to admit that I was being offensive, but if leadership can’t give more consistent support for discipline than “playing air guitar” and “rolling eyeballs”, they get what they get. We, as teachers, have real needs, real stress, real frustration, real paperwork overload, real burn out. Give us real leadership or take the heat.

Along those same, sad lines, the principal also, at a different time, warned us of, again, research that suggested that airspace within the classroom  may actually become contaminated. (Remember, I can’t make this stuff up.) So, if a teacher scolded a child from one vantage point in the classroom,  the teacher must be careful to give encouragement from different airspace, in order for the encouragement to be received and acted upon by the child.

Do you have a picture of that?  We are not only responsible for academics, character formation, health, standardized test scores, parental consent forms for pictures taken at school, parental background paperwork for any parents going on field trips, lunch monies in arrears, lost library books, accumulation of Accelerated Reader points, self-esteem, quiet hallways, graffiti in the bathroom areas, daily documentation of low performance by any child who might be a testing problem in the future, daily documentation by any child who is a discipline problem, daily documentation of every parental communication, and, finally, technology implementation in the classroom, among a myriad of other responsibilities, including disaggregating test scores to find which students are missing which information to make sure that the district comes across as TAKS capable.

On top of all of those responsibilities, you must also remember which airspace, which is invisible, of course, is contaminated and which is unconaminated, fresh and inviting.

In case you haven’t guessed it, the name of the game in many districts in Texas now is to get out of the classroom at any cost, because the classroom teacher has become the repository of every crackpot research theory that harried and sometimes just plain incompetent leadership  can come up with.  Does this put “teacher burnout” into a little more perspective for the reader?

I found myself

Running and working and searching

For all the answers to the

Questions in my

Life

Then I became too tired and

Confused to notice the

Little things which make each day

Special

John’s jokes

Matt’s giggles

Bluebonnets

Good books

Chicken enchiladas

Hot coffee

My Christmas gift this year

Will not come from Macy’s or

Even the Galleria because

My best gift is the

Peace I’ve felt since

I stopped running

I’m going to savor the feel of

Christmas this year from the delicate flavor of

Cinnamon to the last brown pine needle

Vacuumed from the carpet

I’ll sit in front of a crackling fire

With a cup of hot tea and

Part of my gift to me will be

Remembering that

You

Have been special to me this year

And that we are

Growing

And learning from our mistakes

And laughing

And learning from our mistakes

And loving

And learning from our mistakes

And looking forward to a

New Year of hope and grace and joy

Made possible by the physical

Birth

Of a Spiritual promise

Merry Christmas

 (poem written by Paula Whiteley)

As TAKS dictates what children learn in Texas, I wonder what happens to educational foundations that are so important to early learning. Each year, the test is tweaked so that it becomes more and more difficult to achieve success. A few years ago, children read passages on the reading test and answered some fairly basic questions. It was the same with math. I would have no problem with a comprehensive test that covered basic math computation, recognition of clock faces, time to the half hour or quarter hour, that sort of thing. But, if you don’t teach third or fourth grade in Texas, did you know that eight-year-olds are required to differentiate between standard U.S. and metric measurement? They are required to know inches, feet, yards, miles AND centimeters, meters, and kilometers. And, that’s just linear measurement. They also need to know capacity - liquid measurement. They may have never bought a quart of milk or a pint of cream, but they are expected to know the the equivalents of cups, pints, quarts, gallons, and milliters and liters. And, don’t forget the ounces, pounds, tons and grams and kilograms. That’s a massive amount of knowledge for an eight-year-old who has probably never bought a yard of cloth or who has never measured a board to cut it. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to learn that information later, as you become adept at measurement in our society, as you practice it, or interact with it?  Do you have any idea how difficult it is for such a small child to absorb knowledge with which they have no experience? Of course, we busy ourselves in our classrooms making measuring tapes and pouring water in and out of quart plastic containers into gallon milk jugs so that they can have the experience of measurement. But, what is the cost?  Multiplication tables are a huge part of third grade knowledge acquisition, as well as beginning word problems. If we, as teachers, have to siphon off hours and hours of classroom time to teach metric measurement to children who have no knowledge base of miles and kilometers, what’s happening to the multiplication tables, which is truly necessary to be mathematically adept?  What about internalizing reading skills? Why should we have to force feed children skills that are useless to them at this point of their life journey?  Well, because some educational beauracrat that hasn’t been in a classroom in fifteen years - if ever - has decided that it will be on the TAKS test. So, like the lemmings we are, like a school of fish turning on point at the sight of a barracuda, the entire state begins to teach children metric measurement at eight-years-old instead of reinforcing multiplication skills which are truly useful. And that’s just one example:  third graders in Texas this year will be tested over elapsed time, probability, and a whole smorgasbord of math skills that suggests to me that they are getting a few “bites” of math without truly spending time on understanding the foundational math skills that will carry them on through real understanding of algebra, trigonomety, and physics. What do you think??

