Interesting email on teachers

[burniegoeasily]

For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America."

The teacher gives the businessman a lesson by Jamie Robert Vollmer "If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn't be in business very long!" I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of in-service. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the middle 1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the "Best Ice Cream in America."

I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging "knowledge society."

Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly.

They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement! In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced -- equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman's hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant-- she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, "We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream." I smugly replied , "Best ice cream in America, Ma'am."

"How nice," she said. "Is it rich and smooth?"

"Sixteen percent butterfat," I crowed.

"Premium ingredients?" she inquired.

"Super-premium! Nothing but triple A." I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

"Mr. Vollmer," she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to
the sky, "when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?"

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I was dead meat,
but I wasn't going to lie. "I send them back."

"That's right!" she barked, "and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them all: GT, ADHD, ADD, SLD, EI, MMR, OHI, TBI, DD, Autistic, junior rheumatoid arthritis, English as their second language, etc. We take them all! Everyone! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it's not a business. It's school!"

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, "Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!"

And so began my long transformation. Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night. None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when, and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a postindustrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community.

[Aught Six]

This just reinforces my belief that schools are more than willing to sacrifice the progress of the successful in order to feel good about helping (or attempting to help) the failures.

There will always been varying levels of socialclasses in society, and the same is true of intellectual classes. Not every individual has the brain power to graduate high school, let alone obtain a college education. You don't need to be brilliant to succeed in this country; hard work is enough to make it.

People keep asking why we're always looking for well-educated, skilled workers from overseas, but they fail to realize that we've neglecting our best and brightest here at home.

It's no coincidence thatso manyparents are home schooling their children or enrolling them in private school now more than ever. When you put every student on the same academic playing field, the class is only as good as the least common denominator.

[cameronmclain]

Aught Six- agreed! My kids won't go to a public school. It'll either be private or home-school. Too much politics and bureaucracy.

[BenGarrett]

Aught, I'm not exactly sure how you derived from the original post what you derived from it. Nevertheless, perhaps I'm reading your reply wrong, but what I interpret you as saying is that schools should focus on the cream at the top and ignore the rest. Would that be a fair assessment of what you're saying?

You're right insofar as there are some students who simply will not, cannot succeed. They won't. Their biggest hope in life is obtaining a $10/hour job on the local assembly line. That's a fact of life, and one reason why NCLB needs to be reformed; because NCLB, as it is written, is not allowed to factor in those cold, hard facts of life and the education system.

However, you make it sound as if the vast majority of students in the class are those intelligent, future CEOs or company presidents. But I'd submit to you that such students are few in number among any particular student body. There are a few at the top who are super-intelligent and destined to succeed, just as there are a few at the bottom whose greatest ambition in life will be obtaining Shift Leader position at the factory.

In between, however, you have the vast majority of your students: The students who will require some one-on-one time with teacher, teacher's assistant or tutors. Students who have a trouble-maker tendency and are going to require a few days of in-school suspension and log many hours sitting in the principal's office.

People have the notion that education is a routine; you go to college and learn the state's 10-step program for successful teachers, you read Chicken Soup for the Educator's Soul every morning for inspiration, then you go to school and teach to the curriculum, following state- or federal-mandated guidelines. But coming from a family of educators, I have seen first-hand that there is nothing routine about education. Each student presents a different challenge. And if you simply wrote off all those who couldn't gain straight A's by watching the teacher work an example Algebra problem on the blackboard and then take their textbook and work the homework page to perfection . . . If you simply wrote off those who never had to take some of the teacher's time by raising their hand to ask a question, or who never needed extra help after school. If you did that, you wouldn't have very many educated people in this country, my friend.

America's education system is far from perfect. But saying that schools are sacrificing the progress of the successful for the feel-good benefit of helping the helpless is a bit of a stretch, IMO. I don't think the best and the brightest are being neglected; rather, it's a delicate balancing act that many teachers handle well. It's a difficult task. Some teachers, frankly, suck at it and should be dismissed from the education profession altogether. Unfortunately, tenure prohibits that, but that's a 'nuther discussion for a 'nuther day, ain't it?

[Aught Six]

Aught, I'm not exactly sure how you derived from the original post what you derived from it. Nevertheless, perhaps I'm reading your reply wrong, but what I interpret you as saying is that schools should focus on the cream at the top and ignore the rest. Would that be a fair assessment of what you're saying?

I'm saying that educators need to start at the top and work their way down, at least on the secondary education level. I'd like to see the "three r's" as the primaryfocus in elementary schools, but once you reach the next level(which is designed in part to prepare individuals for work and/or higher education), we need to adopt a different model.

Instead of adopting standardized tests as a measurement of academic progress and proficiency, how about cultivating a diverseeducational hierarchy? I guess the bottom line is that I disagree with trying to bring the lower educational class up to the average at the expense of the more gifted reaching the very top.

