August 9, 2009
This isn’t me…yet. Editorial today in the Washington Post. Do read and comment. This line of concern is open and raw for me (see below), and I continue to seek every perspective I can.
August 9, 2009
This isn’t me…yet. Editorial today in the Washington Post. Do read and comment. This line of concern is open and raw for me (see below), and I continue to seek every perspective I can.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Dina,
I find your recent posts remarkable. Like you, I have been reading Haberman’s book recently and teaching in an urban high school. Like the teacher in this story, I have just left the inner city (difference: I’m not out of teaching. I left for a more affluent school) after having some measure of success with my students. It was brought on by some advice given to me by some smart teachers I know, and the fact that the entire school staff was in jeopardy as we had reached “Corrective Action” under NCLB. Unlike the teacher in the WaPo article, I was not unhappy at my previous school (my administration seems more supportive then she makes hers out to be), but I left for greener pastures (a high school on the Newsweek Top School list) when I could have stayed. Haberman has been on my mind lately when I ask myself, “Am I one of his ‘quitter’ teachers that he talks about so much?”
As I look at Sarah Fine’s problem my initial reaction is, “Go find another school where you are supported.” But I stop myself as I realize that the problem that Fine has is a symptom of a larger systemic issue that I think is dwelling in both our conscious minds. She fell into the “Care and Feeding of the Bureaucracy” trap that you mentioned in your last post and that Haberman talks about at length. His answer in the book for Fine’s administration problem is to have the kids sit down and then assemble evidence to convince the administrator of the lesson’s worthiness, and to keep teaching like you need to anyway, but we both know that this does not always work.
(I just notice that your next post deals with the bureaucracy–hadn’t seen it before I read and started typing this.)
So my raw comment on this: Sarah Fine defines the problem. This is the main problem in the urban schools–good teacher turnover. My previous school’s teacher of the year just left. It’s systemic. This is not enough of a national discussion point. And as we both see, pay is not the answer. Sarah did not feel intrinsically supported. I left for a job with LESS money because I felt that the problems of the school would destroy my job no matter how well I taught. And that brings us to your next post…
August 11th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
[...] in her blog, The Line, is running a great series of posts here and here responding to the book Star Teachers of Children in Poverty by Martin [...]