I think that for me, personally, the most grievous single thing about the educational atmosphere in Texas today is the lack of creativity and spontaneity. True, I am a little on the artsy, creative side, and perhaps it hits me harder than most. But, I have talked with others who are not necessarily on the creative side, and they have commiserated with me. I used to be able to walk into my classroom and prepare lessons and experiences for a group of students based on their academic needs that also taught and reinforced skills dictated by the curriculum of the campus. It might be using quotation marks and writing a conversation on a big piece of paper and using macaroni for the quotation marks. Or it might be fractions with cookies and bread slices for circles and squares, or any of a million different ideas to make the day a little different and the lesson memorable and applicable. These days, however, the classroom teacher is not in control of the classroom anymore, and I really lament that. It’s not so much that I want control. It’s more like a cessation of creativity. You don’t teach anymore. You participate in the paperwork. You don’t generate challenging lessons on an as needed basis for your students to prepare them for the workforce. You receive numbers that indicate Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills and you teach them to your students in preparation for a test. You implement the grand TAKS plan from on high. It’s not fun anymore.

I heard an interesting story a couple of weeks ago, which I am sure will resonate with many of you. The teacher, who will be unnamed, told of the principal crying in front of a group of teachers and apologizing for how the teachers had been treated in Texas’ unending quest for higher, more demanding and challenging TAKS test scores. She told of the tension that could be cut with a knife during the weeks preceeding the TAKS test, and told a personal story of a student who had failing grades before receiving medication. Upon taking medication, the student became an excellent student. However, on the day of the TAKS test, you guessed it, the student was fidgeting and unable to attend to the test, and failed miserably. When asked, during the test, if the student had taken his/her meds that morning, the student replied that Mom had not had the prescription refilled.

This is the part I just love: 

When the test scores were received on the campus, the principal immediately demanded to know what had happened that the child had failed TAKS. The teacher related the story and, in front of another group of professionals, the principal said to the teacher, “And you allowed that to happen? What were you thinking?” The school missed an exemplary rating by one point and the teacher ended up having to fill out pages and pages of time-consuming documentation in order to prove that the child lacked medication and it was not her “fault” that the child had not achieved TAKS success.

This seems like a really unusual story, however, I have personally seen two principals, at different times, reduced to tears because of testing stress. If I have had these experiences, and the teacher with whom I was speaking has had these experiences, how many times is this being replicated throughout the state?

The public does not see behind the classroom walls into the meetings and private agendas of our educational communities, but, believe me, public schools are not warm, spontaneous learning environments these days. Being a teacher used to be difficult, but rewarding, but that, of course, was when we were teaching kids. Now, my feeling is that we are looking at eight-year-old intellects and attempting to manipulate them into widget-like TAKS achievers.

Finally, the teacher described the district in which she worked, which is rated as one of the best in the state, as an absolutely miserable place to work, with overstressed administrators and teachers and unfulfilled students.