Look at society--things often tend to fit intoa pyramid. You have the leaders and the followers, for lack of a better term. A society, government,or company are nothing without strong, capable leadership. Sure, you need masses of labor, but if they lack the coordination to accomplish lofty goals, all they'll see is a quagmire.

You're right insofar as there are some students who simply will not, cannot succeed. They won't. Their biggest hope in life is obtaining a $10/hour job on the local assembly line. That's a fact of life, and one reason why NCLB needs to be reformed; because NCLB, as it is written, is not allowed to factor in those cold, hard facts of life and the education system.

Agreed. However, I don't really think too much for or againstNCLB simply because the deficiencies in our education system have grown so deep for so long that it will take an entire educational reform on all levels, starting at the top. That one piece of legislation really won't solve much in the long run, particularly with all of the infighting we see in government on all levels.

However, you make it sound as if the vast majority of students in the class are those intelligent, future CEOs or company presidents. But I'd submit to you that such students are few in number among any particular student body. There are a few at the top who are super-intelligent and destined to succeed, just as there are a few at the bottom whose greatest ambition in life will be obtaining Shift Leader position at the factory.

Nah, the extremes are just that--extreme. Out of any one class, perhaps 2% will be leaders of the next generation of government, business, or whatever else. The bottom 2% will lose their job at McDonald's to a Spanish-speaking illegal (like my town). The vast majority of students are quite capable, but I believe that many in the above average bracket are being forced to stand by while educators trying to drag the lower bracket up to that level.

I suppose in a sentence, I think we should put more work into educating the top 50% than we should the bottom 50%.

In between, however, you have the vast majority of your students: The students who will require some one-on-one time with teacher, teacher's assistant or tutors. Students who have a trouble-maker tendency and are going to require a few days of in-school suspension and log many hours sitting in the principal's office.

Agreed. But again, it's the top half of the "average" (I know, that's an oxymoron) that I want to devote more of our energy to. I really have little tolerance for trouble-makers, particularly when they disrupt the class' aggregate progress.

People have the notion that education is a routine; you go to college and learn the state's 10-step program for successful teachers, you read Chicken Soup for the Educator's Soul every morning for inspiration, then you go to school and teach to the curriculum, following state- or federal-mandated guidelines. But coming from a family of educators, I have seen first-hand that there is nothing routine about education. Each student presents a different challenge. And if you simply wrote off all those who couldn't gain straight A's by watching the teacher work an example Algebra problem on the blackboard and then take their textbook and work the homework page to perfection . . . If you simply wrote off those who never had to take some of the teacher's time by raising their hand to ask a question, or who never needed extra help after school. If you did that, you wouldn't have very many educated people in this country, my friend.

Education is a lot like management (although perhapsteachers would disagree) in that motivating and advancingpeople is the most important, yet mostdifficult, aspect. Some people can do it well, and some struggle all their lives. There is definitely no clear solution to most of our problems with schools. That's one reason I have little patience for standardization. Society is a living, breathing, shifting body of humanity. There is no one-size-fits-all method of teaching.

America's education system is far from perfect. But saying that schools are sacrificing the progress of the successful for the feel-good benefit of helping the helpless is a bit of a stretch, IMO. I don't think the best and the brightest are being neglected; rather, it's a delicate balancing act that many teachers handle well. It's a difficult task. Some teachers, frankly, suck at it and should be dismissed from the education profession altogether. Unfortunately, tenure prohibits that, but that's a 'nuther discussion for a 'nuther day, ain't it?

First and foremost, I admit using my own experiences in school when developing much of my argument. The one thing that really burns me, is again, the standards of learning. The administrations in my middle and high schools used so many resources to bring every student to some artificial standard (which, even at the time, I found to be insufficient for our increasingly knowledge-based economy), while all but abandoning the gifted and talented program, AP course programs, andextra-curricular academic activities (there were plenty of sports, though).

So there you go,I hope my message is clearer now. Unfortunately, I tend to ramble a bit on this issue, but maybe I just need to go back to school.

[Bob H in NH]

The best will work hard and succeed, the worst will not work and will fail. It's the middle that you have to attack and work at and push to reach thier potential.

Schools are doing away with things like leveled classes because it makes the lower level kids "feel bad that others are smarter" well to bad. Work hard and you might get up there.

My wife is a teacher and there are kids with IEPs that have them because they are lazy, the kids are bright enough, just don't do the work (yes there are also legit IEP students as well).

My son's class had a kid did C/D work in every class, never turned in homework etc. He was flunking spanish. Turns out the kid was fluent in Spanish, just didn't want to do the work and bombed the tests cause it was more fun than passing.

[burniegoeasily]

Bob
I had a kid that had a IEP for ESL and did not speak any language but english. He did not qualify for special ed so they stuck him in ESL. Needless to say, I made sure I was at the next ARD.