There are just so many things wrong right now in Texas education that one simply doesn’t know where to begin. So many schools……so little time. Haven’t we learned anything in the past fifty years or so?  We, as a culture, poke fun at people who honestly believe  their worth can be assessed based on the car that they drive. We have made great strides in assuring women that their bodies are acceptable, regardless of dress size. And yet, in the area of education, our state leads the way in dehumanizing our most vulnerable members of society, the children, by pasting a test score upon their developing psyches. Again, testing is necessary, but draconioan measures are not. There are multiple tests that can measure student achievement and teacher accountability without having the entire state jump through hoops and march to the sound of one fascist drumbeat.  

Teaching should be about relationship, communication, motivation and aquiring knowledge. At the elementary level it should be filled with joy and experiences and self-awareness of abilities and talents and relationships to others. There should also be an element of pleasant discipline so that a correlation occurs in the child’s psyche that whispers, “I didn’t think I could do that, but I pushed myself, and with the help of others, I found out that I could learn it really well.”  TAKS has stolen those golden moments of education. What a monumental pity. Learning now entails force-feeding of a pre-determined body of knowledge - like metric measurement - that has to be fostered upon eight-year-olds within a week’s time so that the next essential element can be begun and completed in a timely manner before the TAKS test. God help us, and we wonder why they don’t like school.

Sorry it’s been so long since I have posted. We’ve had computer issues, but I know it is  unforgiveable to have a brand new website and not to post for three weeks! Also, I have just returned from a doctor’s office where I had a painful cyst removed from my back, so, even though it hurts, it’s a good, healing hurt and I feel like I am ready to be human again. Also, of course, it was great to have a couple of days off of work!

Teachers I talk to all seem so very frustrated with the amount of paperwork we are having to do. Here’s the analogy I used with my family:  Imagine that you had to make a pizza from scratch in a nice, clean kitchen. It is not that daunting a task, right?  You make the dough, you make the sauce (actually, I just use Prego), and you chop the veggies. But, now imagine that as you are busy assembling that same pizza, you have about eleven telephones hanging on the wall that are constantly ringing. Just as you begin to spread the sauce on the dough, another phone rings. The administrator in charge of dough has just learned that pizza will be better if it has oregano mixed into the crust. So, you have to take the sauce off, take the dough off of the pizza pan, and mix in some oregano. Five minutes later, another phone rings. Be sure and exchange the mozzarella cheese you were going to use for reduced fat right now. Now two more phones are ringing - you get the picture. As teachers, our classrooms are the focal point of all of the information that the langauge arts, math, reading, bilingual, resource  and TAKS specialists are funneling to us. It gets overwhelming, and the irony is that we are trying to manipulate so much information that we, literally, are losing time to teach in our classrooms.

After twenty-five years in the classroom, I am finding myself still at school often after six o’clock at night. A friend who will not be identified told me recently that she can’t imagine why anyone would stay in teaching. She is in her second year. Before teaching, she had a cushy governmental leadership post with a personal secretary or two. Now, she said, she stays at work until dark….to keep up with the paperwork, of course.  She said, “Weekends are not free time for me, I spend most of Saturday grading papers. ” Her daughter recently said, “Mommy, I never see you anymore! When is there time now for our family?”  This friend is a natural in the classroom,  innately intelligent, nurturing, much to offer to children. Do you for a moment think that she will stay in the profession? Her ultimate comment was, “I had no idea that teaching was this demanding. I am a hard worker, but this is beyond what any one person can do, unless that person has no family and is willing to spend every waking moment focused on a job.”

No doubt the downtime during Thanksgiving will be a great time to think and post. Check back! Leave comments.

I ordered bumper stickers today, October 10, 2007. They are really sharp looking. They look a little like the Texas flag. On the left side, they have a royal blue background with one word in big, red, capital letters:  TAKS.  On the right side, there is a white background with : NOT ONE MORE DAY!  They should be here within a week. I am only ordering 250, but after they are gone, I will use any proceeds to order more. Each bumper sticker is $3.00, because I will have to buy postage,  envelopes, and if there are time constraints, possibly have someone help me stuff envelopes. If you already know you want a bumper sticker, send a check to Paula Whiteley, P.O. Box 87, Plantersville, Texas, 77363. As soon as they get here, we will get them on the website so that you can see how sweet they are.

There are several reasons that I am concerned about the influence of TAKS in Texas. For one, there is a disconnect between affluent and homogeneous students and minority students. In non-educational, laymen’s terms, read that: the rich white kids are always going to have better test scores than the minority kids. There is, in my opinion, no difference in intelligence between the two groups. One group is just as smart as the other. There is, however, a vast difference between students whose parents have established vocabularies and six-figure salaries, and parents who are trying to keep a family together by working two jobs, one in a car wash and one in a restaurant bussing tables. Both parents may have equal amounts of love and nurturing for their children, but exhausted, poverty stricken parents are probably not going to have a home filled with books and may not be present at night to read a bedtime story to a child. If they are at home, they may be overwhelmed trying to meet the emotional and physical needs of children with limited resources. All of this translates to a competition at the public school level, with urban, low socio-economic (read Spanish-speaking and some minority students) coming up with the short end of the standardized testing stick. The inner city schools simply try to play catch-up with the affluent, suburban schools, and it becomes a ratrace. Social studies and science time becomes reinforcement time for the TAKS test,  because science is not tested until the fifth grade.

Administrators have become adept at telling teachers not to even mention the word TAKS in the classroom until after the winter holidays,  so that elementary schools will not be perceived as being TAKS-driven by parents. In reality, however,  schools are driven by TAKS.  One of the first items on the agenda at the beginning of the year is to disaggregate TAKS scores, which simply means to find those skills that are not being taught well on your individual campus, address them, and bring the  scores up. Each week, in lesson plans turned in by teachers in Texas, teachers must notate, in each of the disciplines, numbers that specify exactly which skill is being taught in relation to the TAKS test. Lesson plans will say, for instance,  Reading, 3.4a and b, which might indicate that the students are being taught the difference between a tall-tale and a fable. ( I am just making those numbers up at home, but that’s what they look like, and that’s how we have to notate them in our lesson plans.)

I’m going to use a nautical analogy here. Suppose that you are a third grade teacher and half of your class are students you know are going to pass TAKS with ease. They are literate and adept at solving math word problems. They know their multiplication tables and grasp math concepts. The other half, though, and they are in literally every classroom, both affluent and inner-city, were left behind, despite No Child Left Behind’s best efforts. They are in third grade and they read anywhere from a kindergarten to a beginning third grade level. They are not safely on the ship. They are flailing in the water. Your principal and school team leaders are on the carpet if test scores don’t improve at your campus. You have a finite number of minutes to teach. Who do you go after? The kids already safely on the TAKS ship, or the kids flailing in the water? And, a really experienced, dedicated teacher may be able to bring several of those students from a kindergarten reading level to a second or even third grade level, but the student may still fail TAKS, and, unfortunately, that is all that is measured in Texas. The teacher is left with a sense of failure, while, in reality, he or she may have brought a child’s literacy rate up two or three grade levels.

And, finally, what about the bright children left on the boat? They need extensions and challenges to their abilities, but  that’s probably going to be minimal as long as teachers must throw all of their energy into bringing the marganilized student up to state standards.

More later. Lunch time.

This is my first blog at my new website! First of all, kudos to Susan Webster of mountaineagleweb.com. Love it. If you need a website, suggest you contact the same.

Bear with us as we tweak this site. My plans and creativity may be outstripped for a little while by my lack of website savvy - I know how to surf - but I am in uncharted waters.
I learn quickly, though! Watch us change and grow - I promise it will be fun and a breath of  fresh air. I have been teaching in the public school system of Texas for almost thirty years and it is my opinion that we need an agenda for change. Here’s a plan:

1. Get rid of TAKS in Texas (I know, I know, that’s mighty big talk for a one-eyed fat man) - but we are Texans - we can draw a line in the educational sand and WE CAN
DO IT. In fact, WE WILL DO IT!

2. We need to reduce paperwork at school. It is my personal belief that at this point of the game, paperwork has priority over teaching KIDS. That’s out of balance!

3. We need a statewide plan for campus level administrative accountability.

4. We need protected planning time. There should be a limit to the number of scheduled meetings per week for conference times, as well as after school meetings other than faculty meetings.

5. We need, AT THE VERY LEAST, for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to be a holiday. Does TEA think turkeys and cranberries are going to walk into our
kitchens??

If you agree, please post a comment, and address those things that I have not yet thought of, and be mindful that nothing is written in stone. The agenda can, and will,
I am sure, change over time.

Here are some things to look for:

1. Bumper stickers that read: TAKS….NOT ONE MORE DAY!
If you are a teacher or parent that would like one on your car - let me know!
I am in the process of designing bumper stickers. Before I order, I would like feedback from you before I commit to payment. Would you buy one? I am ordering on a shoestring from my salary, but I am a true believer that we have gone far enough with the TAKS Nazis. Are we Texans or WHAT? I am ordering 250 on my credit card, and if they are bought, I will use the proceeds to order more. I have more ideas for bumper stickers and t-shirts. Watch for more options.

2. I have been teaching for almost 30 years. I began teaching as a Navy wife in Tokyo, Japan in 1977. More on that later. I have watched the profession I love change
over the years. Some of the changes have been good and necessary, but it is my personal opinion that accountability can easily be measured by established annual tests. TAKS has become classroom overkill. Eight-year-olds should not need  more time to take a standardized test than I was given to take the GRE at A&M.

3. I am now, after many, many years of teaching in large, urban districts, in a small, wonderful, supportive district north of Houston. I believe I have the freedom to address
some of the things that have distressed me in the past few years in other locales. This year, I have a new principal who seems to be truly compassionate and thoughtful of
teachers while having that rare ability to bring campus change. However, and, unfortunately, it has not always been so. In another district, I watched in horrified
fascination as good teachers, respected by peers, students and parents were placed on growth plans simply because a new and fledgling principal did not “like” them.
These were teachers with high TAKS scores, teachers you would have thought would have been “wooed” by a school district to stay employed there. In this particular instance, three teachers and an administrator were, literally, run out of the district. Years ago, I would have told you that teachers’ unions were too strong for teachers to be treated so shabbily. However, I was naive. I saw it happen. I know the teachers personally. The situation was so egregious that four of the teachers had to teach in the private sector for a couple of years in order to reestablish their public school educational “creds” as good teachers. Of course, experiences like these are not the “norm”, but it happened to my friends, and to happen once is once too often.
I am betting that you have your own horror story. How do we prevent those excesses in the system? I spent almost ten years in San Antonio ISD, and one of the most impressive things I saw was an annual administrative evaluation at the campus level. Specifically, a lady came in with a pencil and a yellow legal tablet - so don’t tell
me it’s not cost effective. She called in teachers, by grade level, on their conference times and asked one question - “What do you want me to know about your principal?”
That one annual assessment would, in my opinion, bring some much needed accountability to campuses where morale is low and imbalance reigns. Many times there
might be one person on a grade level with a “bone to pick” towards administration, but other professionals will intercede for a principal who is judicial and respected. And,
how much better would it be for a school district to have inside information about an ineffective administrator before headlines hit the media, as we have all seen happen?

I have probably written more than you care to read at this point, so I’ll stop now. Please post your thoughts and comments so that we can encourage each other
for an improved educational system in Texas! And do check back…..we have only just begun! Here’s what I need from YOU:

1. Share this website with your teacher friends…..let’s burn up the internet! If you’re frustrated, tell us why so it can be addressed.

2. There’s a plan that entails more than just the website: let’s network together to remove TAKS from this state…we can do it! I have a meeting soon with a legislative representative to discuss effecting change. We’re teachers - we are a force. Check back often to see how you can be involved.

3. Pray for Texas education, if you are so inclined! Remember, they laughed at David, too - right before the giant fell.

4. If you are in agreement with the present agenda, let me know, and let’s get it done! And, laugh today at school, with kids. It will do your heart good.